alien romances

Alien Romances Is Part Of The Galaxy Express's SFR Holiday Blitz

2009-12-06T04:42:00.002-05:00

The Galaxy Express streaked onto my radar with Heather's very first post on May 19th, 2008 which was titled "All Aboard -- We're Ready To Launch", had witty subheadings such as "It Takes A Village To Maintain A Lunar Outpost" and "A Wormhole By Any Other Name..."

I did enjoy Heather's scholarly nod to "Romeo and Juliet"!

The Wormhole paragraph included a live link to this alien romances blog, which was very courteous and kind of Heather, and which resulted in a Google Alert.

I also rather enjoyed thinking about the village. Does anyone else remember a rock group called "The Global Village Trucking Company"?

Moreover, my favorite novel by Isaac Asimov is "The Gods Themselves" and one of the three parts involves a love story on a lunar outpost. What was yours?

How did you discover The Galaxy Express ?
Do you remember which of Heather's posts set fire to your imagination? If so, please tell the story in the comments here, below the official contest announcement which I quote:

The holiday season upon us, and that means 2010 is simmering just below the horizon. Start your New Year off right with a chance to score a free read in one of the hottest up and coming genres around—Science Fiction Romance!

Here’s the scoop: 12 bloggers have teamed up with 17 authors for your chance to win over 30 SFR books. Whether you’re new to the genre, or a fan looking to add to her collection, this event is for you.

Best of all, it’s dead simple to enter: There are no quizzes to answer, no hoops to jump.

For your chance to win all of the books listed in the sidebar by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Linnea Sinclair, Susan Sizemore, Margaret L Carter, Susan Kearney, and Rowena Cherry all you have to do is leave a comment for this post.

Print book prizes are limited to U.S. residents unless otherwise stated.

The deadline to enter is midnight on Friday, December 11, 2009. The winner will be announced on Saturday, December 12, 2009.

But don’t stop here! Increase your chances of winning even more books by visiting all of the participating blogs.

It’s easy: Just click on one of the links to the participating bloggers below. Make sure to leave a comment on the post titled “SFR Holiday Blitz.” From there, you can then jump to the next blog. There’s a wide variety of books to win so why miss out?

Other blogs:

The Galaxy Express (which started the phenomenon, and could entertain you for hours!)
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net

Dirty Sexy Books

http://www.dirtysexybooks.com/Dirty_Sexy_Books/Home/Home.html

Ella Drake http://elladrake.blogspot.com

Enduring Romance http://enduringromance.blogspot.com

Flying Whale Productions http://maryfitz.typepad.com/my_weblog

Lisa Paitz Spindler http://www.lisapaitzspindler.com/blog

Love Romance Passion http://www.loveromancepassion.com

SciFiGuy http://www.scifiguy.ca

Spacefreighters Lounge http://spacefreighters.blogspot.com

Take It To The Stars http://takeittothestars.blogspot.com

Queen of the Frozen North http://www.cathypegau.blogspot.com

You are here:
Alien Romances http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

Visitors can also see almost all the books that have been donated in the "Biggest Bang" "Listmania" on Amazon... We'd really appreciate some "Helpful" votes.

Moreover, if any science-fiction-romance lovers who are signed in to their Amazon accounts click through to the book pages to read the reviews, excerpts, and what-have-you, we'd very much appreciate it if readers would either check or write in tags such as "sfr" or "science fiction romance" to help other readers find great examples of this subgenre.

Thank you for your visit, your comments, and your support of SFR.

Rowena Cherry
on behalf of the alien romances authors

Darkover

2009-12-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Friday through Sunday, we attended the Darkover Grand Council north of Baltimore. It’s a small con, just a few hundred people, slanted heavily toward panels of interest to writers. Some topics this year included “Writing and Editing: Can (or Should) You Do Both?”, “What Do Authors Owe to Their Readers?”, and “Ultimate Evil,” as well as the usual sessions on food in fantasy, religion in fantasy, and research. The musical track has thinned somewhat in recent years, but there are still several regular performers singing throughout the weekend as well as the big Clam Chowder concert on Saturday night. Clam Chowder also leads a group sing of the Hallelujah Chorus in the hotel atrium at midnight on Saturday. We could see and hear them from our room. Sadly, competition in the costume contest has shrunk so much in recent years that it was discontinued. The Friday night substitute was a “costume optional” ball that, for the few minutes I looked in on it, didn’t draw many participants.

I participated in two sessions on vampires. With Scott MacMillan, I took part in a discussion of whether vampires can be good. Several people in the audience maintained that a vampire’s superiority over and distance from human beings, even if the vampire started out human, would inevitably lead him to think of us as mere prey animals. I tried to uphold a more optimistic viewpoint, especially in opposition to the implication that because they belong to a higher species, it’s OKAY for vampires to use us however they want. Would we consider a more advanced extraterrestrial species justified in treating us that way? Would most of us think it’s all right to eat dolphins if it’s eventually proven that dolphins have intelligence and self-awareness equal to ours?

My other panel was a group discussion on “The Twilight Phenomenon.” The panelists and most of the people in the audience agreed that there are lots better samples of vampire fiction (and vampire romance) out there but discussed reasons why this particular series has such a powerful appeal to its target readership. I’m still a bit bemused by the phenomenon; the Twilight series caught on with readers under its own power, not (originally) by way of publisher hype. Yet there are equally good (or better) YA vampire series that haven’t enjoyed such mega-popularity. L. J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries series, for instance, has been around a long time but didn’t get its well-deserved acclaim from the general public, including a prime-time TV show, until the Twilight craze paved the way.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Rion is out in stores

2009-12-02T11:39:00.003-05:00

Hi Everyone,
RION is out in stores now. And I'm pleased to say they are now in Targets, too. But if you can't find a copy, you can always order on line.

I'm pleased to announce that the book is getting excellent reviews. So please pick up a copy and if you missed LUCAN, it's still available, both in stores and online.

POWER IN THEIR PASSIONN
Marisa Rourke is a beautiful, fearless telepath who tames dragonshapers on Earth. Rion is a tall, dark, and sexy space explorer whose home planet is a galaxy away. The attraction between them is undeniable, but Rion is hiding a desperate secret that will change Marisa’s life forever.

DANGER IN THEIR TOUCH
Marisa’s gift is the only way Rion can communicate with his people, enslaved by a powerful enemy. He knows that kidnapping her is wrong, but saving his planet is worth sparking the fiery clairvoyant’s fury. Yet hotter—and more explosive—is the psychic bond growing between Marisa and Rion. Could their passion be the key to freeing Rion’s people? Only if he and Marisa can discover how to channel their desire . . . before a vicious enemy destroys them all.
Read more at my web site www.susankearney.com

Glimpse of a Reviewer's Life

2009-12-01T10:00:00.073-05:00

On Amazon, you'll see the little VINE VOICE icon by my reviews because I'm in the program where they offer (by an email list) books and other things to reviewers, free, and in turn the reviewer has to review 75% of what they get.

So far I've been lucky and could review 100% of what I've chosen from their list.

I'm also the Science Fiction and Fantasy reviewer for a paper magazine, and do a monthly column with a New Age slant -- so some Paranormal Romances and Historicals with magic fit into the column.

Lots of paper publishers send me ARCs (advance reading copies -- a bound POD printout with typos glaring and no cover art), and Hardcovers and Mass Market paperbacks - and even Trade Paperbacks.

There's no way any reviewer can possibly read every book that's published! So we specialize.

Now I'm not complaining here. We're talking the joy of a pig in mud, a puppy scratched behind the ears, a ghost discovering a way to talk to the living!

This part of my life is currently pure ecstacy.

But -- isn't there always a but? That's what makes stories, you know.

BUT!!!

As sales volume goes down, the number of titles in each category has been going up. Worse yet, as genre walls dissolve, bits and pieces of what I specialize in (impossible Relationships that change reality) are now turning up in several genres -- where numbers of titles proliferate.

With the addition of small press, epublishers, and self-publishers, it is a total explosion of titles to read.

I try to give authors who send me copies direct, editors who send ARCs for cover quotes, and general ARCs preference, but titles I really REALLY want to read are piling up.

Here's a picture of 6 months of pile-up -- (this does not include all the stacks and stacks of books I have read, some of which are already reviewed on http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/ PLUS a 3 ft. stack of to-review books I've already read not shown here)

But my "beat" also includes SF/F on TV and film.

Have you noticed how many "impossible relationship" driven TV shows there are this year?

The last few years I could watch everything (Except for Buffy and Angel, pretty much only on the scifi channel which is now gone, renamed syfy and just not the same). I only watch 6 hours of TV shows a week. That's all the time I have, and it's usually while doing something else because I really don't have six hours a week to myself.

Suddenly, I'm recording about 10 hours of TV every week, and still only watching 6, so my DVR has overflowed and started not-recording shows on my scheduled recordings.

And that's not counting FILMS.

I know there are things I'm missing, important things. I scan goodreads.com and amazon.com Communities, facebook, and twitter for a perspective on trends and look for how trends in fiction mirror trends in our real-world problems (and I find a lot I haven't space to discuss even on this blog).

Trends are my main focus, the big picture, the hidden significance of the microscopic. An obscure book here, a self-published book there, an Independent film, a story in Variety, a headline in the New York Times, a tidbit from Locus, a sudden best seller, or a prize winner that didn't sell so well being made into a TV Show (can you name 3 such shows on TV this year? Include cable channels.)

There is something going on now that needs further analysis. I believe what we're seeing in today's fiction has significance on a scale of thousands of years of human history - perhaps tens of thousands.

There are huge problems facing us, like Global Warming (is it real? Should we do anything about it? If so, what? Is anyone lying or fudging the data? What does it really mean? Who's hiding what from whom? Or "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.")

There's the increasing pace of epidemics bursting across species lines.

There's the species die-off that so many heroic people are trying to slow or prevent.

Perhaps there are new species evolving that haven't made headlines yet.

There's the threat of nuclear war again.

There's the increasing UV concentrations, rainfall shifts, and infectious plant diseases, diseases of the bee populations, all limiting the tons per acre of food we can produce. There's food supply contamination. There's pesticide and fertilizer chemical contamination affecting the fertility of animals, plants and people. There's food-distribution methods leaching nutrients from warehoused food. And there's hitting the global limit on how much more farmland we can put into service, plus the problem of CO2 emissions as we increase acreage cultivated.

And then there is the ever increasing power supply requirements of our ever-increasing global population.

Back in the 1950's there was a rash of SF stories about how civilization would collapse - giving rise to the genre called "post-apocalyptic" -- of which my Sime~Gen universe is an example, though of the more optimistic variety. Sime~Gen stories generally focus on a thousand years later, and humans of good spirit and good will put together a viable civilization again. Against all odds, they succeed, overcome, thrive and prosper because of love. They do more than restore lost civilization. They advance humankind.

Star Trek, too, is post-apocalyptic and optimistic -- for in Star Trek, Earth's history includes a vicious breakdown of civilization in the 1990's called The Genetic Wars. But everything comes out OK.(except for Ricardo Mantalban ).

Today the biggest trend is Urban Fantasy (turning up in every genre from Mystery to Historical) showing contemporary culture oblivious to the magical threats seething below the surface. Our Hero has to protect us from those threats and keep us oblivious.

It's not about "rebuilding" civilization, winning against odds, advancing where No One Has Gone Before. It's about preventing catastrophe, holding the status quo.

And that may be the view of an entire generation currently growing up, that all the problems that beset our world are inherently unsolvable even by the best science there is (maybe because scientists lie; they know something important they're not telling us? Secrets. Conspiracies. Darkness.).

Holding the status quo seems to me at the moment, the single biggest trend in fiction, a trend that is so big we (who absorb fiction one novel, series, or TV show at a time) can't see it as a pattern.

If the best we can hope for is holding the status quo, then we're living in a horror film. The Horror Genre definition is "the hero can't win - a draw is the best you can expect."

The Star Trek universe conception was that humanity not only can win, but WILL.

Today our world concept seems to be "hold on tight or we'll slip backwards."

If we don't change that attitude, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Consider how the USA (yes, I know some readers of this blog aren't in the USA) is handling Iraq and Afghanistan - Israel and the Palestinians. Consider the issues fueling those controversies and parse them into the paradigm of "hold on tight or we'll slip backwards."

Which way is "forwards?" Point me at a novel or TV show that blazes a trail "forwards."

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Science Fiction Romance and The Comedy Of Manners

2009-11-29T07:52:00.000-05:00

Almost any plot or subgenre of literature can be reinvigorated as science fiction.

Westerns are a natural. You simply give black hats to some of your fellow Space-Ark-mates, or colonists and substitute aliens for the gentlemen in war bonnets.

Better still, make the alien equivalents of Native Americans the heroes. Or, make all of humankind walk in the shoes of all the aboriginal peoples our own colonists have wronged in the past, and present the incoming aliens as pilgrim fathers or conquistadors. Ah, but that isn't the stuff of Romance. Moreover, the natives win in "Independence Day".

You can have Quest plots (The Holy Grail in outer space... and very often, as with the Da Vinci Code, the holy grail in sfr is a fertile, pure young woman), Discovery plots, Adventure plots, Pursuit plots, Rescue plots, Mysteries (including murder mysteries), Rivalry plots, Revenge plots, Underdog plots, Transformation and/or Metamorphosis Plots, Beauty and the Beast, Coming Of Age, Who's Coming For Dinner (prejudice/forbidden love)....

The one plot that may not translate so well into an alien romance is The Comedy Of Manners... which in turn might be described as a highly entertaining, watered down Morality Play. (Erring protagonists don't die, they just end up married till death do them part.)

Yes, I watched "Sense And Sensibility" last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The cast included Emma Thompson, Tim Rickman, and a rather hunched Hugh Grant. I wonder how long it will be before Emma Thompson does us (us Romantics) a huge favor and makes movies of some of the Georgette Heyer novels.

The trouble with Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer --when it comes to space travel-- is that their plots and heroines don't kick butt. They are rewarded for not kicking butts, nuts, or giving tongue lashings to anyone. Heyer heroines, actually, are more dynamic. Some of them do have violent tempers, like Leonie, and they shoot men (or want very much to do so) and fight with swords, and cross dress (like Viola and a few other Shakespearean heroines), and drive racy vehicles too fast.

A Comedy Of Manners depends on the heroine wanting to marry a gentleman, but not being able to tell him so. She is too well-mannered, and he requires more encouragement than she offers.

Usually, she has a sister (possibly multiple sisters) who is/are man magnets, often for the wrong sort of man, and who behave like the sort of woman/women a chap would take as his mistress, but would never marry. Villainy in a man could mean that he has sex with a virtuous young woman (or tries to do so, or promises to do so within marriage) and then leaves her.

Imagine! James T Kirk would be the worst of villains in a Comedy Of Manners. The continent Spock would be the hero.... which he was for most of us, anyway.

In science fiction romance, our heroines have to be in greater physical danger than losing their reputations (ie being suspected of not being quite virginal). Unless they are Queens or Empresses married to a Henry VIII type, and likely to be subjected to a show trial and executed. But that is a different sort of plot. The archetypical Sir Jasper does not cut the mustard as a sfr villain. He'd have to want her world as well as her body.

Our heroines in futuristic settings are expected to be sexually liberated, to have smashed the glass ceiling, to hold their own and often their hero's (blaster or equivalent weapon). They have to rock. And multi-task. They cannot sit around, being nice and proper.

By rights, Eleanor ought to have ended up with Colonel Brandon. We saw much more of the Colonel. He was by far the most heroic. However, he did not want Eleanor. He was doggedly determined to love Marianne... and Marianne was the stock "silly girl" whom (in my opinion) we see far too often, setting themselves up as role models for our impressionable daughters in endless sit coms, Disney movies for teens, and high school dramas.

Eleanor got the man she wanted, but only because of the perfidy of Miss Steele. Colonel Brandon's patience was rewarded... but in sfr, does any hero or heroine worth his or her salt settle for being second best?

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all our U.S. readers. Over the weekend, as usual, we'll be going to the Darkover convention just north of Baltimore. I'll be on two panels about vampires.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Rion-dragons

2009-11-25T13:07:00.003-05:00

Hi Everyone,
It's that time again. My new book RION is about to hit the stores shelves. So please check out the book and the fabulous ecard my publisher created for me. You can read an excerpt on my web site www.susankearney.com

Best,
Susan Kearney

Harlequin Horizons & RWA, MWA, SFWA, EPIC

2009-11-24T13:44:00.000-05:00

I have an anecdote to tell you regarding a power-lunch with the head of Harlequin that happened years ago, but seems to be finally percolating to the top where the world can see effects. Of course, there's no way to trace what we see today to my influence, and what we are seeing today would be the biggest embarrassment of my life should it turn out to be connected to anything I ever said anywhere!

