Hackman-Adams

Linda's New Blog

2009-01-02T11:08:00.000-05:00

Linda's new blog is at: http://garridon.wordpress.com/

Her web site is at: http://linda-adams.com

Sponsoring Groups

2008-07-25T17:59:00.003-04:00

In addition to hosting the writer's group, and charing the McLean Estate Planning Council, I've been up to something else. My church supports a public library, and while zipping through the library one day to get from one end of the building to the other without distrubing the Sanctuary, I saw a book. A very well thumbed book. You know, the soft covers and pages tend to curl a little, and the edges of the pages have a well used look. That kind of very well used book.
It was one of the well known books on Alcoholic Anonymous 12 step methods.
A few days later it stuck in my mental images and I began to wonder just how many AA, ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) and ACDF (Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families) members might be struggling to look normal in the congregation.
After asking around quietly and privately, we're pulling together to see about starting an AA or ACOA group to be hosted at the church.
There has been an interesting quiet level of support for this project.

MEGO

2008-07-24T17:55:00.001-04:00

The MEGO phrase is new to me - it means My Eyes Glaze Over.
It's what a wife told her writer husband when looking at his stuff.
Best way I've ever heard for members of a writer's group to get at the issue when a story isn't saleable. It's a story, yes, and its t'is, t'at, and t'other, and lots of things work, but ...
So try it. Whether its rambling, blah, too much stuff, whatever, just write MEGO in the margin and keep going.

Well Done

2008-06-18T05:59:00.004-04:00

Well done, Linda

The American Independent Writers annual conference was this past weekend where Linda and I ran the Agent's Pitch room. We didn't know just how well we are regarded until an agent asked us out for lunch. I have to write a thank you note for that. Then the conference coordinator sent the following unsoliciated message:
"Dear Emory and Linda,
Thanks so much for all of your amazing hard work! You both were absolutely fabulous in the agent pitch room and we could not have had such a great day without you. Thank you for keeping the agents watered, fed, and entertained all day! Wishing you both a wonderful summer! best, best wishes, Taryn"
Compliments like that are hard to come by. Thank you, Taryn.

The Driven Character

2008-06-12T21:35:00.004-04:00

A good friend put me onto a book most people would never think of picking up, which is Raising Your Spirited Child, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. The cover says it is "a guide for parents whose child is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and energetic." Stubborn, too.
Does this sound like your leading heroine or hero? Just a little, especially for self-justifying going after the bad guys?
Or you?
Early on, this book picks up on the negative labels given to children who just wont calm down, and flips those around. It's the list that drives me to think this has value for how the other characters may describe your hero or heroine. Some examples:
"demanding" can be restated as "holds high standards"
"stubborn" can be restated as "assertive; a willingness to persist in the face of obstacles"
"wild" can be restated as "energetic"
"manipulative" can be restated as "charismatic"
"impatient" can be restated as "compelling"
This is just a sample. In fairness, buy the book to see the list three times longer.

And just maybe you'll find out why you have to be a writer.
When you know that, then you can be unstoppable.

A Website Of My Own

2008-06-10T22:02:00.008-04:00

Whew.
Finally, have a website of my own launched for my law practice
with lots of help from a good friend and marketing coach, Cindy Engquist.

Jurors Go To The Internet

2008-02-06T13:38:00.000-05:00

Two weeks or so ago the foreman of an Oregon jury sent a note out to the judge saying that two members of the jury had violated instructions when they went home and did extensive research on the facts and the law on the internet from their home computer. The note asked what the foreman should do about it.

If you didn't know, judges are supposed to be the conduit on what facts and law that the jury is supposed to see. Who knows whether anything those jurors saw on the Internet was true or applied to Oregon.

While the judge pondered this development, counsel for both sides quickly decided they would rather have the judge decide the whole case and dismiss the jury before any misinformation or bad law got into the case behind counsels' backs.

Lawyers Weekly USA newspaper says this is much more common the lawyers realize.

To help your next thriller or murder story, see how this scene could affect your story with a bizarre plot twist.

Sunday Five - Writing References

2008-01-06T08:47:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd devote today's to some writing resources that I've found useful.

Merriam Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus. They have a Word of the Day feature that's easy to subscribe to, and one of the best features is that you can hear the word pronounced.

A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices. This is worth printing to save for a rainy day. Most of the devices you'll recognize, but there's a few in here that are worth a consideration on any writing project. I would have been interested in the book the author published on the subject, but at $50 a copy, it was a tad on the expensive side.

Grammar Quizzes. This is a great interactive site for brushing on any weak grammar areas.

Quotations Page. Browse quotations like Shakespeare, Einstein, and Winston Churchill.

RhymeZone. Type in a word, and it'll give you back words that rhyme with it. A handy refererence for poets or when trying to do dialogue for a character who rhymes.

(Sorry if there are extra spaces in this. Blogger keeps adding them on its own).

Progress Log

2008-01-05T13:22:00.000-05:00

A progress log is an idea I got from an article in Writer's Digest a couple of months ago. But it was also one of those ideas where I had to change it a little to make it work better for me.

The basic purpose of log is to track writing progress. The author of the article said she used it jot down notes for the next day's work and word count. She also said it must be handwritten in some kind of notebook. That's where she and I went in a different direction. I hate absolutes like that; a lot of people don't realize what works for them doesn't necessarily work for everyone else. If I tried writing any kind of log down in a notebook, I would likely only do it for only one or two weeks and probably lose the notebook at some point.

So ...

Mine's in an Excel spreadsheet. Each month has its own worksheet. There are two columns, one for the date, and one for what was accomplished. Basically, because of it, I write one page a day six days a week (one day is a planned break) so I can put it on the progress log. If I get more, great, but one page is very doable, especially during the uphill climb of starting the book.

A sample is on my Web site. I don't track word counts, but it can probably be customized to calculate that.

Starting the New Year with What Else?

2008-01-02T07:09:00.000-05:00

Books!

From the library, I never even got out of the New Books section:

Bad Luck and Trouble, by Lee Child. This is a good book that goes in an unexpected direction. According to a newspaper article, women were supposed to be attracted to the tough Reicher character. I'm not seeing that myself; the stories are simply good, and this one is definitely in the patriotic zone.

White Night by Jim Butcher. One of the earlier urban fantasy series that I still read. This is the ninth book in the series, and the series hasn't suffered the problems other series have. One of the biggest differences between this and other series is that there is logical character development and real risk taking (things happen to the characters that have repercussions in later books)--but without characters getting constant increases in power/abilities (the character here does have an increase in skill, which does fit).

The Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose. I've read some of her other books, and this one didn't seem like it would be as violent--but she is a very good writer. Edited to add: I just couldn't get past the first couple of pages. Didn't hook me.

The Navigator by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos. I think I'm probably not going to like it. Clive Cussler has one of those series that really ran out of steam long ago. This book is an attempt to go in a different direction, but the problem is that they're the same stories in the same setting with different characters--but nothing significant is different about the characters. They're really kind of the same but with new names.

From the bookstore:

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, an earlier book in the Dresden series that I somehow missed. Does this inspire me to look at his other series? Actually no. That looks more like a traditional fantasy.

Blood Drive by Jeanne C. Stein. I got this one because I liked a book by her I found at the library last week. I was actually surprised because I almost stopped reading it for two reasons: 1) It was in present tense, which I almost never read and 2) the main character is raped in the opening chapter. I put it down, but ended up picking it up again after I put down Wolf's Trap for good. Once I got past the first few chapters, then it got really pretty good. Enough for me to buy this book.

Doing Critiques When You're A Beginner

2008-01-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

Critiques someone else's story is a great way to see the mistakes in one's own story. Sometimes problems in our story aren't obvious until we see someone else do the same thing. Critiques can help put problems in perspective.

But what if you're at the beginning level of writing and don't have a lot of knowledge? I learned this from my days at Toastmasters. Toastmasters is a club where members practice public speaking while other members evaluate them. I think I was evaluating speeches within a few weeks of joining, and of course, I had no idea how to evaluate. How I critique now ultimately developed from those seeds of Toastmasters.

Admittedly, it was hard finding fault with something when I didn't know much--especially when some of the people I was evaluating were a lot more experienced than me. So I started just with what I liked and why. The 'why' is important because that both helps the speaker and also makes the critiquer think about why he liked it. And everyone who writes is (or should be) a reader. If you start reading a book and drop everything else because it hooks you, there's a reason in there. Likewise, if you start reading and stop after the first paragraph, there's a reason for that, too.

Unhelpful Critique: I liked it. It's great.
Helpful Critique: I like it because it was funny. It had me laughing from page one.

After doing a lot of them like this, take a cautious approach and add comments about a few things you're sure of that need work. It might be something simple like flagging a sentence and asking the writer to check the grammar. Or it might be a repetition ("Didn't the story just mention this in the last paragraph?"). After that, you can continue building on that as your comfort level goes.