If you haven't heard the Harlequin flap by now, here's the scoop. Skip to the section break if you know all this.

Harlequin publishers which has grown to own many imprints, some of which you may recognize but not know Harlequin is the company behind them, has felt the pinch all publishers are feeling.

And they have responded by partnering with a vanity publisher.

Vanity = they charge the author to "publish" the book, do no editing, do little or no "promotion" (their idea of promotion is not an author's idea of promotion) and dump some copies on the author. If the book is successful by the efforts of the lone author, they take the lion's share of the profit, or maybe all of it.

Self-publishing means you become a "publisher" doing all the steps, work of several departments, dealing with many companies to assemble components, do all the marketing, do all the publicity, do all the promotion (all different things requiring different sorts of mental acuity and intelligence, plus training and talent), but if successful you keep all the profit (except for taxes which can be complex).

E-publishers are publishers. They do all that stuff except maybe the lion's share of the publicity, and still manage to pay the author a goodly cut of any profit. They're "real" businesses, as is a self-publishing author who actually does it all (or knows who to hire -- Mass Market publishers hire lots of sub-contractors.).

Harlequin recently announced they were entering into a venture with a known vanity publisher. The few clues in their announcement all pointed toward standard vanity publisher rip-off, with the one tiny detail that they "intended" to watch for successful books and offer those authors contracts for a Harlequin colophon bearing edition.

Here's Harlequin's Press Release.
http://press.eharlequin.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=

----------------Section Break-------------

OK, so now that Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, and even EPIC (ebook writers and publishing professionals), and many others have weighed in on this controversy, we should look at it from several different angles.

Here's the SFWA statement:
http://www.sfwa.org/2009/11/sfwa-statement-on-harlequins-self-publishing-imprint/

Here's a bit about the whole flap involving other writer's organizations.

http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/24433

And isn't it interesting that READERS don't have an official organization to post a position white paper on this subject?

Writers and readers need to pay attention because we are in a topsy-turvey revolution in the Fiction Delivery System which is part of the revolution in industry caused by the Web and especially Web 2.0 where customers of all businesses can find and talk to each other directly.

In the pre-Web world, two people in different countries who bought the same brand of canned peaches would never be able to FIND each other, never mind talk about how good or bad those peaches were. Today the web connects users of a product and even translates (sort of - it's getting better).

I am ever so grateful to people who post their experiences with appliances, bed sheets, and other expensive things I buy seldom. User comments are what count for me these days, not advertising.

In today's world, word of toxic peaches would flash around the entire world in 15 seconds because of Twitter. The blogosphere would ignite with warnings, and facebook would be alive with URLs.

I read a blog comment yesterday where someone said, "make one mistake and you're a hashtag on twitter." (a hashtag is written like so on twitter #NewMoon -- that's the hashtag for the Twilight film New Moon, but you also see it as #newmoon and other variants)

Twitter surfaces "trending topics" by searching for keywords in the 140 character posts. If a few hundred people start relaying posts about say, Heinz Peaches, suddenly #HeinzPeaches would become a "hashtag" and within a few minutes probably surface as a trending topic.

People love to talk about the mistakes corporations make, but rarely gossip about the perfect, easy, convenient, no-hassle service they get from a corporation.

Nobody I've found yet has said "do something perfectly and become a hashtag on twitter."

With novels or films, though, it's often the other way around. People chatter incessantly about what they liked, but have little to say about what they didn't like except "it's bad."

So there's been a lot of talk on Amazon Communities and on Goodreads.com about Romances of various flavors. People like their fiction separated by flavor, aroma, mood, color -- all neatly categorized so they spend money only on what they're in the mood for.

Good books get talked about at length and in detail, the characters, backgrounds, backstories, relationships, speculation about their futures.

Books people don't like get "It was bad." "I didn't like it." "This author just doesn't deliver."

The characters don't get analyzed, the background visuals don't get discussed in terms of how they do not explicate the theme, the motivations don't get sliced and diced, the story doesn't even get retold in reviews. All a "reader" knows is that the BOOK is no good, and if they haven't studied writing, they really think the problem is inside the book, or the writer, not in themselves.

Readers who are only readers rarely comment "I just wasn't in the mood for a sappy romance." Or "I got bored by all the action scenes and skipped them - I probably missed something important and that's why the ending made no sense." "It fell flat for me because I was still bummed by being jilted by my boyfriend."

We've studied reader tastes on this blog in some detail. If you're interested in how to account for taste, you might want to read my blog entry:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html

And follow the links in there back to some of the deeper explorations of how to account for the tastes of whole generations of readers.

The more educated a reader is in the art of writing, the more able that reader is to wade into the vast volume of self-published work and pick out the books that will, for her, be superior to anything the traditional publishers can ever produce for Mass Market distribution.

After the "quality" editing run suggested in that last link above has been done by the author and others knowledgeable in the craft, all books are equal.

The only remaining point is "market" -- or whether you as a reader are in need of reading this book.

With experience, a reader may trust an author, or a colophon (because for several years at a stretch a colophon will have been "edited by" the same person) or even a whole publisher like Harlequin to produce more of whatever they liked in the previous book.

Likewise with small publishers, ebook and/or POD publishers. With a few free samples, and a little trust, readers may part with money to read a series that they don't buy in a Brick-n-Mortar store or at Wal-Mart.

This was the theory behind my first non-fiction paperback, STAR TREK LIVES! What is specifically aimed at your taste and mood-of-the-moment will seem to be of "higher quality" than anything aimed at a mass market that only includes you.

And that's why the Star Trek fanzine fiction took off in a blaze of glory that literally changed publishing forever.

Prior to Star Trek fans pouring out millions (maybe billions by now) of words of fan fiction, Science Fiction fanzines carried pretty much only non-fiction -- any fiction was just sendups, short humor, amateurishness for its own sake.

It wasn't Star Trek that changed our world so much, it was fanfic.

Star Trek fanfic started out on two levels at the same time.

Devra Langsam (a professional librarian) and some librarian friends of hers started the first Star Trek fanzine called Spockanalia - focused on the phenomenon they called Spock Shock. That's the impact of the ALIEN on women that produced ALIEN ROMANCE; or more specifically alien sex, infatuation, crushes, etc.

Spockanlia was printed mimeograph on high-acid (cheap) paper that has deteriorated. But the writing was professional level because the editors were librarians and knew from good craftsmanship, because-lines and themes, and foreshadowing and character motivation, as well as the importance of expunging typos.

Just after Spockanalia appeared, some industrious individuals began their own Star Trek fanzines with stories they wrote themselves, often published on spirit duplicator, or even just by typing a few carbon copies in a typewriter and circulating the paper copies. (really! by snailmail!)

Soon though others with wordsmith skills began producing fanzines that they invited authors to contribute to. Then the 'zines began to compete on editing. Before long, the field diversified into 'zines specializing in certain types of stories, and Star Trek 'zine genres emerged complete with names the readers understood.

There was still the occasional self-published 'zine, but even then only teenagers skipped the step of getting the work really edited before offering it for sale. Lack of editing produced scornful reviews and readers shunned the 'zine. Kids lost a lot of money as the editing standards increased. I know one self-publisher who did novel after novel of her own and each one pristine -- because each got edited by other eyes.

STAR TREK LIVES! blew the lid on this secret, underground publishing venue and exposed it to newspaper and TV attention, attracting thousands and thousands more writers, editors, publishers of the do-it-yourself generation. The field of 'zines exploded as the word 'zine short for fanzine (coined in SF fandom in the 1940's) became a newspaper term that didn't need explanation each time it was used.

So what has this to do with Harlequin?

Have you figured it out yet? Think hard.

SELF-PUBLISHING is fanzine publishing.

In self-publishing, editing is seen as optional. From the outside, that is.

Today, the online posting sites for fanfic demand beta-readers sift the stories before posting for free reading. Some beta-readers rise to the top because they actually edit (why did Stephen bite Rosemary's neck?)

People shun wasting their reading time on un-edited work.

Self-publishing is considered "un-edited" by almost all the professional organizations, so they are stomping on Harlequin for launching a vanity-press.

The new Harlequin Horizons imprint is an imprint for self-publishing authors.

A colophon is the graphic squiggle that labels an imprint. A colophon would be like a Vampire Romance and a stylized V dripping blood, the Imprint would be Stefan's Vampire Romances.

Harlequin said that Horizons won't offer professional editing by their own (rather sharp) editors. Harlequin will point authors rejected by their slush pile readers to the self-publishing operation as a "viable" alternative.

Those are the two points that have all the professional writers' organizations miffed.

Harlequin (nowadays a respected name though it hasn't always been so) is using marketing techniques to the disadvantage of beginning writers who don't know what's being done to them.

Harlequin (as any professional writer's organization knows) stands to make a hefty profit from the new writers (over and over again) because their new Harlequin Horizons imprint will not be geared up to teach these new writers why their work was rejected by Harlequin.

So new writers will continue to make the same anti-commercial "mistakes."

What's the difference between a vanity press and self-publishing?

A vanity press panders to the writer's ego and charges big bucks for the service.

Self-publishing is a job that smashes your ego down into a micro-dot.

SFWA says Harlequin's retraction of the announcement of the name on the new imprint (Harlequin Horizons) isn't enough.

The first uproar was targeted at the idea of putting the rather prestigious name Harlequin on what would be mostly a product that does not meet Harlequin's publishing standards.

So it seems it should be enough to name the venture something else.

But SFWA (rightly, I think) is still shunning the entire concept of a major publisher with known precision standards owning and operating a self-publishing operation that is marketed to their slush pile rejects on a distant promise of "if the book does well, we will consider..."

The writer's organizations discount all efforts made through self-publishing operations, vanity press or hard working self-published authors -- even most epublishers are excluded from qualifying a writer for membership because they don't pay advances against royalties.

Professional writer's organizations sift the publishing world on how the writer gets paid.

It's professional. We do it for a living. People who don't do it for a living aren't qualified to become members. It's an attitude that unites professionals in all fields, and divides them from amateurs and wannabees.

Those who have been in the publishing business since before the Internet became a publishing venue have their understanding of what is actually happening (and why Harlequin decided to launch this venture) conditioned by a vision of the industrial world that is in fact no longer exactly true -- though it may become true again, as we work through this turbulence.

I've talked a lot about the business of publishing in prior posts here. You might want to check:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html

Harlequin made a business decision based on an assessment of where the world is going with book publishing and what they could do to position the company to make a profit in that new world.

The people I knew at the helm of Harlequin years ago are long gone, and I expect their corporate culture legacy is long gone too.

But I see the Harlequin Horizons venture as if it were actually on the because-line of a novel that started at the power-lunch I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Some trickle-down of the legacy of that lunch discussion, a bit of dust on a wall, a flake of paint here and there, some trace of something may have remained in the air at Harlequin and led somehow to this decision. (I can hope not, of course, because this decision is potentially very harmful to the very people I treasure most - the beginning writers.)

Here's what happened.

One day, I got a phone call from a secretary at Harlequin's Canadian HQ who said her boss (CEO) was going to be in New York (where I lived at the time) and would like to have lunch with me.

Huh? I mean REALLY!

She eventually convinced me it wasn't a hoax, and I made the appointment to meet him in New York at a very expensive, posh, hotel restaurant.

It turned into a six martini lunch for him. I talked his ear off.

Subject of his questions?

You won't believe this.

STAR TREK FANZINES.

That's what he wanted to talk about. And of course, at that time if you started probing Star Trek fan activity from any end of the spectrum, you would end up talking to me on the phone (pre-email).

It seems that the press had convinced this mover and shaker of the publishing industry that women were the market for STAR TREK fanzines and those women were into the exact kind of story that Harlequin published, except with science fiction and aliens emphasized.

You have no idea how bizarre that concept was at the time.

So I spent over 5 hours explaining self-publishing, fanzine publishing, Star Trek publishing, emerging genres, trends, economics of fanzine publishing, content of the stories, target audiences, editing quality, prices readers were willing to pay ($20 for an amount of words Harlequin sold for $2.50 ) to get those particular stories.

This "lunch" lasted so long that we were the last people in the place as they were closing and retooling for dinner. The staff had prepared all the other tables before one very obsequious manager crept up to softly suggest we might like to leave now. (what an experience! I've been thrown out of places coast to coast for being too talkative past closing time. Politeness was beyond comprehension -- I mean this was New York!)

This CEO asked questions and made comments and comparisons that convinced me he understood what I had said. That was the truly astonishing part. I was actually able to communicate these ideas to someone in a position to take the entire Star Trek fanzine phenomenon to the next level, Science Fiction Romance!!!

Not STAR TREK ROMANCE -- that was owned by Paramount -- but rather the underlying abstract concept of how sexy a smart non-human could be in a story.

I did convince him there was a future for science fiction about romantic relationships (totally insane and ridiculous concept but he believed me).

In fact, another such power lunch conversation resulted, where I was invited to Washington DC (had to take the plane shuttle and the train downtown, then back in the same day) for lunch at a really exclusive club -- the kind of place that's members only; all posh silence and exquisite service once you're through the security. The drapes in that place cost more than my house.

I was invited to a place like that in San Francisco, too, a Yacht club. They don't put a bill on the table when you're done. It's in the membership fee.

And that DC "lunch" too became a six martini lunch (not for me; I don't drink much) that left us the only two people in the place as it closed to retool for dinner. But lunch with a CEO that lasts about 6 hours is an experience and a half, especially when the talk really is all business. Lunch with editors isn't quite in the same category as lunch with the boss of the boss of the boss of the editor. How many writers get to bend the ear of the actual decision makers?

But nothing ever came of all that talking, that I know of.

I do know that for a while, the person at the helm of Harlequin understood fanzines, self-publishing, fanzine editing, and most importantly how very desperate the readership was for more SFR.

I had such high hopes.

But no.

It never happened. None of the programs he was meditating on ever materialized. He could see my vision and share it, but there was no way to make it materialize in the Mass Market Publishing world.

So I forged ahead and wrote the DUSHAU TRILOGY for mass market paperback and it won the first Romantic Times Award for SF, and other such SFR works with the R part disguised as plot driver. (see http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com for free chapters of that and my Hardcover efforts to make this point.)

Now Harlequin Horizons appears out of nowhere.

Vanity Press!!!

Monday, Nov 23rd, one of the Agents I most respect, Agent Kristin, posted the following on her blog:

-------quote---------
Today, Thomas Nelson Publishers joins the Harlequin hoopla in a ridiculous blog post. Ashley and Carolyn Grayson posted their response—to which I whole heartedly agree. I find it laughable that Hyatt believes that agents are speaking out against the ripping off of writers via vanity publishing arms because we see “self-publishing” as a threat.

As many commenters have already noted in my blog comments section, vanity publishing and self publishing are not the same. A distinction that Hyatt does not seem to understand. I suppose he also believes that venerated writing organizations such as RWA, MWA, and SFWA, all of which have a long tradition of helping and protecting writers, are similarly trying to keep the status quo by vehemently speaking out against such blatant ripping off of writers.

I also want to make this distinction.
----------end quote-------------

And there's lots more she has to say. See Agent Kristin's post for the links inserted in the above quote:
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/11/horizons-is-not-remotely-like-harper.html

I really hope there's no connection with me because this is about the opposite of what I was saying to that CEO about the potential for SFR. But this is the very first time since then that Harlequin has made a business move even remotely flavored with that conversation's content.

I'm not sure I'm flat out against Harlequin Horizons (just against the proposed method of doing business).

If the operation is smooth and high quality ( Vanity presses are famous for not-being high quality!), it's possible Harlequin Horizons might take us the next step beyond the tizzy publishing is in right now.

What I envision is packagers. Independent editors who select and edit novels in a specific narrow category, then when the novels are at the highest quality level, though aimed at some specialty audience, the packager uses an outfit like Harlequin Horizons to publish the work with the packager's colophon (not Harlequin Horizon's colophon). The packager's colophon would then become trusted by readers.

Readers are the key element being ignored here.

All the professional writers organizations have spoken. Where are the readers?

A trusted colophon could become acknowledged by writers' organizations like SFWA, RWA, MWA, EPIC, etc. It could qualify the work for award consideration and as a membership qualification, in a defined category.

But I suspect long before that could happen, we will have a series of Awards created by various organizations for works in these nooks and crannies of reader taste. We already have the very respected EPPIES (which have been renamed) which have so many categories I can't count them.

As Alvin Toffler pointed out in his book Future Shock, the computer revolution, the information age, allows for customization of products that the industrial revolution handled as Mass Market.

The days of the mass market may be numbered.

The inflection point in history where that numbering may have begun would be the 1970's explosion of Star Trek fanzines that has continued into e-publishing on the web and overflowed into the universes of every other TV show you can think of (SF TV led the way, but today it's everywhere).

But economies of scale have not yet hit the niche markets.