One of the key things is to understand what you're commenting on and why. Too many beginning writers simply parrot advice they've heard (i.e., "No adverbs") without really understanding the reason for the advice or where the boundaries are. We had a writer in the critique group who had a zero tolerance policy for adverbs. If there was one in an entire chapter, he zeroed in on it and proclaimed it needed to be taken out. He had seen the "rule" and that told him no one should use them at all. His writing was also very flat and had no life to it.
That's where the understanding of what you're commenting comes in. It's not identifying a problem because a rule said it but understanding why it makes the story not work for you.

Unhelpful Critique: Don't use ly words! Take them all out!
Helpful Critique: You may want to check your adverb usage. As I was reading, I started to find that they were distracting me from the story.

Last note here: Always remember that even a critique is a
demonstration of your writing ability. Use it to help yourself improve.

Words to Avoid in 2008

2008-01-01T07:30:00.000-05:00

Lake Superior State Unversity offers up words--or in some cases, phrases--to avoid in 2008. I think some of them ended up on this list because business turned them into fancy buzzwords that didn't mean anything (wordsmithing and organic are examples of this).

Any other phrases?

Sunday Five - New Year's

2007-12-30T08:25:00.000-05:00

Today, the Sunday Five features links appropriately for the coming New Year.

Who will enter 2008 first? A list of the places that will enter New Year's in order.

New Year's Traditions Around the World.

And what would New Year's be without resolutions. Here's the Top Ten. Mine is simply to finish my urban fantasy, get it out to agents, and plan two more.

New Year's is always celebrated by popping a
champagne bottle and drinking a flute of bubbly. The Washington Post featured an article on a travel writer's trip to Champagne in France. Writer trivia: According to Dictionary.com, the word is capitalized when referring to the sparkling white table wine from France, but if its from anywhere else, it's lowercased.

And last but not least, 2008 is the 100th anniversary of the New Year's ball that gets dropped.

(Sorry if there are a lot of spaces betwen the paragraphs. There seems to be a bug with the blogging software. I keep taking the spaces out, and the gremlins make them reappear again).

Researching by TV

2007-12-29T07:42:00.000-05:00

Photo: Washington Monument lost in the fog at 9:00 am.

Years ago, I watched the TV show Scarecrow and Mrs. King. It was set in Washington, DC and has some great stock shots of this area. TV or film, if it's good, can make you feel like you're in the actual place it's set. In fact, it was so good, I wondered if it was shot in DC. At least until I spotted a place that I was familiar with. I lived in Los Angeles at the time, and sure enough, one of the scenes was filmed at a Gemco on Vineland Blvd only a couple miles away from me. Yet, if I relied on a show like that to tell me what Washington, DC was like, I probably would have gotten it wrong--because the director spliced together stock footage with filmed footage.

The same thing goes for other "factual" information. CSI generated such an interest in forensic technology that people came to jury duty feeling like they knew something. Problem was that the show, in the expendiency of time, took shortcuts. News articles reported that lawyers now have to explain to jurors that they're aren't always fingerprints at crime scenes!

Research is only as good as the source material.

Books for the Week

2007-12-26T07:40:00.000-05:00

A trip down to the local library netted me the following books:

The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, by Kim Harrison. I got this merely because it was urban fantasy. Normally I've passed on Harrison's books because she doesn't deliver good stories. The last one I read made me feel like I wasted nearly the entire middle of the book on a dead end. Maybe she'll improve. The titles are cool, which is why I got the other ones.

The Becoming, by Jeanne C. Stein. Urban Fantasy also. I haven't read any of her books yet, so we'll see how this comes out.

Wolf's Trap, by W.D. Gagliania. Urban Fantasy also (if you didn't know, we have a place in D.C. called Wolf Trap). It was a Bran Stoker finalist, so that tells you how much the genres are crossing. Edited to add: This turned out to be serial killer story with a lot of emphasis on shock value. The first couple of chapters were just gross and there wasn't any sense of the fantasy part. It could have been at thriller from the first couple of chapters.

The Lottery, by Patricia Wood. Not something I would ordinarily have even looked at. I picked it up because I've seen the author on some message boards, and she's posted to this blog.

Bones to Ashes, by Kathy Reichs. Thriller. I have mixed feelings about this author. She can write well, but some early annoyances kept me away from her. She has a competent heroine who would go off and do something stupid near the end of the book and not be able to get herself out of the jam (have to be rescued by someone else). That's not an issue in the last two books I read, this one included. But the last two books also never quite gelled for me. When the final answer to the puzzle came--what happened when a childhood friend disappeared--I was disappointed. I got to the end, read it, went "huh?" and had to read again. It still didn't really make sense to me or leave me with satisfication. It is book ten, and it's hard to maintain a series after about seven books unless the author makes major changes--but at the same time has to be be able to not alienate readers.

Sleeping With Fear, by Kay Hooper. A paranormal romance. This is one where the opening hooked me. In fact, since I'm struggling with my opening, I went back to study this, and it helped me with what I needed to do. This is part of an unusual series, unusual because it has a new main character every book, but it's clear it's all part of the same thing. The book's opening is fantastic, but the rest of the book didn't follow suit. It dragged some and was repetitive; two significant issues that were given a lot of attention to were never explained. The author had about four books come out in a relatively short period of time; maybe she ran out of time to clean up some of the problems.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T07:37:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

Sunday Five - Christmas

2007-12-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

Since it's almost Christmas, five links about Christmas:

From Newseum, a copy of the New Sun editoral from September 21, 1897 in response to a child's question about Santa Claus: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

The History of Christmas: From the History Channel.

Christmas Traditions Around the World: See how they celebrate Christmas in places like Italy, Japan, and Norway.

The Legend of the Christmas Stocking: According to this, the Christmas stocking dates back to the 4th Century with a woman's dowry! By the way, there are a couple of other different legends about this.

NORAD Tracks Santa: A typo in a Sears advertisement led to NORAD tracking Santa Claus. Check in Christmas eve to track Santa on the Web site.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas in Connecticut

2007-12-22T08:03:00.000-05:00

One of my character's in my Urban Fantasy is loosely based on actress Barbara Stanwyck--not the woman herself but the types of characters she played. Since most of my experience is watching her in The Big Valley (the first season is on DVD), I thought I would watch some of her movies. Turner Classic Movies was showing Christmas in Connecticut on demand.

The movie was made in 1945, and it's a romantic comedy. It turned out to be a delightful film. Bette Davis was originally asked to do the role, but she turned it down, so Barbara Stanwyck accepted it instead. Stanwyck had just come off an intense role and opted for this lighter, funnier one.

She plays Elizabeth Lane, a writer for a magazine. She writes wonderful articles on how to create recipes, bringing in elements of her life on a farm with a husband and a child. It isn't just about the recipe, but the family side, too. One day, the publisher tells her she's going to host Christmas dinner for a sailor who just got out of the hospital. The publisher is the kind of fellow who controls everyone with the way he talks, and he simply talks over her when she tries to turn it down.

See, she has a small problem ... She's single, lives in apartment, and can't cook. She based the setting on a friend, John, who has a farm, and the recipes come from her uncle Felix, a chef. If the publisher finds out the truth, he'll fire her and her editor. John proposes for the nth time, and this time, fearing she will be out of the job, Elizabeth accepts. Felix decidedly does not approve and spends most of the movie operating behind the scenes to keep this from happening. The actor, S.Z. Sakall, does a wonderful job with this; everytime he appears on camera, he steals the scene.

The plan is for the two to get married before the soldier and publisher show up for Christmas dinner. They even have a loaner baby for the evening. Of course, none of it works out the way it's supposed to, and it's pretty obvious Elizabeth doesn't have a clue about babies. The rest of the evening and the following day are spent in crisis after crisis. The publisher, so focused on telling everyone what to do, thinks that Elizabeth should have a second baby to boost the magazine's circulation.

Of course, the moment Elizabeth meets the sailor, sparks fly, and the inevitable happens by the end of the movie. I enjoyed the humor. The thing that struck me was how much humor in films and TV has changed; now we get R-rated jokes and insult humor, not stories about people where the humor is simply part of that.

My only complaint about the movie was that Christmas really wasn't all that important. They could have taken it out, and we wouldn't have known the difference.

Sad Christmas Story

2007-12-21T16:11:00.000-05:00

I heard this over the news this afternoon, so I looked it up on the Army Times: Dying Solider Promoted Early. It's the kind of thing that reminds us that there are good people out there.