It's still too expensive to self-publish, e-publishers are struggling with narrow margins, and the only solution business school graduates know is to reach a wider market.

But art aimed at a wider market leaves the various narrow markets luke-warm rather than ignited in passion for more-more-more at any price, as Star Trek Fanzines did.

We might view Harlequin's move to vanity or subsidy press as an act of desperation as their mass market readership evaporates beneath them, and they need another source of revenue so they're setting up to fleece beginning writers who don't know that they don't know what they need to know.

Publishers have to learn that the future of the fiction delivery system lies in the micro-market not the mass-market.

Or am I wrong? What am I missing here?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Day The Earth Stood Still (yesterday, on TV, at 8pm)

2009-11-22T09:17:00.000-05:00

I missed the first eleven minutes of this remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still", because I was watching an absolutely gripping bit of political theatre.... and perhaps if I had seen the very beginning, I might have enjoyed the movie more.

How is a debate a "debate", if people vote from remote locations without any solemn or otherwise obligation to listen to, and weigh, the arguments for and against the motion? I hope the Jury Trial system never goes the way of the Senate!

My husband tells me that I am in for a real treat when I see the original movie. He rates the original a 10, and this version a 3.

Reviewers are kinder here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/

I give kudos to John Cleese for his endearing and totally charming performance as a true world leader, a Nobel prizewinner who keeps a blackboard and chalk in his living room.

The other fine supporting performance was by Jaden Smith as the bigoted little boy who probably did more than his stepmother to convince the unsmiling alien that mankind was worth saving.

The blubber premise grossed me out, frankly. I won't say more even though I don't consider it a major spoiler... unlike the idea of carrying a bit of ones own blubber/placenta around with one in a little jar in case of accidents, and even smearing some of it inside an inconvenient policeman's mouth.

Major spoiler:

That the explosion-proof, diamond-bit drill-busting robot turned into bifurcating cockroaches and ants bothered me. That they flew around in a cloud reminiscent of starling flock formations (currently on display in the Artology exhibition at the Cranbrook Institute of Science) was cool. I could have wished that they'd focused on eating something more to the point than one big truck and a few roadsigns.

If mankind is going to radically modify its alleged, environmentally destructive behaviour, a few missing truckers and roadsigns won't impress an out-of-touch President in his bunker. Those metal munching cockroaches ought to have eaten all the airports, and all the ships, and all the world's nuclear reactors. And the tree cutters and earth movers and shakers, such as Caterpillar, John Deere, Hewlett Packard, Google, and Goodyear... (You can't run a mine without rubber, apparently).

How the world has changed since this movie was made, by the way.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20091120/bs_ibd_ibd/20091120issues01

However the physics of mass confused and upset me the most. It always does. It's my pet peeve with science fiction. In fact, the cockroach size issue was my biggest hurdle... my wall-banger moment. It surely could, and should have been photographed with more care and sensitivity.

Oh, and there was another issue of mass. Keanu Reeves asked an apparently smaller man what size that man's clothes were. He then asked the man to undress. Unfortunately, we were not permitted to see this feat. Moments later, the tall Keanu left the room in a perfectly tailored, exquisitely well fitted suit.

Continuity is ok. But, what was Keanu going to wear if he did not take the man's clothes, no matter what size they were? Ask a silly question!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_bNDv0-ZrU

Bottom line, though. I'd have given The Day The Earth Stood Still (Remake) an extra two points at least if they'd shown that particular logistical detail. My philosophy when telling a fantastic story is to show everything that is --or could be-- plausible.

A Programming Note

2009-11-22T07:46:00.000-05:00

Visitors may have wondered why we have 6 wonderful examples of alien romance cover art in our right hand sidebar.

That's because the six of us are donating those novels to one winner who visits our site in a special event in honor of sfr (science fiction romance) organized by Heather Massey of The Galaxy Express that will take place on Sunday, December 6th 2009.

List of participating bloggers

The Galaxy Express

Spacefreighters’ Lounge

Flying Whale Productions

List of authors

Author #Bks Title

Nathalie Gray (4) The complete Lycan Warriors series Ebook

Leanna Renee Hieber (1) DARK NEST

Claire Delacroix (2) FALLEN & GUARDIAN

Jess Granger (2) BEYOND THE RAIN

Karin Shah (1) STARJACKED

Ann Somerville (1) ON WINGS, RISING Ebook

Susan Grant (1) MOONSTRUCK

Ann Aguirre (2) WANDERLUST & DOUBLEBLIND

Katherine Allred (2) CLOSE ENCOUNTERS; CLOSE CONTACT (ARC)

Rowena Cherry (2) FORCED MATE; KNIGHT’S FORK

Susan Kearney (1) LUCAN

Jacqueline Lichtenberg (1) DUSHAU

Susan Sizemore (1) DARK STRANGER (AR)

Margaret L. Carter (1) FROM THE DARK PLACES (AR)

Linnea Sinclair (2) GABRIEL’S GHOST & SHADES OF DARK plus HOPE’S FOLLY tote bag
(Linnea will ship overseas)

Barbara Elsborg (1) LUCY IN THE SKY Ebook

Ella Drake (1) FIRESTORM ON E’TERRA Ebook

Total: 17 Total: 26

TGE, Alien Romances, and Spacefreighters’ Lounge will all be giving away additional books.

Total # of books across all blogs: 30+

Writing Output and Dumb Aliens

2009-11-19T11:21:00.001-05:00

Here’s a very useful article on planning and productivity in the writing life, by Karen Wiesner:

Writing Productivity

My main reaction is awe at her output. She breaks down her annual schedule week by week and makes it sound so easy. Of course, she writes full time with no “day job,” but still. . . .

Since I’m a much slower writer than I’d like to be, I’m always searching for new techniques and tricks to overcome my inertia. Sort of like the way I used to accumulate books on housekeeping in hopes of finding the secret to getting the house clean with no effort. As a dedicated outliner, I’ve found Karen’s FIRST DRAFT IN 30 DAYS and FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FINISHED NOVEL to be phenomenally helpful and an excellent fit for my natural way of working.

But what I still want, ideally, is a magic word processor that would take my detailed outline and transform it into a first draft in my own style. I enjoy outlining and don’t mind polishing; unlike lucky authors such as Isaac Asimov, I don’t get much pleasure out of the actual, well, WRITING.

On an unrelated topic, I saw the alien abduction faux documentary THE FOURTH KIND last weekend. It impresses me as a good illustration of Jacqueline’s contrast between SF and horror. Despite the SF trope of extraterrestrial visitors, the movie’s mood is horror. The human characters remain helpless to do anything except investigate their terrible experiences, and even then gaps in their knowledge remain. They can’t learn much more than the aliens want them to know. The film has some scary moments, but aside from the exasperating lack of realism in the sheriff’s behavior (it’s supposed to take place in Nome, Alaska, which I’m sure operates like a real city, not a frontier outpost in the wilderness where police can do anything that strikes their whim) the aliens don’t make much sense when you think about them carefully, either. If they’ve been hanging around for thousands of years, as suggested by the dragging in of that tired “prehistoric alien visitors” notion with bas-reliefs from the ancient Middle East as evidence, shouldn’t they have learned more than enough about our species by now—too much to require the random snatching and vivisecting of ordinary human beings? More glaring, if they’re advanced enough to remove a child through a solid ceiling on a beam of light, why aren’t they smart enough to destroy the psychologist’s tape of her encounter with them? And surely cosmic beings of superhuman intelligence could figure out that if they don’t want humanity to learn about their existence, they should stay far away from the psychologist and her family, ensuring that nothing abnormal ever happens to them again—instead of kidnapping her daughter in a dazzling light show.

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Vampire Archetype Flashburned Into Memory

2009-11-17T14:44:00.001-05:00

Before we start, look at the graph on this blog tracking the meteoric rise of Vampire Romance by number of titles per year over 10 years.

http://vampchix.blogspot.com/2009/11/rise-and-fall-of-vampire-romance-and.html

I found this via the following post on Twitter which I retweeted (I don't know who Michele Hauf retweeted here):

RT @michelehauf: RT Track the meteoric rise of vampire romance over the past decade at VampChix! http://bit.ly/ycx0r

That's a shortened URL going to the whole blog - the long URL above goes directly to the specific post with the graph that tells it all.

And if you haven't investigated my Vampire Romances, take a look at http://www.simegen.com/writers/luren/ to sample free chapters and look at what other Romance writers have said (I can still post more comments if you have any you want linked back to your own website.)

OK, now that you've done your interesting homework, come to class, sit in your chair, fold your hands and prepare to be bored out of your mind with one of my insanely long posts -- which is worse this time because I have to brag or there's no way to make this point, and the point is really, really abstract and you probably don't want to know, and maybe it really ought to be kept a deep, dark secret.

--------Skip If You Know All About Archetypes-------

We've discussed archetypes before, and I've always assumed everyone knows what they are and how they work and why. But maybe not. If you know all about archetypes you can skip this section of this post and still understand the point. Look for the dashed-line divider below that says SKIP THIS SECTION IF. to see if you need to read that section. That would be two whole sections of this monster that you can skip and still get the point.

The thing with archetypes is that they don't look like whatever manifestation you're seeing them inside of.

They don't seem "real" and have no absolute specifics about them. It takes some practice to walk the world and spot interacting archetypes in the people around you and their biographies.

People are so different, no two alike, and the differences matter to us. The similarities, not so much.

How can you say one person is "just another version" of another person?

But that's what successful Romance Writers (and other genre writers) do to make their characters (and dialogue) Flashburn into reader's Memory.

Some really successful writers don't even know (and shouldn't know) they're doing that at all.

Learning a little (very little) bit of Astrology can help sort the world around you into archetypes, but that's the lazy woman's way of learning it.

You can't make a diagram of an archetype (though that's what Tarot cards are and that works for some people). You can't do an animated gif to show what archetypes are. They aren't tangible or visible.

Archetypes are psychological patterns of non-manifested FORCE or ENERGY. They are templates for reality, not reality itself.

Yes, an archetype is a little like a web page template. It's not the template that matters to the page visitor, it's the color, sound, motion, words, videos, links, that make this page different from that page, and that is all that matters to a visitor, "what's here that's different from what's there."

But web designers know that what makes all the content accessible and high-impact on visitors (stopping surfers mid-click), conveying the meaning that is within the content is the underlying pattern, the design, the composition, the template.

Fictional characters are just like web pages in that sense.

If the template design shows through you get a stereotype. If the template design does not show through, you get a living, breathing, psyche-penetrating, communicating, real character who seems like a real person and "lives" in the reader's memory, dreams, and even manifests in their lives (yes, I have testimonials from my readers about how my characters have affected their real life decisions and results - to the good, thankfully!)

New writers need to learn to percieve this dual level of reality (template vs. content) because what matters to people is the specific manifestation of the archetype, not the archetype itself. "Happiness" is achieving a specific manifestation of whatever archetype is operating in life (and none of the other possibilities within the archetype), and nobody cares what the archetype is as long as the specific desired manifestation appears.

People and thus characters prefer to ignore the fact that an archetype encompasses their reality. It's irrelevant. They want what they want.

For example: In Astrology, Tarot and in Archetypes, there is no distinction between "winning" and "losing" -- between succeeding and living or failing and dying. These are polar opposites to us living beings, but irrelevant distinctions on the level of archetypes.

I'll leave you with that concept for a while because it's so nonsensical to our ordinary consciousness it takes a while to sink in. But it's the main clue you will need to understand a couple of future points I hope I can make on this blog.

Archetypes exist on the astral plane, or in Kabbalah Yesod represented by The Moon in astrology.

The best show-don't-tell I've ever seen for "the astral plane" was the Star Trek: The Original Series episode SHORE LEAVE (also written by Theodore Sturgeon, one of my favorite authors and I knew him well enough to know that he understood the astral plane well enough to have encoded it in this episode deliberately, though I don't know if he did.)

Here's a reminder about the episode on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shore_Leave_%28Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series%29

What you think, wish, dream, what just crosses your mind, what you subconsciously fear or want, becomes MANIFEST on the astral plane. Your psyche is the template, and energizes your personal reality. On the Astral Plane, anything you want (or fear or don't want) will surround you.

The Kabbalistic trick is to understand that the astral plane is the foundation of our actual concrete everyday reality. And our reality actually is influenced starkly by what we think, dream, feel, and subconsciously hold dear.

Archetypes are the pattern of illusion and delusion, and they're plastic.

In addition to your personal manifestations of archetypes in your own life, archetypes have attributes defined by the human Group Mind that downloads and pours content into them, content that is displayed on that Group Mind's homepage.

Maybe all archetypes are eternal and the same ones arise wherever humans are. The Magician. The Mage. The Vampire. The Maiden. The Mother. The Crone. The King. The Queen. The Youth. The Outsider. The Alienated Hero. The Warrior. The Shaman.

Which are you living inside? Living with? Playing publically?

You can recognize archetypes manifest in something you're familiar with. A badly handled archetype becomes a stereotype, just as a badly handled "foreshadowing" becomes "telegraphing."

Last week we discussed Sharon Green's WARRIOR WITHIN starring Terrilian.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/11/astrology-just-for-writers-part-6.html (which post is mis-named, it is Astrology part 7)

Remember what we discussed and think about The Female Warrior Archetype - Amazon? - Marion Zimmer Bradley's Renunciates?

Archetypes do change how they manifest over generations. Yet the more they change the more they stay the same. Still, the available options you may choose from in your life or your novels change with the Group Mind.

You can change your options list by changing what Group Mind you belong to. Think about how a person can change when they do something drastic in their life - such as a religious conversion, joining the Army, graduating and leaving the "old neighborhood" losing touch with all the kids from class and finding new friends among co-workers. Consider a Rock Star fan who moons&moans, then cuts loose and goes Groupie, following the star around the world, associating with the Star's friends and forgetting family. Same person: different manifestation.

Today the female image has shifted markedly from where it was in, say, the 1940's before women contributed to the USA winning World War II. Now some women have become (or been brainwashed into becoming) suicide bombers, and there are more acts of violence against women in TV fiction than ever before since anyone started counting violence on TV. But at the same time, women are combat trained and gaining combat stripes in the armed forces, rising to high rank where that was prohibited before.

Something is changing in our Group Mind, and that change is accelerating.

But that's all very theoretical and abstract. Worse, that quick reprise doesn't even scratch the surface of what we can see once we are able to sort the world around us out into archetype and manifestation. But seeing doesn't accomplish much.

What can we do with this concept of the archetype?

Can we make our Group Mind change its mind about Relationships, and thus consequently about the merit of the Romance Genre in general and all its variants in particular, and possibly even the entire notion of what constitutes "peace" in this world?

----SKIP THIS NEXT SECTION IF...--------

...blatant bragging offends you or if you're already familiar with the origin of the Sime~Gen Universe novels and all the Star Trek connections underlying them, and how this all spawned Vampire Romance.

You can happily skip this section, and still probably get the point anyway. Scroll down to the next line of dashes where it says POINT.

In the Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! on which I was the primary author, we discussed the then popular theory that "Spock" was actually a new Archetype - The Alienated Hero but heroic because of Intelligence not Brawn. In retrospect, it's clear that Spock actually raised the prestige profile of the Geek, the outcast Class Brain. Spock was considered sexy! The Group Mind attitude toward the Geek, The Brain, the Egghead changed in much the way we would like to see the prestige profile of the Romance Genre raised.

It's unclear whether the Archetype illustrated by Spock caused the change, or emerged because of the change sparked by Star Trek -- possibly this Group Mind/ Archetype Manifestation process is as interactive as the manifestation of Violence on TV vs. Violence in Society. Think of bootstrapping, or climbing the inside of a rock chimney. It's not either/or. It's a little this, a little that, until change manifests.

Smart men weren't considered sexy in the 1960's, any more than smart women were attractive.

The book STAR TREK LIVES! (which was published in 1975, six years after my first SF story sale and a year after House of Zeor, my first novel) blew the lid on Star Trek fandom and brought in (via the Star Trek Welcommittee) hoards of new fan writers brim full of stories to tell.

Some of those new fan writers had grown up reading Romance and though they may have watched the same TV screen with the men in the room, these women saw a different Star Trek. They saw hot romance sizzling in the background and sub-text of every scene, and that is what they wrote about in fanzines.

They literally invented from scratch what has become the genre of SFR or Science Fiction Romance.

The first Inspirational Science Fiction Romance is posted for free reading at
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/

And as published Relationship Driven HEA Trek, they lured many readers into the genre until it finally (after several sad failures) burst into the Romance genre scene with THE VAMPIRE ROMANCE.

Huh?

What has VAMPIRE ROMANCE to do with SFR? With Science Fiction?

Vampires are FANTASY. Paranormal. Aren't they?

Vampires are supernatural EVIL, so they have to be FANTASY right?
Vampires can't be Science Fiction?

Vampires are Horror. That's the vampire archetype. Right?