Globalization

2007-12-21T09:22:00.000-05:00

Globalization strikes again. This time it's on liability for what authors write.
A New York court just ruled that a US author can be held liable in a London Court. The full case is available on line at http://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/decisions/dec07/174opn07.pdf
The case is a suit by a Saudi citizen on defamation, libel and slander types of claims for a book published on how terrorism is financed.
What you need to know is that the United States and England in the United Kingdom treat such claims differently.
The better remedy then a book directly on subject would have been to write a popular work of fiction in which the issues to be exposed are woven into the plot. But that would have required a lot of work, development of skills, characterizations, and writing a story that the intended market would like to read. The intended market may not read thriller, but might read something very different, like romance.
To quote my marketing guru's tagline of "saying what your customers want to hear," writers of indignant books need to watch more closely what will attract the people they want to have read their book and their message.

WIW: Book Marketing Workshop

2007-12-20T17:42:00.000-05:00

Boy, it's sure easy to tell that Christmas is only days away. Though I'm on the Do Not Call list, I still get calls from telemarketers anyway--usually at least two or three a day (better than the eight I was getting before DNC). The last two days I haven't had any calls at all.

Below is an upcoming event from Washington Independent Writers:

WIW Pubspeak--Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Program 7:00-9:00 p.m., food and beverage orders from 6:30 p.m.

Bertucci’s--Clarendon
The Market Common
2700-2800 Clarendon Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22201
Wheelchair accessible, call (703) 528-9177
Metro: Clarendon, on the Orange Line

HOW TO MAKE REAL MONEY IN SECOND LIFE: Boost Your Business, Market Your Services, and Sell Your Products in the World’s Hottest Virtual Community (McGraw-Hill, December 2007)

Robert Freedman, senior editor of REALTOR Magazine and past president of the American Society of Business Publication Editors, wrote a book that shows how players, both big and small, have begun to tap the vast business opportunities available in Second Life, the 3-D virtual reality Internet platform that is attracting huge interest in the corporate and non-profit world. The book’s gold mine of practical advice explains how you can apply your real-world business know-how to make a killing in this environment. He is joined by Dave Levinson, CEO of Cranial Tap, a company that develops the 3-D platform facilities for companies and non-profits in Second Life.

For writers, what is most interesting is that people are making money because the Second Life platform is organized as a free market economy using a virtual currency that’s fully convertible to U.S. dollars. So, any money people make selling goods or services can be taken out of the virtual world and converted into real dollars. There are several writer-specific openings:

As a marketing tool. Writers are marketing their books virtually. Some are selling them in virtual bookstores; while others are building gathering places in which their books figure prominently.

As a story generator. Businesses are setting up virtual presences in a big way, so freelancers can pitch stories about these virtual activities for b2b magazines that cover businesses in certain industries. These virtual activities aren’t just about marketing to consumers; they’re also about b2b collaborations (meetings, research, brainstorming)

As a networking tool. Like other social networking sites (Facebook, Linked In, MySpace), Second Life is an interactive community in which people with like interests network. That includes writers.

As a window into the future of the Internet. Second Life has been called by some analysts the new face of the Internet. What they mean by that is the firewall between the World Wide Web and 3-D platforms is gradually coming down, so that the Internet itself will soon be characterized by a 3-D interface. Writers who are ahead of that curve on this will be best positioned to write about the evolution of the Internet as it happens.

Member cost is $10 with advance payment; $15 at the door. Nonmember cost is $15 with advance payment; $20 at the door. Reservations are required. To RSVP, call (202) 775-5150, send e-mail to rsvp@washwriter.org or register online at www.washwriter.org. Please mention the event for which you are responding and your membership status.

Genre Choice

2007-12-19T18:36:00.000-05:00

One of the current influences on my WIP is agent Evan Marshall's book The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing (MP). It's a step-by-step by guide on how to write a book--a real step-by-step guide. Most of the other books talk theory. I got the book because I was trying to figure out how to overcome some of the difficulties years of short story writing has given me with novel writing.

The first thing it gave me was a new genre to write in. I wasn't even sure what I was going to write when I got it, except that I knew I needed to get started on a new probject. I had been writing in thriller--both my first book and my co-written one were thrillers. But the genre changed in the years we were writing it, and it went away from direction the book was in. MP actually addressed that specific issue with some suggestions on how to come up another genre to write in. I started out with a list of pros and cons on several genres:

Thriller:

Pros: Action, fast-paced (I really like action)
Cons: Boys' club, plot-driven (my stories are more character-focused)

One of the biggest changes in thriller is that the action has gotten more grittier and violent. It's hard for me to find a thriller where someone doesn't get their finger cut off or an eye poked out. Most of them are also about crime, and I tend to enjoy the adventure stories better.