How many posts have I done on this blog explaining the paradigm and trope underlying genre fiction, and how a new writer breaks that trope at peril of life, limb, reputation and career?

Romance trope requires the couple find each other attractive (if not at first; eventually). Real attraction often first manifests as repulsion, and that makes a good Romance, but ultimately it must transmute into an attraction the reader can relate to.

And how can anyone love something EVIL?

Evil isn't sexy.

Surely not?

Oh, our predecessors soooo lacked imagination!

Or did they?

When and where did SFR and romantic Vampires actually begin?

Margaret Carter, one of our staunch contributors on this blog is the expert on the history of Vampire literature, so I'll let her point you to the answers on that. It was actually longer ago than you might think.

Major classics of Great Literature aside, though, look again at that graph I pointed you to at the beginning of this post.

http://vampchix.blogspot.com/2009/11/rise-and-fall-of-vampire-romance-and.html

It only goes back to 1997 which is ancient history for most readers of this blog. But I'm discussing the manifestations of the Vampire archetype in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. That graph would not be parabolic had there not been 30 years of cultivating of the Group Mind's taste before 1997.

The Romance mass paperback publishers found there was a sudden market in a certain age group for Vampire Romance.

The Vampire did, however, turn off a lot of romance readers.

It disturbs people. Even today you say "I write Vampire stories" in a full room and listen telepathically and you'll hear "Evil" and all the religious people will leave the room or try to convert you.

OK, so the Romance publishers started putting VAMPIRE ROMANCE or something similar on the spines of those certain, slightly different, romances -- romances with a supernatural dimension, edgy romances flirting with the issue of Evil -- to warn off their more sensitive readers.

Meanwhile, in Science Fiction and the budding Fantasy field (yes, before STAR TREK fanfic, there really wasn't much of an adult Fantasy field - "adult" not meaning graphic sex scenes, but fantasy that was not aimed at 10 year olds) there was a flood of Vampire novels published.

Concurrent with the Science Fiction genre was the Horror Genre, often confused with SF, and most all the Vampire novels ended up labeled Horror even those with Good Vampire Heroes. That was when I started reading a lot of "Horror" even though I dislike the Horror genre. Non-Horror genre novels were published under the "Horror" label because nobody else would have them -- they contained a VAMPIRE!

A genre example.

Star Trek was the first real SF on TV. When it was cancelled after the first 3 years, and went into syndication so successfully, producers began to search for a way to lure the Star Trek audience to a new show.
They presented Star Trek fans with SPACE 1999, thinking they had the combination. But SPACE 1999 was actually HORROR FANTASY, and SF fans just don't respond to Horror (or if they do, it's with a different part of their literary taste buds.) SF fans at that time were somewhat allergic to Fantasy as well because most of the best selling Fantasy writers were women (SF editors wouldn't buy SF from women, so women went and made their own genre. So what else is new?)

This was such a hot-button issue in the 1970's that when I was nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1973 for my Star Trek fanzine universe Kraith (up for free reading at
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/ ) there was a big political flap in SF fandom at Worldcon, and that was before K/S emerged.

Kraith plays with telepathic bonding and all the Theodore Sturgeon elements, Vulcan culture and its being shaped by telepathy. But those who voted against Kraith did so because it was Star Trek and was nominated by Star Trek fans who happened to be Worldcon members.

The feeling was that Worldcon was being taken over by "those people" - actor groupies who'd never read an SF novel. The disdain had a similar feel to the disdain focused on Romance and Vampire Romance. Today, Fantasy out-sells SF. If you graph the stats, I'll bet you find the same parabolic curve seen in the graph we're studying here on Vampire Romance titles.

In Science Fiction, the Hero prevails. The ending (as with Romance) has to have a specific flavor -- winning; triumph; achievement; understanding; satisfaction. Romance needs the HEA, the Happily Ever After, ending, and nothing else sells quite as well as an HEA.

An HEA can't actually be generated by a heroic success -- it isn't "Happily Ever After" if one partner forces the other to love them. That makes a good middle, but not an HEA.

SF needs the success ending, whatever success is. It has to be a definitive success and it has to be brought about by the Protagonist's personal actions which must proceed from the protagonist's ability to THINK CLEARLY. And preferably in an application of the scientific method, to resolve the plot's conflict via scientific reasoning even if the problem isn't actually a science problem.

SF became "Action-Adventure" because cerebral stories don't sell well, so publishing demanded that the SF novel end with a VICTORY imposed by FORCE of some kind - i.e. action. It wasn't enough to solve an intellectual puzzle any more. There had to be a physical problem with physical action and a physical resolution.

In the Horror genre ending, the protagonist must not prevail over Evil.

Evil can never be destroyed. The most you can achieve is to cram it into a coffer, a closet, a cave, and seal it with a magical seal that will hold for centuries, or millenia with luck. You have to leave the problem to your descendants. You can't win. That's the message of Horror. And SF is all about winning definitively, and that total triumph when a definitive solution slams into reality and changes everything.

The Horror premise is that evil is a property of reality, and reality wouldn't exist without it. Good and Evil must always be at odds, always in conflict, but neither can ever win.

The premise of SF is that humanity will prevail.

And that, as Gene Roddenberry said so many times, is the premise of Star Trek. We will go where no man has gone before, and we will prevail. We will prevail by intellect, compassion, and by wisdom. (He used that word, Wisdom, a lot in everyday talking, not just in speeches before throngs -- "When humanity will be wise ..." )

It's a philosophical difference that the producers of Space 1999, and the next TV offering to Star Trek fans (marketed specifically to Star Trek fans) Battlestar Galactica (the original), just couldn't grasp.

And so both shows failed to capture the Star Trek audience which continued to grow and grow, through an animated Saturday morning cartoon version of Trek, through books and the films, and into several TV series, with convention after convention making headlines everywhere, even on TV news. What an embarrassment.

Eventually, Ronald D. Moore succeeded in creating a Battlestar Galactica remake that grabbed Trek fans - he had the experience.

Here's his comment on my theory of Intimate Adventure:

http://www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventurecomments.html

That link reveals that Ronald D. Moore is a Sime~Gen reader, maybe fan, and it's posted with his permission. I did send him a set of Kraith Collected at his request.

Here's Ronald D. Moore's filmography on imdb.com

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0601822/

So after Anne Rice's first novel INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE became such a runaway best seller, Horror genre re-exploded with a new wave of Vampire novels. But they were horror vampires, bent on evil, destructive killers, not to be reasoned with, and with no shred of humanity left.

Then the Romance Genre pretty much invented THE VAMPIRE AS GOOD GUY and those books flooded the market for years. Then all of a sudden (about the time I was writing Those of My Blood - 1985-ish) you couldn't sell a Vampire Romance. Editors said don't send it, we're overstocked.

Everyone thought that meant they'd never publish any more, and the genre was a failure. I finished Those of My Blood anyway, and after more than 20 submissions (the only time that ever happened to me, and my agent was adamant that it would sell) it sold to St. Martin's Press for Hardcover. St. Martin's touted it as my breakout book. It was published in 1988. The paperback came out in 2003, but the new publisher refused to label it Vampire Romance because it takes place on the moon and so nobody would buy it. The graph we're studying begins in 1997.

Those of My Blood - Amazon Page.

Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series started with Guilty Pleasures in 2002, and either rode or created a contemporary urban fantasy Vampire Romance/Horror genre mix. Look at 2002 on that graph.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show was on the air as TV beginning in 1997 when this graph begins.

Archetypes keep creating this kind of chicken/egg problem. When you can't solve a problem, as every math student knows, it's because you haven't stated the problem correctly.

OK, so what happened with the archetypes from Star Trek (1966) to now (2009)?

That's over 40 years, two generations.

These kinds of Group Mind archetype changes span generations. See my post on generations and taste from October 2009 which really is Astrology Part 6 (the November 2009 one is Part 7) -- on Pluto and the generations:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Think about that post on Pluto because there's more to say about how Pluto manifests via the Group Mind and why it's so clear that Astrology is utter nonsense. Let the notions soak in for a while.

Archetypes are always shifting and changing in the way they manifest, but there is (by definition) a core pattern to each archetype that is somehow inherent in all humanity and unchanging through millenia.

These patterns turn up in all cultures over all times that we've any record of. The Vampire myth is everywhere in one form or another. It's always been there, just not the subject of popular fiction. (of course "popular fiction" and "mass market" are new phenomena, and are now melting away under the force of the specialty niche market ebook!)

So what happened between the advent of Star Trek fan fiction (STAR TREK LIVES! was published in 1976 but it was based on 5 years of research in Star Trek fan fiction) and the explosion of Vampire Romance novels that continues today in a rapidly evolving form of Paranormal Romance, SFR, and Time Travel Romance, etc etc.

How could Science Fiction spawn the Romance Vampire?

Science Fiction readers tended to loathe the Romance field. Romance readers tended to loathe Horror. All vampires are horror genre.

What happened?

Before there is a runaway best seller in any new sub-genre, there has to be what Heather at http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/ called in her post
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/10/does-science-fiction-romance-need-gene.html
a "Ground Zero" where the explosion of a genre happens.

Before we get to that Ground Zero, there are usually a number of novels that do pretty well, but just don't attract any attention. Audiences build a taste for a genre slowly (actually as we're seeing here over generations), and then BOOM something hits big time. Commercialization interests notice the small following, and promote it using sly, sneaky, underhanded but effective advertising tools that cost a lot of money.

And its a generational thing. In the 1980's, there were a series of children's books for pre-teens and tweens set in High School and featuring Vampires -- evil ones, and not-so unreasonably evil ones. They conditioned an entire generation to be willing to try things with fantasy and urban fantasy - and set the stage for Harry Potter.

In 1974, my first novel, House of Zeor was published.

It's the first novel in the Sime~Gen Universe, but my first sale is a Sime~Gen story that appeared in the January 1969 issue of WORLDS OF IF Magazine edited by Fred Pohl.

House of Zeor was reviewed by Jean Lorrah with the title of the review being VAMPIRE IN MUDDY BOOTS.

The Sime~Gen Universe is built on the Good Guy Vampire with a core of pure DANGER.

As a child, I had read a number of SF works with Vampires as aliens from outer space, or otherwise built on the Vampire archetype.

But I always felt there was something wrong, something missing, something just plain out of FOCUS in these SF universes. Very often they were published as SF but would have been published as Horror if they didn't have science fiction in them.

I wrote Sime~Gen to fix what was wrong with the portrayal of Vampires. The first story, Operation High Time, is available on the Web for free reading (It's not very good, but it is short.)

http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/oht.html

From 1970 to 1975 I was working on STAR TREK LIVES! researching Star Trek fanfic (and writing tons of it in Kraith which you can read online for free at http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/ ) and meeting Marion Zimmer Bradley, and marketing HOUSE OF ZEOR.

I was also raising two kids. I don't know how I did it all.

Sime~Gen, complete with Vampire archetype to the letter, came from the mid-1950's, long before I knew anything about archetypes, but I did know Vampires from SF.

I know now that what was totally missing from those early SF Vampires that I so needed to "correct" was Relationships as the plot-driver.

So that's what I wrote into House of Zeor - Relationship as a plot driver.

It's about Vampires in a Science Fiction Universe with a framework of a Romance plot, a solid love-story in every novel, a love-story that eventually shapes the way things turn out.

Sime~Gen has a hidden Fantasy premise (ESP, Magic, and the supernatural that comes out later in the novels). Because of ESP and Magick, it is disqualified as SF.

It's mixed genre with the mixture hidden so it could be published as SF (because no other genre would allow the SF part). But House of Zeor is actually a non-Horror Vampire novel with a love-story plot driver.

House of Zeor was written during and after I did a close analysis of Star Trek, Star Trek fan fiction, and why fans wrote (and read) Star Trek fan fiction.

The lead character of House of Zeor is Spock, but he's not the POV character. He's a scientist in a non-scientific world struggling to solve a problem with scientific thinking. So the book really is SF. But he's a Vampire with all that implies - except he's not supernatural, he just has supernatural Powers (but he doesn't know that).

I sold 65 copies of House of Zeor on a money-back guarantee in the expensive hardcover edition to Star Trek fans who liked Spock, and never had one returned.

I wrote House of Zeor to prove the validity of the hypothesis I set forth in Star Trek Lives! about why fans wrote stories about Spock. That's why House of Zeor had to be published before Star Trek Lives! (to see if what I said in STL! was true.)

House of Zeor connected. It was in print continuously for over 20 years, and came back in the Omnibus SIME~GEN: THE UNITY TRILOGY.

Meanwhile, Jean Lorrah joined me collaborating on Sime~Gen novels, and writing on her own in the universe, too. Many readers prefer her touch on Sime~Gen.

Further proof of my theory about the connection between the Vampire Archetype and Star Trek -- and thus the nature of the SF genre -- was supplied when fans of Sime~Gen began writing their own stories in the Sime~Gen Universe, spawning at one point, 6 publishing fanzines of fiction and non-fiction about Sime~Gen.

Much of that fan written material is currently available online for free reading, and new material is still being added at http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/

which is an index page full of links to huge sections of Sime~Gen fan activity. To read fiction, see Rimon's Library at the bottom of that page.

To read free chapters of the published novels and find links and background information on Sime~Gen see
http://www.simegen.net (net not com)
or
http://www.simegen.com/writers/simegen/

So just as Star Trek spawned fanzines of fiction (prior to Star Trek, SF 'zines contained NO FICTION, but only non-fiction, letters, opinion, personal updates, the kind of thing you find on blogs -- and like fanzines, blogs have evolved to carry fiction), so Sime~Gen spawned fanzines full of fiction, and a little non-fiction.

The Vampire is still my favorite archetype, but as GOOD GUY.

------------POINT-------------------

At last, to the point of it all.

On this blog, I've been discussing various philosophical nooks and crannies, plus a whole lot of intellectualized analysis of story telling techniques.

I've discussed marketing, and genres, and social networking and the changes wrought either because of ebooks or that ebooks are the result of other changes in the publishing industry (such as a major change in the tax laws that killed the mid-list).

And each of these individual points I've made are defining a universe of discourse for solving the problem of the attitude of the general public toward the Romance Genre, and SF Romance and Paranormal Romance, Vampire Romance, Alien Romance.

I've told you a lot about writing technique, simply asserting that doing it this way assures your story will be forgotten and doing it that way will assure that your story will be remembered and called a classic.

I've never offered any evidence that I know what I'm talking about.

But I stumbled upon a bit of evidence in the last few weeks. I only realized what it was evidence OF a couple days ago.

Sime~Gen keeps getting mentioned on various websites, even blogs. So? That's nothing new.

When my sifting tools turn up one of those mentions, I try to find time to drop the blogger a note.

I found a blog a couple weeks ago that mentioned Sime~Gen. It was fairly typical, though outstandingly articulate and well written.

http://freyashawk.blogspot.com/2009/11/sime-gen-authors-query.html

On that blog entry freyashawk says:

"Some time ago, I wrote an article about a series of books that impressed me deeply when I first read them. They were novels about the Sime-Gen universe, created by Jacqueline Lichtenberg who, with the collaboration of Jean Lorrah, then proceeded to weave an elaborate tapestry depicting an alternate future of the human race based on a strange mutation.

Rather to my astonishment, Jacqueline Lichtenberg read my article and responded with a comment a few days ago. She wrote:

'Thank you for the nice words about the Sime~Gen Universe novels.
Please let us know what format you'd like to see these novels in next.'"

And a bit down the page, it says:

"I re-read the entire collection of Sime-Gen novels and stories last year, after recommending them to some one else who, like most of her peers, was infatuated with the 'Twilight' series. To me, the Sime-Gen universe depicted the same sort of social conflict that occurred between vampire and human, with concepts of prey and predator being turned upside down by love."

FLASHBURNED INTO MEMORY

Do you see my point? These books, read decades ago, persist in memory and get REREAD, then recommended to a new generation because they compare with something very current, like THE TWILIGHT SERIES.

Freyashawk did a second post that answers my question where she is staunchly advocating the necessity of producing reprints ON PAPER because ebooks are too ephemeral:

http://freyashawk.blogspot.com/2009/11/ongoing-correspondence-with-jacqueline.html

"Use the internet by all means to promote the Sime-Gen series and network with other writers, but find a way to PRINT the books at a reasonable cost. If you do not wish to organise that aspect of it yourself, I would expect that there are countless writers' groups and small publishers who would be more than pleased to assist in this project if the behemoths of the book-publishing world are too short-sighted to involve themselves. The reputation of any small publishing venture would be enhanced greatly if it were to produce a new edition of these Classics as well as new novels in the series."

This response from readers happens because of the techniques I have described in previous posts here, starting with the 20 posts on Tarot, through all the Writing Craft posts on theme, structure, plotting, story, conflict, etc etc.