Mystery (Cozy):

Pros: Characterization-friendly (cozies in particular for this), woman-friendly
Cons: Little or no action; difficult to plot.

While I like to read mysteries, I often get to the end of the book and don't see how all the pieces fit together to come up with the bad guy. Since I have enough trouble with my plotting skills, this seemed problematic.

Young Adult:

Pros: Action; woman/girl-friendly; characterization friendly
Cons: It's about kids

My uncle, Ernie Rydberg, wrote for children, but I'm not sure that's my niche. While I read YA, the reason is because the books are about girls having adventures and action and the stories are character-driven.

Fantasy:

Pros: Action; woman-friendly; characterization friendly.
Cons: World Building

The world building has ALWAYS been what kept me away from a fantasy. I had a very early idea for a fantasy novel but never did it because creating the world simply was too daunting for me. I'm more interested in creating the people and the story than creating the world--but I know for a lot of writers, part of the fun would be the creation of the world.

This led to Urban Fantasy as my genre choice. Urban Fantasy is a fantasy in a modern setting. Some world building for the fantasy parts, but it has a real setting that I can use to great effect. I can even use modern technology!

Seven Days Until Christmas

2007-12-18T19:25:00.001-05:00

This year everyone seems to be getting into the Christmas lights. There's a house down the street that's completely covered in lights. On the side of the house, done in lights are the words "Santa Stop Here." All that's going to be fun taking down when Christmas is over and it's freezing cold outside. But the house actually looks fantastic.

The weirdest Christmas decoration was one I never saw in person but read about in the newspaper. It was in Washington state at least twelve or thirteen years ago. It was one of those things that probably sounded like a great idea on the first thought, but if they'd thought it over for a few days, they wouldn't have done it. When the family was decorating the lights, they attached a life-like male mannequin to the edge of the roof and made it look like it was a guy who had been hanging Christmas lights and his ladder tipped over. The mannequin was hanging onto the roof for dear life with a ladder on the ground under him.

Well, the neighbors called the fire department thinking a disaster had happened. Fire department came out. So did the police. The police (and this is what was reported in the newspaper, though it doesn't make any sense at all) ARRESTED the mannequin. The family had to go down and get their mannequin out of jail (after being lectured on Christmas pranks).

Anyone else got any strange Christmas decorating stories?

Sunday Five

2007-12-16T10:54:00.001-05:00

Just some random links related to writing:

If you want to brush up on your grammar, Newsroom 101 is a great site to help. It features over 700 questions on grammar in a series of interactive quizzes. Most of them are common mistakes made by journalists.

For improving vocabulary, there's Dictionary.com, with both a dictionary and a thesaurus. They have a word of the day that you can subscribe to.

Check out the ALA's list of most frequently challenged books. It's interesting to see what's on this list. I remember looking through one of these lists at the Fort Lewis library; a lot of the books were challenged because of profanity. But it's very curious because, if anything, there are more commercial books today that use profanity. Why the specific books and not others that do the same thing?

Sometimes it's not always possible to go to another city or state to do research. However, with the Internet, it's easy to do some of it online. This site offers a list of links to major newspapers within the United States. Find a newspaper in your location and subscribe to their daily news in email.

For names for characters, the Social Security Web site provides a list of popular names by decade.

Feldergarb

2007-12-15T18:09:00.000-05:00

One of the letters in the current issue of Romantic Times Magazine struck home for me. The letter writer was a reader of paranormal romance/urban fantasy, and she was complaining about the excessive use of a particular four-letter word in these books.

I've noticed the same trend; nearly all of the urban fantasies I've read use the word quite liberally. The one I'm currently reading has a character utter it every two or three pages. I suppose it's very trendy to use it, but I'm starting to wonder if it's getting used too much.

Please note that I'm not offended by the word itself. I remember seeing Jumping Jack Flash, a Whoopi Goldberg movie, on video and then seeing a seriously edited version of it on a Christian (!) network. The main character spends most of the movie uttering profanity--but it's a part of the character's personality. With all the profanity edited out, the characterization and humor was lost.

But in the urban fantasies I've been reading, the word seems to be used because they can. As I write mine, I constantly debate if I want to use any profanity. There are places where something would fit in with the context, but then I end up leaving it out because I realize that it isn't necessary.

What do you think? Are these books using profanity too much or is it just right?