Remember Archetype and Template as discussed above in this post.

The techniques of writing craft are like the archetype or template, but it's the content -- the specifics of the story -- that matter to the reader. If those specifics matter too much to the writer who then mis-applies the template, the reader will never recieve the message, the imagery, the content that matters to the writer -- for the same reasons cited above in the section about archetypes.

These writing craft techniques when applied to archetypes that are currently changing in a Group Mind's manifestation of them (Vampires-are-Evil to Vampire-as-Good Guy, is still Vampire Archetype), produce ReReadable Books, books that are remembered for decades and recommended to new generations.

Sime~Gen so easily gets flashburned into the reader's memory because the universe premise asks questions using the Vampire archetype, questions about real world current issues that the readers don't usually know, consciously, are really bothering them. But as Gene Roddenberry taught me, don't answer the questions. Just ask.

When you ask those obtuse, difficult, ellusive questions at the nexus of change in an archetype's manifestation, you capture the attention of those to whom the content matters but the delivery vehicle does not.

The Vampire Archetype manifestations (not the archetype itself; the manifestations) were morphing with the culture through the 1970's, '80's and still are even today, reflecting cultural changes such as the role of women, of racial prejudice, sexuality, the toxicity of violence.

How do you get your way? How do you get satisfied? How do you survive a crumbling life situation? What right do you have? How do you get what you need? And even though you have a right, do you have the right to exercise that right over everyone else's objections?

In Astrology, it's all bound up in 1st House/ 7th House matters, obstructed by 4th House / 10th House matters. That's another essay, but there are the 4 archetypes that quarter our existence.

It could be that the entire paradigm underlying our world culture is shifting more massively than anyone now knows.

The element that could be shifting is all about how one gets one's needs met -- taking your fair share from whoever's trying to keep it from you; exploiting the labor of others (slavery was abolished but continued to evolve via underpaying wages spawning Labor Union's battles); Charity and giving your fair share to taxes as a means of ensuring that Charity is done properly.

Think sweeping meta-history -- history about history. Get an orbital perspective on it all.

Giving and Receiving, the biggest, most abstract (dry, boring) concept behind Kaballah.

Shifts are happening generation to generation on that most fundamental level of the asbsolute structure of the universe.

Is "Evil" a fundamental component of our "Reality" -- or can it be vanquished forever? If we vanquish EVIL, will it take GOOD with it?

Do a quick run through some video games to check subject matter and problem solving techniques. What constitutes the problem in the most popular games? What's the conflict? How is it resolved to the benefit (high score) of the player? Much of gaming is about Good and Evil at War. Primal. Nothing new there. Shades of gray would spoil the fun.

The video game is today what the Vampire novel was to kids growing up in the 1980's. An obsession. I knew it then. My Vampire Romance hardcovers, Those of My Blood (1988) and it's sequel Dreamspy (1989) are still available now in paperback.

The "Vampire" is a perfect amalgam of the issues disturbing the deepest levels of our culture, the issues where the underlying archetype of human nature is changing the way it manifests (not the actual core of human nature; just the way it manifests, the part that matters to us living creatures, is changing. 2009's Halloween included Vampire films with awesome FX.

The Vampire is still popular, more popular as Horror, but go back again and just stare at that graph of Vampire Romance titles.

http://vampchix.blogspot.com/2009/11/rise-and-fall-of-vampire-romance-and.html

Think about what that means and we'll dig into it more in future posts.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

First impressions and epiphanies

2009-11-15T08:05:00.001-05:00

In life, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression". In fiction, your principal males do.... but only if they are interesting to begin with.

"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."
~Abraham Lincoln

I watched "Frost and Nixon" yesterday and found it quite riveting. "Cheeseburgers" was the sentence that changed my mind about the Frost character.

"I don't fleece my relatives," changed my mind about a bad boy hero in one Regency romance. He'd been established as deadly in duels, he drank too much, he was a hazard to other road-users, and he enjoyed the usual masculine vices of his time. However, he did have a personal code of honor.

Are there snatches of dialogue that have given you an epiphany about a character? Does there have to be a spoken turning point for every good protagonist?

Moreover, do readers and writers still have double standards? Do heroines get second chances? If we don't like the principal female in a novel, do we persevere in the hopes of getting to know her better?

I think not.

PS.
I'm doing NaNoWriMo, so I'm not supposed to agonize over and polish my latest alien romance too much... if at all. For now, the first indication that my hero might be redeemable is when he tells the heroine, (after she has thoroughly and dramatically foiled him),

"I wasn't looking forward to ravishing you."

Best wishes,

Rowena Cherry

Open Universes

2009-11-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

The Japanese manga and anime industry is much more tolerant of derivative, fan-produced work than most American writers and producers are. (I don’t know the reason for this cultural difference.) In fact, many Japanese commercial graphic artists have come into the professional field from fandom, and it’s not uncommon for a professional to continue producing “fan” type work. Fan-produced manga is called “doujinshi.” THE OTAKU ENCYCLOPEDIA says “most professional manga artists respect this activity as the creative right of fans.” Quite a relaxed attitude toward copyright compared to what Western fandom lives with! There’s an annual doujinshi convention in Tokyo, Comiket, which draws over half a million people per year. The mind boggles.

In an interview in THE OTAKU ENCYCLOPEDIA, one of the organizers of Comiket is asked what makes a good doujinshi. He says, “Doujinshi are best when the original works are not too perfect and there are still things to say and explore” (p. 48). An interesting assessment. I wouldn’t necessarily call the source works “not too perfect,” although that description does apply to many of them (fan authors are often motivated by a drive to “fix” source material such as the last season of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST or the final episode of FOREVER KNIGHT). The second part of the sentence, however, sounds just right to me. I’d call it a question of “open” versus “closed.”

Some works of fiction are highly resistant to fanfic. THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, by Suzy McKee Charnas, for instance (even if she allowed fanfic, which she doesn’t). Just for fun, not for distribution, I once wrote a story in which one of my vampire characters met her vampire, Dr. Weyland. That tale was pure self-indulgence on my part, and its main purpose was to explore how my character would react. There’s nothing in the closed plot of THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY that invites such exploration. On the other hand, one of the other great twentieth-century vampires, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Count Saint-Germain, would provide limitless scope for fanfic because of his millennia-long life during which he interacts with countless people in a variety of historical periods and cultures. (Yarbro also forbids derivative fiction, though.) The most fruitful fields for expansion by fans are found in works and series that create entire universes—e.g., STAR TREK, STAR WARS, J. K. Rowling’s magical Britain, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar, S. M. Stirling’s alternate-present DIES THE FIRE and its sequels, or Jacqueline’s Sime-Gen series. Worlds such as these leave plenty of open space for fans to insert characters and incidents. There’s even a STAR TREK group, headquartered at Starship Farragut, that films its own videos in a ST spinoff containing no characters from the commercial works. In imaginary universes such as these, there always remain “things to say and explore.”

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

Astrology Just For Writers Part 6: Targeting a Readership Part 3

2009-11-10T13:59:00.000-05:00

I reviewed an Astrology book, ASTROLOGY A COSMIC SCIENCE, on Amazon which just turned up (with my review) on a Dating Website (Dating?!!! hmmm. Had to read that.)

http://awardwinningdatingsites.com/320/astrology-a-cosmic-science/comment-page-1/#respond

Astrology A Cosmic Science is very old and the author, Isabelle Hickey, is now gone, alas, but this book came back into print recently.

It was written around the time Pluto was just discovered and Astrologers were trying to figure it out.

http://www.amazon.com/Astrology-Science-Isabel-M-Hickey/dp/0916360520/rereadablebooksr/

I had written about the book on Amazon:

------------------------

Strewn With Hidden Gems Of Wisdom
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The strength of this book is the deep, rich context surrounding each topic. But for many, that would be its weakness.

I use it as a reference book – when I’m stumped by a chart, I just page through this book looking for new associations to break the logjam in my mind. But in truth, this is a book to read cover-to-cover, pasting in post-it-notes to mark the bits and pieces of unrelated but illuminating wisdom tossed into various discussions.

For example, in one very illuminating section of this book, Hickey discusses each of the signs as it manifests as the Ascendant – then under each sign as the Ascendant, she discusses each of the signs that would be on the other House Cusps if there are no interceptions, or if you use equal-house methods.

She shows you how the rising sign synthesizes with the signs on each of the cusps – to create some of the characteristics of people with that sign rising, and to color the house involved. This explains WHY a particular ascendant tends to produce people who behave a particular way.

The book is worth its price for that section alone — if you’re willing to just sit for a couple of hours and read all the rising signs, one section after the other. The faster you read it, the more sense it makes. The section is laid out very systematically, and that system reveals vistas of astrological truths in and of itself.

However, at random throughout the section, a few sentences, “throw away dialog,” and offhand allusions are tossed into other topics to point you to bits of knowledge about how astrology works and what it’s actually for. These bits are not taken up anywhere else in the book, not assembled, not set into a larger context, and not indexed. They just leap out at you as if outlined in soul-fire.

For example: In the section devoted to Capricorn Rising, which puts Libra on the 10th, Hickey says, “Venus’s sign in Saturn’s house is often loving for the sake of expediency. This is not true of the more evolved individual. Students often ask the question, “How can one tell the evolvement of an individual in the chart?” Character is shown by the signs in which the planets are placed. Planets in their sign of exaltation and in the signs they rule are indications of an evolved consciousness. Also the higher-octave planets — Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and Jupiter — in the first, fourth, seventh, or tenth house show that the individual has had much soul experience in other lifetimes”.

You see? For that alone, this is worth the cover price, and there are lots and lots of those throughout the whole book.

Maybe these bits of wisdom aren’t actually true. But as you go, “Aha!” and pull out a dozen charts of people you know well to check out Hickey’s theory, you learn vast amounts more about astrology than you ever would have without investigating that theory.

I came to amazon today looking for links to used copies of Hickey’s book and was delighted to find it in print. I had been paging through this book at random the other day and it gave me a flash of inspiration. I used that insight to write two columns for my sf/f review column called ReReadable Books. Hickey had connected several sf novels for me, using the 7th House, the 6 of Swords and how they generate the art of storycraft. I’m a professional sf author, and teach writing online, and I needed to write a handout for the Writing Workshop at the World Science Fiction Convention. Before I leafed through Hickey’s book, I had no clue in my mind what I could offer at that Workshop. Then I produced a 14 page essay which will probably be the October and November installments of my column.

So, the strength of this book lies in the context surrounding the facts, a context which assembles random bits of the universe in which you live into a pattern that makes sense. But that context material is so randomly placed – so “stream of consciousness” in the style of Hickey’s writing that it’s impossible to use this book just to find out, say, the signature of the advanced soul.

You’d never find it if you searched the index or the table of contents. You have to read the entire book. (stock up on post-its).

And if you like this style of astrology (with a karmic and spiritual bent) – you really need Hickey’s book on PLUTO as MINERVA, and all about WISDOM. There’s a lot in that book I don’t agree with – but it surely makes you think.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
…-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.amazon.com/Astrology-Science-Isabel-M-Hickey/dp/0916360520/rereadablebooksr/

So I tried to post a reply on the Dating Site blog but it wouldn't accept it, I think because I'm not a member of the Dating Site and don't have their cookie on my computer.

So here's what I wrote in my comment, addressing members of the dating site, now redirected at Romance writers (and readers, for that matter).

This seems to be a posting of Hickey's book with the reviews from Amazon, including mine. I've learned a lot about Astrology and Tarot since I wrote that review, from Hickey and most notably from the great Astrology Teacher Noel Tyl whom I quote all the time.

Hickey's concept of Minerva as the symbolism for Pluto explains a lot about how and why Relationships form then blow apart violently (in divorce or worse).

Pluto transits transform people beyond recognition, but still within their Natal potential. Pluto, slowly but inexorably, fulfills natal potential, which is why it makes a good source of believable plot for a novel.

But such major Pluto transits tend to project the energies. Your transit can manifest via other people or the world around you, rather than within the psyche. It's hard for a writer to show-don't-tell the connection between the character and a sequence of plot events such as this:

... your boss fires you just because she's angry at someone else and you can't prove it. On the way home, you stop cleanly at a stop light, and a car whirls around the corner and T-bones your car. Your spouse files for divorce (what a relief) and your dog dies, and your replacement car needs a new transmission, and the house you win in the divorce springs a leak in the roof, and the insurance wasn't paid up, then your Mother dies (expected but the TIMING is exquisite) and at the same time, you win some award or have some totally explosive success that makes everyone you know and respect jealous, then you're diagnosed with Breast Cancer (thank G-d it's caught early, but you have no medical insurance because of the divorce and firing so all the inheritance is gone but you're alive).

Yep. The stuff of soap opera! Remember I did explain how Pluto is the absolute epitome of pure drama, intensified beyond all absurdities.

When a whole series of stuff like that just avalanches into your life over about 2 years, it is very likely a Pluto transit interacting with a) your Natal Chart and b) other major transits to your Natal Chart being amplified by Pluto.

Knowing that Pluto's energy of wisdom ebbs and flows through our spirits, we can learn how directing Pluto's energy into life is somewhat like trying to hold onto a fire hose running full blast. You definitely need HELP to keep it aimed where it can do good not harm.

And that help is your mate. Your Soul Mate.

If you're sitting on a big fire-hose, you need a Wisdom-Heavy Soul Mate to grab onto it behind you and aim YOU at a constructive task.

Well aimed, Pluto does not produce such a list of wild effects as I described above. Instead, it produces one clean, definitive Event from which you learn a new Wisdom, yielding to the lesson and reorganizing yourself around it. That too can make for great story theme and substance.

Pluto is not Love. It's Wisdom.

Love without Wisdom = Disaster.

That's the kind of Disaster that makes fabulous reading!

Below is a link to a blog post I did on Pluto and the generations of young people changing the world.

Those who are attempting to understand Relationships and the phenomenon of the Soul Mate might like to read some of my blog posts based on what I've learned of Tarot and Astrology applied to the field of Romance writing.

You can start with Astrology Just For Writers Part 6 and work your way back through the links in each post. Isabelle Hickey's Pluto/Minerva concept explains a lot especially about sex mixed with violence, bondage, and practices exerting excessive force. Hickey's concepts can provide alternative scenarios especially suited to writing Supernatural Romance and Paranormal Romance.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

------------------------

Meanwhile, I've just finished reading Deborah Macgillivrey's WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING, a Dorchester Romance.

http://deborahmacgillivray.blogspot.com/2009/09/wolf-in-wolfs-clothing-now-in-kindle.html

I think I found her on twitter, and the book sounded right up my alley. I'd read about a third when I asked her the following as a comment on her blog (linked above)

---------
I'm still reading WOLF. Can you explain why you put the first really hot sex scene at the 1/3 point of the narrative and why it's over 10 pages long with several settings?

Since I keep writing blog posts on writing craft for the Alien Romance blog ( aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com ) questions of structure like this keep coming up.

Is this a Dorchester requirement or a pacing you find works with your readers? (and may I quote you?)

-------------

And she answered:

My characters act and react within their own parameters of who they are. In my second historical, “In Her Bed”, the first sex scene happened early on, simply because the plot opens with the heroine trying to get with child in order to hold onto her fiefs in Medieval Scotland. When and how characters meet, what is driving them, gives each story its own pace. In the first book in the Sisters of Colford Hall™ series, “The Invasion of Falgannon Isle”, Desmond comes to the island with vengeance on his mind. As soon as he arrives, he falls for the magic of the heroine and her quirky island, so their romance dictated the sexual scenes be put off. In “Riding the Thunder” the second book, Jago (Trevelyn’s twin) was in a flux, knowing their seeking vengeance against the sisters was not right. Thus, it pushed the sexual encounters farther back into the book because of his conscience gnawing on him.

When I created Trev, I wanted an arrogant man, used to taking life as he wanted, and little worrying about what happened after. He was a “wolf” in the truest sense. And he wanted Raven. He would not hold back, seeing sex as a way to bind Raven to him. Instead, it bound him to her?something he didn’t count on. Raven was the most vulnerable of the sisters, less willing to take risks. She’d spent so long creating a “Tolkein” faerytale world where she was safe, secure. Her letting go so early in the relationship and allowing Trev into her bed, her life, was her taking that ultimate gamble for something very special.

So, since I am allowed to write the stories as I want, it’s the characters themselves who say how the emotions and the sexual extension of that love occur and when. I love logic. Everything has to fit the logical make up of that character, or it just doesn’t fit. It won’t ring true for the reader.

If you find anything to help you, please feel free to use quotes.
November 2, 2009 4:56 PM
----------------------------

Now you can see from Deborah Macgillivray's track record that she has gained a readership that Dorchester Love Spell and Zebra Historicals know how to reach and serve. That's why she's "allowed" to write them as she sees them. She has created a market.

She has gained a gut-level understanding of the story that her readers are following, so she just has to follow her nose through her story to turn out a slam-bang perfect of its kind novel (yeah, she's that good).

Then I was thinking about WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING (BTW it's not werewolf, and the paranormal is left gray and equivocal) and the similarity to Sharon Green's first DAW novel series, THE WARRIOR WITHIN. Green does not write that way -- follow-her-nose -- she does it on purpose.

Green took John Norman's Gor novels and (in response to a challenge uttered at a party at an SF convention) turned the Gor novel formula inside out and upside down (a totally unthinkable feat in professional story-telling at that time).

Sharon Green:
on Amazon

John Norman
John Norman on Amazon

Sharon Green took the cave-man, sword-slinging beast-man who rescued and ravished damsels with total disregard for their person-hood, and switched the point of view.

She did it pretty much on a dare (yes, I know Sharon Green and I like her a lot!)

The first novel sold so well, she got to do a whole series, showing how this character, Terrilian, a very strong woman with massive immaturity, learns that her preferences aren't the only ones that matter.

I couldn't put The Terrilian Series down! Really. Those books are as fascinating and absorbing as some of the best fanfic I've ever read, and I had never been able to read the source-material by John Norman.

Sharon Green dealt with teaching this lesson in Relationship to a woman, using the same trope John Norman used, but mirror-imaged.

See comments on my post http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html for comments on trope.

In the 1970's when women were struggling to attain a new identity in mid-life, Sharon's mirror-imaging of the male fantasy founded a blazing career for her.

But if you check the reviews of Terrilian on Amazon, though they are plentiful, there is a segment of the readership that came looking for "Romance" that went away bitterly disappointed.

At the time Sharon invented Terrilian, there was no commercial place for ANY relationship-driven action novels on either side of the Romance/SF divide. That was an absolute. (before the Web and e-books, there really was no place but the author's bottom drawer or fireplace.)

That was the decade when "Warrior" meant "male archetype" and nothing else. The female warrior archetype was literally "unthinkable" and certainly not commercial.

Yet Sharon Green's Terrilian novels, the series called THE WARRIOR SERIES, sold like hotcakes and therefore built a bridge over that divide with a very sophisticated use of the male action trope.

Sharon Green generated a public, popular, Group Mind image of a female warrior and what it means to be a female with warrior traits -- and those warrior traits are on the psychological level more than the physical (though physical courage is not lacking, it's not where the battle is joined).

There is no battle more fierce than the battle against one's own self-image.

As I've said before, there are things about writing that readers don't want or need to know if they simply want to read for the pleasure of reading.

But all writers could wish that most readers knew the difference between a badly written book and a book they simply dislike. I tried to address that issue of "Quality" in my post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html

Despite the scathing reviews juxtaposed against the over-the-top rave reviews for Sharon Green's WARRIOR series, what you have in the Warrior Series is a very HIGH QUALITY piece of work.

Regardless of whether you like the dark story, the brutality mixed with sex, the raw power nature of the sexual component of what later (7 huge novels later) becomes a more emotional and intellectual Relationship, you should be able to see the QUALITY of what Sharon accomplished.

In addition to that Quality, Sharon broke trope without breaking it. She did what Hollywood always demands: something the same but different.

A great deal of what you see on the Romance and Action Romance stands today is based on the breakthrough Sharon Green made with this series.

You can make a fortune if you can master the thinking method used to arrive at the CONCEPT of mirroring the insanely popular male-action trope the Gor books epitomize, and selling the same male action-packed trope to WOMEN who wanted freedom without the price of maturity. That's where we were in the 1970's and even into the 1980's among adult women raised to be subservient to men.

Today, news reports of more violence against women on TV dramas than ever before are bandied about as a horrifying development, not as evidence of women succeeding in becoming Combat Officers in the Army (unthinkable development - there might be a woman in command over men! Can't have that!) Women now FIGHT and even win against men, in combat or board room.

Fiction didn't exactly lead the way, but Sharon Green and other writers who portrayed for the young generation of women a way of thinking, living and feeling that is both feminine and aggressive created a new trope for female-self-image.

Find the next thing that needs changing and invert the trope of that in our fiction.

THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT.

If you're familiar with both WOLF IN WOLF'S CLOTHING and WARRIOR WITHIN, you can follow this contrast-compare more easily but I'll try to make it simple (OK, you can stop laughing now). This is important because it's about "targeting a readership."

Wolf in Wolf's Clothing is written to a generation of women raised to expect themselves to have to mature and remain women.

Warrior Within was written to a generation of women raised to expect themselves to get everything without maturing in order to remain women. (i.e. there WAS no archetype for THE MATURE WOMAN in American culture; we had to invent it. Marion Zimmer Bradley was one of the leaders with her Renunciates of Darkover -- but RENOUNCING protection isn't the key to a woman's maturity. It's only a step.) Think of I LOVE LUCY which I hope you've seen in endless reruns. Lucy portrays the archetype of yore. Wolf in Wolf's Clothing portrays the archetype of the near future, what the 14 year old girls of today will mature into (maybe sans magic; maybe not).

Both attitudes of the female READERSHIP addressed specifically by AUTHORS, (almost two generations apart) -- both attitudes are culturally inculcated. They do not represent Natal Chart personality or any individuality.

What you absorb subconsciously before you are old enough to speak is really hard to edit later in life. (Magical Initiation, Religious Conversion, or a massive Pluto transit as described above can force you to edit your operating system and "recompile" the code.)

That originally absorbed cultural material becomes part of your identity. (look up CULTURE SHOCK and read Alvin Toffler's book FUTURE SHOCK and Edward T. Hall's book THE SILENT LANGUAGE).

http://www.amazon.com/Future-Shock-Alvin-Toffler/dp/0553277375/rereadablebooksr/

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_4_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+silent+language&sprefix=The+Silent

Both of which are products of the 1960's & 1970's culture and give you tremendous insight into what exactly has changed and where the next change of that magnitude is coming from. But these books give you the principles by which civilizations change on the archetypal level, and thus let you do some worldbuilding that readers will believe.

Macgillivrey and Green are both taking a character and "teaching them a lesson." And that lesson breaks their self-image.

Another series that does that with Pluto's huge hammer blows is the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series by Laurell K. Hamilton.

The Pluto-Minerva lesson in Wisdom has to BREAK the person, SHATTER a wall they don't even know is inside them, DESTROY their very identity at its core, in order to penetrate "down" to the layer where the error exists.

We accept anything that resides at that inner level as "Wisdom." Even if it's wrong. Perhaps especially if it's wrong.

The process of rewriting, debugging, recompiling and rebooting that internal Wisdom Operating System isn't likely to happen without a major Pluto transit with all the dark power-symbolism erupting full force. (Pluto transits can work the other way, too, changing correct information into incorrect information - Pluto is not survival-oriented except on the Soul level.) The older you are, the more force Pluto has to bring to bear to create real change.

Once that erroneous information coded into the core being is removed and replaced by new information, the PERSON literally becomes someone else.

What gives them pleasure changes. What gives them grief changes. All the emotional circuitry leading from events in the outside world to the gut-level responses within gets rewired and the resulting behavior in response to stimulus changes.

Ah, but the NATAL CHART does not change!!! This is still the same life lived by the same soul.

But any human observer would say, no, it's NOT THE SAME PERSON.

What is it that can produce this effect?

It's not the standard Saturn Transit that often opens one's eyes, strips away things you depend on, and shatters your ego, challenging your values. Saturn makes great plot material, but this is deeper.

connect what happened when you were 27, with what happened at 28 or 29 -- that's the maturing effect of the first Saturn return. Don't trust anyone over thirty -- is true. It's a gulf you cross to maturity and your responses to input will change.

Macgillivrey and Green are writing about a different kind of transit from the Saturn transit.

The reason that SEXUALITY and VIOLENCE and FORCE and ABSOLUTLY IMPLACABLE determination and total OBSESSION and HORRENDOUSLY COMPLETE CHANGE and even CRIME (Pluto is violent crime), DISEASE AND DEATH,INHERITANCE and HERITAGE are the forces driving both plots is that the transformation these authors are writing about is a PLUTO TRANSIT transformation.

Scorpio. Pluto. Force majeur. The underground. The subconscious.

For more on the symbolism I'm discussing with Pluto see my post on the generation signature by Pluto's Sign
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

That post is also Targeting a Readership Part Two.

For contrast with Wolf and Warrior, my first award winner, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER is about a FIRST SATURN RETURN and is driven by all the keywords of Saturn, even the background and worldbuilding is derived from Saturn keywords.

The change that both Macgillivrey and Green were illustrating artistically was a change to the deepest core ASSUMPTIONS (not beliefs) of the main character each was dealing with.

In the early days, Green had to teach a lesson on that level to women.

Today, we feel the need to teach men a lesson.

As currently transiting Pluto enters Capricorn and shifts emphasis and coloration, we are in the mopping up part of the Gender Wars.

I didn't mention in Astrology Just For Writers Part 6 that along with Pluto's entry into Capricorn we also are looking forward to Neptune entering Pisces, it's own sign.

Remember how I made the point that the generation born with Pluto in its own sign (Scorpio) had a greatly emphasized Pluto energy in their personality, the source of what they obssess on and enjoy most, what they're willing to pay for in entertainment? Neptune will become exceptionally prominent like that when it's in Pisces, its own sign.

2011 or maybe 2012 should show us more of how that will work on the general group psyche of current adults, and it'll be a good 15-20 years before we know what the children of that generation with Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces will go for in entertainment.

But note that as Pluto transited its own sign of Scorpio, we got the MORE-MORE-MORE-VIOLENCE-POWER-IS-EVERYTHING generation of video game players.

Neptune rules Pisces, and as it transits its own sign the keywords connected with Neptune will manifest in our cultural assumptions.

One pervasive effect of Neptune is to convince you that your highest ideal (12th House, Neptune and Pisces are about IDEALS among many other slippery things including entertainment itself) - that your highest Ideal already is a fact.

Saturn is Fact.

Neptune is Ideal.

Pluto is Force.

Uranus is Freedom.

Uranus will simultaneously be entering Aries, ruled by Mars (war; whereas Pluto is the upper octave of Mars which might be seen as nuclear war, supervolcanoes rather than mere volcanoes).

These 3 factors (Pluto in Capricorn, Neptune in Pisces, Uranus in Aries) will persist while Saturn sweeps through Scorpio and Sagittarius and maybe on into Capricorn which Saturn rules).

That is the "atmosphere" we'll be writing our fiction in. People battered by those forces, concerned by those issues, burned out over dilemmas and conundrums (Neptune), fighting with their teenagers over what the teens see as reality, will come seeking LOVE CONQUERS ALL and THE ALL POWERFUL H.E.A.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/snow-dogs-and-happily-ever-after.html

What lessons will the people born with Pluto in Scorpio (1985-1995 or so) need to see worked out in their Art (our novels) as they live through these transits?

What lesson in Relationship, what Wisdom, has to be "beaten" (Pluto) into their "heads" (Aries rules the head).

What do they assume is true (Neptune) which actually might become true if they would "wake up" (Uranus) to themselves (Aries) and accept the Discipline (Saturn) of Wisdom (Minerva-Pluto).

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com

FFFig! Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost (or why the wrong label sucks)

2009-11-09T13:14:00.022-05:00

Heather and passengers have had some interesting and productive discussions on the labeling and categorizing of science fiction romance over on her blog, The Galaxy Express recently. This is no new discussion, but it is one we evidently must keep having because apparently even those deep in the business trenches of commercial genre fiction Don't Get It.

Case in point: Amazon. Now, many of you know I have no love for Amazon. I recognize it as a necessary evil at most times. I also recognize it's a hugely popular site and I am appreciative of their innovations in on-line book marketing and such. So given that they were one of the first, one would think--wouldn't one--that they'd know what in hell they market.

Sadly, they're perpetuating part of the deep problem science fiction romance has in declaring it's identity. Amazon--arguably one of the largest on-line marketers of books--has (if one goes to the ROMANCE categories) lumped science fiction romance/futuristics/romantic science fiction in the following category:

Fantasy, Futuristic and Ghost

If you don't believe me, click here for the Romance section with the categories on the left. Click here for their FFG category.

Notice they break out "vampires" and "time travel." They don't have a category called Fangs and Far Back in Time. Noooo. Vampire romance is recognized as a (sub)genre of its own. So is Gothic. So is Romantic Suspence. But science fiction romance? We're lumped in with elves and temporal disorientation and things that go boo.

I can understand if space was a consideration, as it would be in a brick-and-mortar store. It's not. This is a website. It's a matter of creating pages and hyperlinks to same. It's a matter of coding. It's so simple it's ridiculous.

So is lumping in science fiction romance with magic swords and ectoplasm.

Is it any wonder readers can become confused?

Granted, science fiction and fantasy have long been lumped together. But ghosts? I wasn't even aware Ghost Romance was a valid subgenre. But if it is, shouldn't it belong with vampires? I mean, vampires and ghosts seem to have more in common (at least, on Halloween they do), than starships and ghosts.

I'm now tempted to pen a story about a haunted starship that crash lands on a planet and is eaten by a dragon. At least then it would be properly categorized on Amazon.

'Nuff said. ~Linnea

http://www.linneasinclair.com/
Watch for Rebels and Lovers, Book #4 in the Dock Five Universe! Coming March 2010 from Bantam Dell

Eclectic doings

2009-11-08T12:48:00.003-05:00

If this video posts, it is my latest attempt to use images of galaxies to accompany a recording of me reading... so the sound track is important, and the visuals are not.
It's the reverse of music accompanying text and specific visuals, which is the usual way of book trailers.

I'm trying to keep up with NaNoWriMo, and at this time of year I always seem to have a lot of balls in the air. (Juggling metaphor)

One of my earliest memories of story-telling technique lessons in school might be called "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" method. (It wasn't called that). You start with a list of unlikely ingredients, or characters, go with the flow, and try to create a rational and cohesive story.

This method may have harmed me for life! Anyway, I am still more of a puzzler than anything else, and my four unlikely bedfellows (in a literary sense) are the corner pieces of my jigsaw.

I've been researching Pagan ladies... which has been absolutely fascinating, not least because there is a pattern of similarities which includes psychic gifts and the ability to dowse. Also, weather which is a bit of a work in progress, but it helps that I am a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society. My third subject is British police-cars of the 1990's.

In the past, I've posted about my love of lists and of pinning down what is about my hero and heroine's person. I cannot make use of the fact that modern British police fleets include a discreet van that contains a toilet for the comfort of modern officers who may have to spend six hours at the scene of a motorway accident. However, the information that some patrol cars carry a dog catcher set my mind racing in a whole new, and twisted direction for my next alien romance.

Lizard Overlords

2009-11-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

Could the remake of the vintage TV series "V" about reptilian extraterrestrials invading Earth in the guise of benevolent humanoids, which premiered this week, actually be a covert warning? Maybe this program is trying to alert us to the ancient, worldwide conspiracy of our secret lizard overlords, psychic-vampire alien reptiles who lurk among us after withdrawing (literally) underground. By all accounts, this complex of beliefs is serious, not a joke. Here's a website:

Reptilian Agenda

Now, I enjoy a solid, multilayered "theory of everything" -- for instance, the combination of demons, witches, werewolves, and vampires in the Homo lycanthropus species of Jack Williamson's classic DARKER THAN YOU THINK. In that novel these pseudo-human beings have been preying on us since prehistoric times and are responsible for all the evil that has plagued the human race. I adapted a section of my book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN into an article about Williamson's novel. It's online in issue 4 of the JOURNAL OF DRACULA STUDIES:

Journal of Dracula Studies

Come to think of it, one form taken by Williamson's "witch-men" is a dragon-like winged lizard. Maybe Williamson was already trying to warn us in 1940?

The trouble with most real-world, allegedly factual conspiracy theories, unfortunately, is that they're not only implausible but *dull.* Shapeshifting, humanoid, energy-vampirizing, super-intelligent reptiles controlling us from the shadows are at least interesting! And, as Oz says on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER upon learning that Sunnydale is infested with vampires, "It explains a lot."

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

RION

2009-11-04T10:08:00.004-05:00

It's that time again. RION the second book in the Pendragon Legacy series will be hitting the stores at the end of November. So if you haven't read your copy of Lucan yet, please catch up. :)

Now I'd post the cover here but for some reason blogger is turning the image strange colors. What is up with that???

RION
The Pendragon Legacy #2
Mass Market Paperback
ISBN-10: 0446543322
ISBN-13: 978-0446543323
Publisher: Forever (Grand Central Publishing)
Pub. Date: December 2009 (11-24-09)

POWER IN THEIR PASSION

Marisa Rourke is a beautiful, fearless telepath who tames dragonshapers on Earth. Rion is a tall, dark, and sexy space explorer whose home planet is a galaxy away. The attraction between them is undeniable, but Rion is hiding a desperate secret that will change Marisa's life forever.

DANGER IN THEIR TOUCH

Marisa's gift is the only way Rion can communicate with his people, enslaved by a powerful enemy. He knows that kidnapping her is wrong, but saving his planet is worth sparking the fiery clairvoyant's fury. Yet hotter-and more explosive-is the psychic bond growing between Marisa and Rion. Could their passion be the key to freeing Rion's people? Only if he and Marisa can discover how to channel their desire . . . before a vicious enemy destroys them all.

Read an excerpt at www.susankearney.com

DoubleBlind by Ann Aquirre

2009-11-03T13:27:00.002-05:00

This is not so much a "review" as an exploration of a significant development in the SFR field.

I do intend to review Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre and it's a 5-star read if you overlook a couple of small things that irk me (matters of taste, not quality)

- see my post on Quality
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/7-proofing-steps-for-quality-writing.html

Since I now have 3 titles of my own available on Kindle (The Dushau Trilogy), I've taken a sudden interest in Amazon again.

I don't understand that place as well as I once did, but I'm learning fascinating things about how they're growing, building independent sections then linked them in a crazy-quilt.

I found that Linnea Sinclair apparently started using the tag sfr and when I added that tag to a couple books, I suddenly found myself looking at a Community for SFR. (color me perplexed)

Tags? Something changed. I'd always ignored tags. What are they for, anyway?

So I started adding the tag "Jacqueline Lichtenberg" to some of my own books (haven't finished that yet) and suddenly found myself staring at a "Jacqueline Lichtenberg Community" -- huh?

OK, well, it had no posts in it so I wrote one. *shrug*

Then I went on poking around trying to trace the connections (there aren't many or even any!) between the Kindle Editions and print books.

The Dushau Trilogy Kindle edition is linked into a print edition page, but there are several print edition pages for each book.

The other pages are about copies from used book & collector jobbers often without the cover image, and no link to the Kindle edition on those separate pages. Most people shopping for Dushau won't know it has a Kindle edition.

When a listing for a used copy gets deleted (probably because the jobber sold all copies in stock), the reviews posted to that particular page apparently get deleted by Amazon.

The Dushau Trilogy has had many more reviews posted than are now showing, but somehow Kindle has let the remaining ones onto the Kindle edition pages.

Then on the Sime~Gen fan List, I discovered from a Kindle owner (I don't have one) that people can search for books by number of reviews listing it as whatever # of stars. Dushau would be closer to the top if the reviews hadn't been trashed by Amazon. *hmmmm*

So I went poking around again, and dropping the tag "Jacqueline Lichtenberg" on books by me. And on one of the pages, I found out that people who had bought that book by me (I don't recall which one) had also bought Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre.

What a coincidence!

If you've read my posts on Tarot you'll see that I treat "coincidence" more seriously than most people.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/10-pentacles-cake-comes-out-of-oven.html

You see, I was just finishing reading Doubleblind, and when I saw Amazon associate the two with a "readers who bought this bought that." But because I'd been studying Doubleblind I understood how ingenius the amazon.com algorithm has become.

Usually, the "readers who bought" suggestions that I see do make some sense. There are vast similarities. I can see it most clearly when readers who've bought a novel I wrote (and know the mechanism of) have also bought a novel I've read. But rarely has the similarity shouted out at me like this one.

Amazon is getting better at associating apparently unrelated works, and that may be because of all the tedious effort put in by readers to rate books and group them into communities by tags.

This development -- computers associating and grouping ART -- is extremely significant, perhaps in all the history of mankind.

It was the potential that originally attracted me to Amazon, but at first launch, Amazon worked in a very clunky way, putting things together that don't belong together.

I was disappointed when Amazon branched out into general merchandizing and then started merchandizing books (getting publishers to pay extra to get a title featured or tossed into your face whether you like that kind of stuff or not). But they lost tons of money the first 5 years or so and only now are turning a profit, mostly based on that ingenius and innovative algorithm and its modern derivatives.

What's disappointing is not that they're merchandising books, but that in order to be profitable, they must merchandise rather than concentrate wholly on grouping works of Art.

In that context, my astonishment at finding Aguirre's Doubleblind associated with my novels may make more sense. And it may be the "tags" feature, or some additional algorithm behind the tags (this new Cloud Computing concept I discussed in some of my Web 2.0 posts) that did the trick. But something changed on Amazon.

There really is a texture in Aguirre's writing which is characteristic of what I like to read -- which has always been what I like to write.

It's very hard to pin down or articulate, but Doubleblind held my attention despite a couple of irksome traits. It's written in the awkward and distasteful(to me) first person present tense instead of first person past. First person present is used to disguise the artsy-fartsy shallowness of "literary" writing, not in serious storytelling. (see? I have a prejudice. How sad.)

But there are some good techniques in Doubleblind. The narration POV stays steady in the woman's head the whole book through, and she's the more or less sane one while the man she's determined to rescue/cure/love is pretty much flipped-out during most of the book. She knows she loves the sane version of this guy.

I dislike stories told from the POV of an insane person, but this novel has a big story to tell that is HIS story. Aguirre very cleverly gets at his story through her story. It's a well controlled, and well structured narrative.

I will include Doubleblind in my professional review column.

It's part of a series (everything is these days), and I do vaguely recall reading one of the previous novels, but this one reads just fine as a stand-alone. That's a difficult trick to pull off.

It has another awkward structural quirk, but one that I've used myself.

Aguirre inserts communications between people scattered around the galaxy, communications that the main POV character, Sirantha Jax, does not know about and which telegraph that her current mission may become much more complicated very soon now.

This is a device that I have seen used much better than this, and one that I have used with the awareness that readers will SKIP reading the insertions except maybe on re-reading.

Now here's something that happened to this book in production which is not Aguirre's fault or responsibility.

The insertions of "emails" flying around the galaxy are printed in such tiny print with such a thin font that I literally couldn't read them. There was a time when I could read that small fine print without difficulty, and many readers won't have a problem with it.

But this is one of those book-design quirks that may irk readers. It could put off some readers who will report (on blogs or Amazon communities) that they didn't enjoy the book, but they won't say why because they don't know why. (Really - not all readers know why they like or don't like a book! And many of those don't care why!)

The tiny print on the message inserts probably happened because the book designer ran out of space because they inserted a chapter of Aguirre's next book at the end, leaving no blank pages or author comments for the final folio.

That will be another book in a series I really like, the Corine Solomon Urban Fantasy series. This one is due out in April 2010 and is titled Hell Fire. It's about a magic worker and her sidekick who has a wild talent, and I love the Relationship between them.

It would be interesting to discover if those message insertions in Doubleblind were requested by the editor because the surprise ending didn't track without them, or if Aguirre planned it that way, or if she used the inserts to avoid changing point of view, or to make the book shorter. Or maybe she had to make the book longer? Or maybe she just wrote them to keep us advised on developments with characters we're going to get back to in a sequel and was just hoping to get away with it as a teaser to sell the next book.

At any rate, I would advise readers to get Doubleblind in the e-book or Kindle or Nook edition so you can adjust the print size to suit you. I found even the bulk of the text to be on the small side.

That should tell you something. I didn't have to squint my way all the way through the novel, you know.

Readers often attribute to author's choice what must rightfully be accounted for by publisher's choice or demands or by an author's attempt to comply with commercial requirements (such as how do I get readers to wait for my next book in this series?).

These are questions that readers need to learn to consider before "blaming" an author for something they don't like about a book.

The same is true of feature films and especially TV Series episodes. To get the thing OUT at all, it is often necessary to do things that distort the art. So it's worth a beginner's while to invest time in mastering craft skills that can solve the mechanical production problems in such a way that the art does not become distorted.

Now why did Ann Aguirre's Doubleblind come up as recommended to those who like my books? (or one could hope, vice versa)

It's this Web 2.0 thing that I've been discussing in some of my posts.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Amazon started collecting information about what readers like and want and milling it through their proprietary computer program. Others have imitated, but can't keep up with Amazon's innovation rate.

That's partly because Amazon started out tremendously well FUNDED. But that's not the only reason. Some other startups of that era are long gone, and of course Microsoft started on a shoestring.

When the whole era of interactivity with web visitors burst into high gear with Web 2.0 -- video, blogging, social networking, connecting web visitors not just with the purveyor but with each other -- Amazon was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the new web-savvy customer who was comfortable giving up personal information and asserting matters of taste in a public forum.

Amazon was ahead of the changes in the book-buying customer base, and ahead of changes in the general web-customer base. They even cater to the individual merchant providing a platform on which others sell things. Amazon gets all that cusomter information to mill over.

So far they've guessed correctly about the direction of customer behavior.

While I was writing this, Linnea Sinclair posted a note on my previous blog entry here pointing out how commercial writers, genre fiction writers, must LISTEN to their readers.

What Amazon has done (and others have copied) is LISTEN to book buyers.

That's why their computer associated Aguirre with Lichtenberg. It may have something very simple behind it - or something much more sophisticated than I can understand. That "tag cloud" thing may turn out to be the most powerful artist's tool yet invented.

Other book sellers - maybe e-book publishers? - may do what Amazon has done, and get AHEAD of where the "public" is going with this interactivity thing.

I suspect in that "tag cloud" instrument Google and Amazon are using, we will find the key to the next step in SFR, and the Romance genre in general. I have a lot more to say on the shifting sex-roles and sexual identity, and in general the "battle of the sexes" and Pluto's influence on our society, but that has to wait for next week.

There are ramifications here that I don't understand yet and so can't explain to you. Very likely, some readers of this blog entry already see the shape of the future to come.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Whither Copyright?

2009-11-01T11:00:00.004-05:00

It's November the first, and I am doing NaNoWriMo... therefore, I will be brief here. (And loquacious there.)

Announcement and Plug:

On November 3rd (Tuesday) I will be discussing the finer points of the law regarding intellectual property rights of artists and content creators, fair use, first sale doctrine, musicians and more on my 10.00 am (Eastern Time) radio show on http://internetvoicesradio.com/CrazyTuesday

COPYRIGHT: WHAT'S RIGHT AND WHAT IS NOT RIGHT?

Patrick Ross and Lucinda Dugger of the Copyright Alliance.org will explain why you should be concerned about authors' and artists' rights.

Brenna Lyons, EPIC president; Marci Baun, Publisher Wild Child Publishing, in person and other authors via texting will share common misconceptions and some horror stories about copyright infringement.

Useful urls
http://www.copyrightalliance.org
http://www.copyrightalliance.org/letter

A Preannouncement and another Plug:

Please notice the sidebar. This blog is participating with Heather Massey of The Galaxy Express in a massive, multi-blog promotion of our genre (science fiction romance) on December 6th. So far, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Linnea Sinclair, Margaret L Carter, Susan Kearney, Susan Sizemore, and yours truly have pledged either books or ebooks as prizes for those who visit our blog on 12/06/2009.

No Trick: A Treat For Our Readers (one day late for Halloween)

There's strong demand for accessible, convenient, reader-friendly ways for readers to discover new authors without having to go on a scavenger hunt all over the internet, or to play virtual lucky dip
on the online bookseller sites.

Therefore, with the help of my friends, I have compiled, and Charlotte Boyett-Compo has formatted
two samplers which we are proud to call The Best Of Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal Authors. If it's not actually the best it may well be one of the first. And it's free.

http://www.freado.com/book/4645/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#1

http://www.freado.com/book/4647/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#2

Authors include: Linnea Sinclair, Jade Lee, Joy Nash, Deborah Macgillivray, Susan Kearney, Susan Grant, Cathy Spangler, Kathleen Nance, Charlee Compo, Rowena Cherry, Dawn Thompson, Nina Bangs, Cindy Spencer Pape, C.L. Wilson, Laurel Bradley... and many more.

For those not familiar with the Book Buzzr site:
Click the link
Wait for the yellow loading bar to do its thing
Scroll over to the far right to "Read Now" (in oxblood red)
Click that (the cover art will shift to the right, there will be a central crease down the middle, the left side will be blank)

Alternatively, you can click on "Read Now" in the yellow bar.
It is not such a good idea to click on the front page of the book "to zoom" as you will get formatting bars in front of your text.

Next, look at your own desktop browser toolbar.
Click on View. Then on Zoom. Then on Zoom In.

You can turn the pages using the video/tape style solid arrow.

Enjoy.
Please feel free to snag the urls and share them (but always in their entirity, please)

Maybe one can trick an ancient, fantasy or futuristic genie back into his or her bottle, but the silicon chips of time may be running out for artists and creators of copyright protected materials.

And a Warning:

I was amused and flattered to receive a Google Alert for my name, pointing me to a download request for one of my paperbacks on a site where members are known to share e-books.

However, I am not so amused to see that a link (on a blue field) has been posted which is only visible for visitors to the site who are NOT members. I'm told that members of the site do not see that link. Therefore, my friends should know that the link is probably malicious or else a fraud.

/request/14460/0/Knight%27s_Fork_by_Rowena_Cherry/?sms_ss=blogger">XXX - Knight's Fork by Rowena Cherry download request

please help,I need this book and others by the same authorWhen the Queen Consort of the Volnoth asks him to father her child, not realizing that he is the son of her greatest enemy and that he has taken ...

Now... I'm going back to NaNoWriMo where I am writing "Devil" Deverill's come-uppance. My chess title for this one is "Grand Fork".

Rowena Cherry

Going to College in Virtual Reality

2009-10-29T12:04:00.002-04:00

At one of my schools, the University of Hawaii, some professors are holding classes in replicas of college settings in the Second Life online environment. The University of Hawaii island in Second Life includes four buildings around a courtyard with a view of the ocean, “as well as two floating skydecks and a treehouse.” Here’s an article, with a video:

Malamalama

My mind is definitely boggled. I’m amazed at how close we’ve come—in the short time the Internet has existed—to the virtual worlds we read about in science fiction. There’s a Globe Theatre island where full-length Shakespeare plays are presented. And I’ve heard of authors doing readings in Second Life, an idea that sounds really cool. The opportunities sound practically boundless (for instance, a kind of freedom for disabled people that they can’t attain in the physical world). On the other hand, interacting in virtual space is open only to the affluent; in addition to buying the equipment, a user has to pay real money for online resources. If such a realm of interaction eventually becomes commonplace, I can conceive of it as yet another barrier between the haves and have-nots.

I’ve never entered Second Life myself. If anyone here has, please tell us about the experience. For instance, how much does meeting someone in the virtual world feel like meeting a person in real life?

Margaret L. Carter
Carter's Crypt

On the road

2009-10-28T13:27:00.002-04:00

Hi All,
I've been out to San Diego to see my daughter. Then on a road trip from Florida up to Pennsylvania. And of course along the way I stopped in lots of bookstores, left bookmarks and signed stock. And I noticed that stores tend to shelve my books everywhere. It's almost as if aliens tried to see how many different places they could hide my books. I found copies of Lucan on new release tables, shelved under romance, under new books, on end caps, under the cash register and ever on the center isle turning styles. It was actually quite an education, but you know it's really hard to be an author. When I saw copies of my books on the shelves i feared the book wasn't doing well. When I saw no copies, I was worried that we didn't have enough on the shelves. So either way i tend to worry.

I returned home to find out that RION, my December book and the second in the Pendragon legacy series received a 4 1/2 stars from RT book review. "The review calls Pendragon a “sizzling series,” ending with, “Leave it to Kearney to build a passionate relationship and combine it with political drama and adventure!”

So I hope that those of you who enjoyed Lucan will preorder Rion to make sure you get a copy. Luckily Grand Central Publishing increased the number of books out there.

While on the trip we went to Hershey Pa. And of course we had to tour the chocolate factory. Now are you wondering what chocolate has to do with books? Well chocolate is an essential writer's tool--as necessary for creating great stories as my computer.

The pictures above were taken at a book signing, of me and my husband at a 3-d movie, very cool, and at the Hershey facility. Even the traffic lights in Hershey are in the shape of kisses. :)

Enjoy,
Susan Kearney

7 Proofing Steps For Quality Writing

2009-10-27T14:11:00.003-04:00

How could a writer possibly decide whether their own story or even article has a low, medium, or high "quality?"

"Quality" is a word, and concept that means something different to each person who uses it, and in each context where you find it.

"Quality" essentially means "it feels good to me, so it doesn't matter what you like."

But "Quality" is also a comparison measure to other things "like" this one -- whatever it is; a sofa, a dress, a silk neck tie, a painting, a story.

The problem with applying the word "Quality" to writing is that writing is an amalgam of Craft and Art.

Art does have some objective parameters to it, but different people respond to or care about different parameters. You really can't assign an objective measure to the "Quality" of Art.

Craft, however, is almost entirely objective, and the measure of "Quality" in craftsmanship has two dimensions.

1) Does the craftsmanship produce a seamless, smooth, useful product? (i.e. if it's a plumbing pipe, does it hold water? If it's a story, does it deliver an emotional punch, intellectual high or spiritual journey?)

2) Does the craftsmanship of this object compare well to the craftsman of similar objects? (i.e. does this pipe hold water better than that pipe? Does this story deliver a bigger punch than that story?)

The problem in judging "Quality" is that readers, or end-users of any product, measure "quality" by different standards than the originator of the object -- or the purveyor (in writing, that's the publisher).

For a writer, "Quality" means, "Does it say what I wanted to say?"

For a publisher, "Quality" means, "Does it have a huge market, bigger than anything else like it?"

For a reader, "Quality" means, "Does it satisfy me? Is this what I've been wishing for?"

It sounds like an impossible task for a writer (an originator) to look at the brand new product and judge whether the reader, end-user, will see it as a "Quality" item.

And in a way it is, and in a way it's not that hard because there are a few objective measures of quality in writing.

The writer is half-way-born-editor, just as most editors have some writing in them.

Editors, however, are not publishers. A publisher is someone who is in the business of peddling a product to a market. An editor is in the business of finding or generating product the publisher can peddle at a profit.

We've discussed writing as a business, and you've read many other blogs here and elsewhere about self-publishing, the fastest growing segment of publishing.

But there's something going on at YouTube and on the Web 2.0 sites like it that you need to understand in order to apply the objective measures of quality to your work AT A PROFIT.

This article explains where a lot of the most popular videos on YouTube are coming from, who makes them, and what their profit margin is, and why that profit margin is so slim -- and this article also offers a way for writers and videographers to make a little money on the side, provided they understand this "Quality" issue I'm discussing here.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia

Demand Media is doing what the Dime Novel did for the Wild West. But Demand Media has developed an algorithm to data-mine all the searches people do on google etc. They buy the search terms people put in from the search engine company, then sift and arrange the terms to generate topics of interest to lots of people at any given time.

Then they hire a videographer or writer to do a video or article explaining the topic. They have a web page where they post topics they want material on. They pay almost nothing, but they do pay writers. They're a volume shop.

The videographers and writers doing this work are often professionals who have worked to the extremely high and demanding specifications of the general media.

But now these craftsmen are learning a new way to look at their trade, and it's a lesson all writers, especially e-book or self-published writers and eventually traditionally published writers have to learn.

Traditional publishing is withdrawing support for writers so that publishers expect writers to fund and execute publicity for themselves. So eventually, traditionally published writers will be in the same boat as self-published writers (or vice-versa).

So read that article in Wired Magazine and think about what it says about the higher "quality" videos produced for much more money, and the business model behind that. Think about what this article implies about the shifting parameters in this world, and what it implies about craft mastery, and objective measures of "Quality."

This article in Wired Magazine is actually describing what used to be the difference between the Hardcover or Trade Paperback and the Mass Market paperback. Writers working in Mass Market had much less time to spend rewriting and polishing. Writers working in Hard Cover were expected to spend ten to a hundred times more time but Mass Market paid more. The trick was to get a Hard Cover into a Mass Market edition to get paid for the extra time spent.

With the $$/hour parameter of the business model dominating all your choices, there are two attitudes you might choose from.

A) It's all shlock so why bother trying so hard?

B) What I do is worth $20 so I have to do it three times an hour in order to live. So how can I produce "Quality" without spending time?

In other words, how do you train your art producing subconscious to spit out words already crafted in a high-quality product (or photograph images that you can clean up pretty good in the time allotted?).

How do you perfect SPEED and ACCURACY in craftsmanship?

The answer is simple and rather horrid to contemplate.

Slow, tedious repetition and self-correction, critical analysis of your own work, refusing to accept the first shlock that comes out, until at last that very first effluent from your subconscious is "Quality" crafted. Training subconscious is like training a puppy.

That's how you get to Carnegie Hall - practice, disciplined practice.

But not practicing your errors, practicing doing it right. The company that the Wired Magazine article is talking about might be a great place to do that practice and get paid for it.

Marion Zimmer Bradley once fed her family by writing True Confessions and Astrology articles for a market very much like the one Wired is describing. She rose to edit the Astrology magazine, too. She often said writing short non-fiction made her a better fiction writer.

Remember what I learned from Alma Hill that "Writing Is A Performing Art" -- and this $20/article concept is a perfect illustration of that fact. To do this at a profit a videographer or writer must PERFORM as if on stage before a live audience.

That's what you're practicing for - a performance.

When you practice writing, think of it as rehearsal. Any mistake you make is part of the permanent impression on your audience. So rehearse until you can perform your story flawlessly, in the time allotted.

That's not degrading your ART -- it's perfecting your craft.

Now, exactly what do you do, as a writer, to self-correct and train your craftsmanship to the point where you produce objectively measurable quality at the drop of a hat (or paypal deposit).

The following tests are for the objective part of story writing, the craft itself. Art is a totally different subject, but some of these tests will turn up flaws in the Art as well. If you find a flaw in your Art, you can choose to cover it up with Craft real-quick-n-dirty, or tear the story apart and re-do the Art from scratch. Choose by remembering the $$/hour parameter and the "rehearse until it's smooth" parameter.

7 points to self-test a novel for "quality"

1) PLOT INTEGRITY - check to make sure what I call the "because-line" actually tracks logically. If YOU think it tracks, ask someone you don't know to read it then ask them questions about why things happened in the novel. To FIX missing links, make sure every event happens BECAUSE OF the initial event. Anything with a very tight PLOT (PLOT = BECAUSE LINE) but very little EXPOSITION will sell somewhere (that's from Robert A. Heinlein).

2) CHARACTER MOTIVATION (i.e. the STORY-LINE which is the sequence of emotional states that leads the main character to change) must be clear to the target readership (not just to you). You have to explain WHY people do things in SHOW rather than TELL -- that WHY is inside the chosen plot events. When a character DOES SOMETHING the world responds with a LOGICAL consequence from which the CHARACTER derives a (possibly illogical but human) LESSON which the CHARACTER tests by doing something different "next time" which CAUSES (plot-line) another logical consequence, until the character has learned his/her lesson (theme=lesson learned)

3) When you've got both these lines whole, complete, transparent, accessible to your target reader, and precisely formulated to the genre that the symbolism belongs to, when everything makes complete sense, REDUCE THE WHOLE THING to an outline (chapter-by-chapter, describe what happens, why, and what it means in just 2 or 3 complete sentences -- this is your sales tool for your pitch). If you can't do that reduction, there's something wrong with the structure. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE NOT VIOLATED A TROPE OF YOUR GENRE (that is the real criteria by which Manhattan Agents and Editors work - trope-trope-trope.) Trope is often the cause of the PACING issue that editors will cite when rejecting. Editors don't know what's wrong or how to fix it. They're not writers. That's your job. Readers expect you to do your job. If you don't, they call the work badly written or low quality.

4) Go back and DELETE 15% of the words, cut-cut-cut, use better words, delete all the adjectives and adverbs, and shift to well-chosen words. Then if necessary add-add-add to get the exact length for the genre. Then delete almost all the EXPOSITION. Take what's left and break it up like a sonic beam breaks up a kidney stone. Pulverize the exposition and sprinkle it here and there in LOGICAL sequence. The trick with exposition is to make the reader curious to know the fact you need to impart -- take about 50 pages to build the curiosity -- meanwhile drive up the suspense until the reader just HAS TO KNOW. Then tell them in a dependent clause buried in the middle of something -- use an oblique reference, nothing "on the nose." Make the reader FIGURE OUT what you want to tell them in exposition. That's a dodge for SHOW DON'T TELL -- make the reader think it's their own idea, not yours. If you do the work for them, they don't have any fun even though you do. Writing is selling FUN, which means you have to give away your fun in return for money. So you don't get to tell. You have to work to induce the reader to figure it out.

5) Send it out to test readers you DON'T KNOW and who don't know you personally (not work-shoppers you see every month- actual people who have no stake in stroking your ego -- yes, building a cadre of such folks you have access to is one thing online networking can do best). Get tech experts in fields you have used to check the facts.

6) NOW - after all that, you polish the text, not just running spell check, but going through the whole MS looking for word-substitution typos, bad sentence structure, wordy constructions "Well, the fact of the matter is that he lied" becomes "Well... he lied." Don't use grammar-check, learn grammar.

7) Yet another test reader, one who knows grammar, punctuation, spelling and reads books from your target publisher in your target genre. (each publishing house has a style sheet dictating grammar, spelling, punctuation). That's your final step - no sense polishing words you're going to delete. In hand-written times, that was known as "making a fair copy." On foolscap.

After doing this 7 step self-test on various projects, you will eventually come to where your test readers aren't finding so many things to fix. With repetition, you start producing things that actually are publishable if not of the highest quality on second or even first draft. First draft is the goal in low-paying markets, and that means you must PERFORM your writing at concert pitch. In higher paying markets, you might run the story through these 7 tests several times and keep perfecting on each draft, raising the "quality."

THE ESSENCE OF STORY IS CONFLICT

Even if you meet the self-test criteria above, you can still attain the level of "badly written" IF THERE IS NO APPARENT CONFLICT.

Likewise, you can attain the label "boring" -- or "I couldn't get through it" -- if there is NO COHERENT THEME that is illustrated by the conflict.

A "story" is a sequence sliced out of a character's life wherein they LEARN A LESSON (your theme) by OVERCOMING OBSTACLES or ATTAINING A GOAL (obstacles and goal generate the plot-line).

If you pick the wrong primary character (lead, star or hero), no matter how well you do the objective mechanics in the 7 point checklist, the art fails and your novel is "badly written" or "low quality."

If you pick the right primary character, BUT start at the wrong place in that character's story, the art fails and your novel is "badly written."

"Quality" is actually NOT TASTE -- it is not mysterious.

That's why slush pile readers, screenplay coverage readers, editors, agents, and reviewers can sort a stack of manuscripts, screenplays, ARCs, or published books very quickly and toss out more than half that don't meet the quality standard necessary.

Here's how it's done. (all beginners think this is unfair and won't work, but it is fair and it does work when done professionally)

1) check first page -- any error of craft, toss the MS
2) check p5 -- if the story-development point (beat) is not there, toss.
3) check the MIDDLE. If the high or low EVENT isn't there, toss.
4) check the END. Compare to beginning and middle. If the final image doesn't RESOLVE the conflict set out on pgs 1-5 - toss without reading the whole thing.
5) check the 1/4 and 3/4 points -- if the plot development is correct on those points, then read the whole thing. (a novel is generally 4 "acts" or "movements" like a 1-hour TV episode, so it's quarter-points you look at; but with a screenplay for a feature film, it's usually 3 acts, so the pages for the beats are different, but the principle is the same.

These 5 checks quickly reveal if the writer has violated the TROPE the professional reader is looking for. If the trope the reader wants isn't there, even if the item is high quality of its type, it isn't worth the professional reader's time ($$/Hour remember? Business model rules supreme.)

So what chance does a writer have of getting through this screening process and having a manuscript read by someone who might pay for it?

Getting through those tests is also a learn-able bit of craft.

Focus on the simple fact that these tests are entirely objective.

Matters of taste and art are judged after the objective craft is judged. And according to that article in Wired Magazine, matters of taste and art are currently much less important than they once were.

Note how the article points out that using this computer algorithm to sift search results for what people want, and then providing exactly what they are searching for is more effective than a room full of professional experts creating topics they think people ought to want.

Soon feature films will be marketed that way, I'm sure, maybe novels first. Remember what Rowena Cherry found in that survey of Romance readers -- half want more sex. Survey replaces art.

The MAJORITY AUDIENCE will soon be conditioned to expect this kind of responsiveness from the media. "Quality" means "what I like." And now people are being mass-conditioned to expect their expectations to be met.

When you take their money for a book but betray expectations -- they have no clue what's wrong, so they say "badly written" and don't waste money on that byline again (and warn off all their blog readers).

A lot of editors either fall in that bewildered category, or simply have no time to waste with "writers" who can't write the required trope in the required time. It's not the editor's job to teach you to write. ($$/hour - remember that. Read that Wired Magazine article carefully.)

I have been tackling ways of explaining these parameters of "well written" stories for a couple of years now (not systematically) on this blog.

One thing Marion Zimmer Bradley taught, I have found to be true -- anyone who can write a literate English sentence can sell fiction. A LOT of my students have done so.

And though the article in Wired Magazine points to Demand Media as something "new" -- it actually isn't new from a writer's point of view. Since the commercialization of the printing press, quick-n-dirty production has been a component of the writer's business model. And as I said above, the Dime Novel, the Mass Market paperback, and now today YouTube videos, are all about $$/hour and professionalism.

Professional writing is not a mystery, it's not arbitrary, it's not a secret. It's not even hard except for the part where you take what your artistic subconscious produces and externalize it.

Failing to externalize your art produces what Marion Zimmer Bradley called "self-indulgent" novels. A particular editor might buy it - but readers will call it "badly written" because they don't know where the failure happened.

Externalizing your art is an entirely different process for each writer, it's idiosyncratic, but something you can teach yourself with the 7 point checklist for "Quality" of craft.

E-pub and self-pub is the ONLY route open to those who can do all these other things on the checklist, but fail to externalize their art, de-personlize it, universalize it.

The best way is to train your subconscious in your genre's trope until it produces fiction pre-configured to fit your market.

That's why professional writers warn neo-writers off "workshops" and posting "fanfic" online. You end up rewarding your subconscious for practicing your mistakes, and you train your subconscious to AVOID EXTERNALIZING. That will doom you to a lot of rewriting once you understand which step you have skipped.

"Quality" is often, alas, proportionate to time spent re-doing and perfecting the craft underlying the art. The ingredients of a quality product are often rare (fine olive oil is "virgin" -- the rest of the press is used for something else). Flawed diamonds are not used in the crown jewels, though they work fine for industrial purposes.

Are you in the business of fine art? Or commercial art? Knowing the difference and the difference in business model, could be the real key to success in your life.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/dushau

Google Earth (or the stars, or Mars, or the moon)

2009-10-25T08:37:00.000-04:00

It's easy to be seduced by Research!

When I wrote my first draft of my first alien romance, Forced Mate, I got carried away by the fact that there is (or was, in 1993) still a type of plane just big enough to carry a stretch limousine across the Atlantic, but small enough to take off from an abandoned World War II airbase near Cambridge (UK), and fly below radar all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada.

An amateur pilot mapped out the route for me.

Eventually, I came to see that there was no logical reason why a romantically minded space alien would abduct his heroine from Cambridge in the UK and take her (kicking and screaming) to Nevada, no matter how curious he might be to see how Siegfried and Roy made tigers disappear. Duh! He'd take her to his mothership.

Another researcher told me that the most plausible place for a spaceship (a smallish shuttle) to land in the UK would be on Salisbury Ridge, close to Salisbury Plain (and Stonehenge). I've lost touch with that researcher, unfortunately.

So, now I'm on my own, trying to find Salisbury Ridge. I'm using Google Earth. There's a place called Ridge at Chilmark. Another possible place to hide and lose a spacecraft appears to be in the Nile Clumps... I hate to make things up, if I don't have to do so!

I took a spin on Google Earth. My first destination was Ridge, Chilmark, which does look possible, but is a bit far from Stonehenge. I can zoom and bank to view the terrain with a hawk's eye view or with the perspective of a galloping sauropod... one with poor eyesight.

Seriously, I can see hills, trees, fields, crop circles, overgrown gun emplacements, drone launch pads (circular). If I wish to, I can see churches, pharmacies, ATMs, Holiday Inns, roads, fire hydrants... and more. I can also view photographs taken by tourists.

Sadly, some of the really cool things, such as "pimples" (of the anti-tank kind) that were posted on the Google Earth 3 version, are not on Google Earth 5, but GE5 has more whizz bang stuff and links to Wikipedia.

While virtually scouring the surroundings, looking for places to hide a star-fighter, and enjoying images of stormclouds over Stonehenge --and very useful photos of forks in minor British roads--, I found a fitting backstory for my latest hero. Now to check it out.

There's a Google Earth Community with forums and chats and groups, not to mention a Search function that is everything you'd expect from Google. It's possible to meet a potential source in whatever part of the world interests you. This is too cool!

I daresay, the only reason the CIA hasn't tried to purchase Google (if it hasn't) is that it would be too expensive. And, of course, the CIA like anyone else can use it for free.

Google Earth doesn't stop there. You can look at Mars. It's a separate download. I haven't done that. I doubt I'd find men there, anyway. You can look at the stars, which is a great way to finally get a handle on astronomy and the placement and shapes of the constellations. Finally, there's the Moon and it has flags and icons denoting info dumps, and all sorts of good and useful stuff on its surface.

If you haven't tried it, I heartily recommend it.

Rowena Cherry
Space Snark TM