Unpopular Opinions? Welcome to my TED Talk.

1. Insomnia's not so bad.
   No, really! It has its limited, mind-numbing, exhausting uses. I mean, I finally got on Tik-Tok and followed people who slay me. Laughing my ass off without waking my family or peeing my pants in the middle of the night counts as exercise, right?
   RIGHT?
2. Being warm is overrated.
   Those of you not enduring a scorching heatwave right now, hear me out. Moving to a warm climate where a good, hard frost is perishingly rare just ain't all it's cracked up to be. Ask the allergic asthmatic how they know.
3. Firefly.
   I'm team Vivien on this one. It can be problematic as hell - just like most human beings I'd posit. But y'know, it did a lot right from a scripting and conflict standpoint. Mostly, I just remember it as a really good time that ended too soon. Of course, had it come out today, it's possible I'd have liked it less because of the yuck factors associated with it.
   
4. Snakes.
   Don't care. I like 'em. Not in my house necessarily, but I like seeing them. I like knowing they're out there in the world doing snake things. 
5. Old cats are the best.
   
   Sure kittens are cute and adorable, but they grow up. Old cats are opinionated, cranky, eccentric as hell, and set in their ways. They might be stiff with arthritis and their hearing may be gone. They might live for another few weeks or for years - getting more assertive and opinionated each day. But they are the cats who appreciate everything you do for them. They're suckers for a warm lap and a few soft pets. The relationship you've forged with them is settled and established. As their worlds get smaller, you move closer and closer to the center of it.
6. Having your parents live with you can be a win.
   Don't think I'm not aware of the incredible privilege I enjoy - my relationship with my folks is pretty damned good and a lot of people aren't that fortunate. In this case, it's even more privileged than that. I get to have this time with a parent who's becoming frailer and whose world is (like the elderly cat's) getting smaller. When we moved my parents into the house, it was to help them age in place and to never need a nursing home. That's a pretty big gift to give and to get. I hope we can sustain it. Are there hard days? Oh, yeah. But you know what? One of the parents brings me tea at random intervals throughout the day and makes fake ice cream every afternoon. It's the little things.
   
7. Pronouns are no big deal.
   Ask what people prefer. Use the preferred pronouns. Mess it up? Correct yourself. No flailing or apology or groveling necessary. Correct. Move on. Impacted people care that you're trying - though at some point - trying needs to move into habit. Otherwise, affected people may be forgiven for bringing an air horn into the conversation to provide demotivating commentary on being misgendered for the thousandth time.
8. Book lights don't actually light up books.
   I'd like to think this isn't an age thing, but it could totally be an age thing. Those tiny LED book lights that so cleverly clip to your book cover and adjust to illuminate the pages you're reading? Yeah, they don't. Sure, I can see the pages and that there are letters on the pages. But provide enough contrast to actually allow my migraine addled brain and eyes to bring those letters into focus so they can be seen, read, and registered? Not a chance. The book light is enough to keep me from killing a cat or dying because I tripped over a cat in the middle of the night, though. So there is that.

 TikTok comedy anyone?

Chase your own dang goals, Writer-You

This week I can talk about anything I want to, so buckle up. This could get weird. Also personal. There might be swearing. You have been warned.

First, a confession: for the past, oh who knows how long, I've been in a slump. Not just one of those cute temporary "oh golly, I don't know what scene should go here" blocks but a solid half year of writing literally nothing. Of complete writer-brain paralysis. I'm coming out of it, with the help of a therapist, because as is so often the case with these things, a bunch of root causes grew up, choked the crap out of each other, and formed this constricting tangle.

One of those pesky roots was author goals. Or rather, other people's goals for me as an author.

My own goals starting out were pretty simple:

1. Have my partner read something I wrote and say it's good.

2. Have a stranger, someone I've never met and almost definitely am not related to, read my book and like it. 

3. Have enough success (that is, sales) that I don't have to assume a different pen name and start over, which I've heard authors anti-affectionately refer to as "re-branding." Note that I had no idea back then how to define "enough success."

So, my first book came out, and amazingly, #2 happened. Yay! My second book came out, and whoo-boy!  #1 happened as well. (Thank you, Conejo-my-love.)

My third book... er, so here's where things get sticky. Remember how I didn't have numbers for "enough success"? Remember how it was all vague and hand-wavy and trust-everything-will-turn-outish? That was a mistake. Huge. Because instead of defining my own goals--or my own identity, as a writer--I ended up chasing someone else's goal of sufficient numbers, sufficient success. I wanted to be successful enough that my publisher wanted to keep me on, right? 

But how much is that, numbers wise? How do you achieve it? What steps do you take to make that happen?

Problem was I let my success be defined by someone else's goals, without a clear understanding of what those goals were or what they entailed, and then I appropriated all of the guilt and horror when I failed to meet those goals. 

My identity had become dependent upon someone else's estimation of success.

This is a shit way to live, people. It's a worse way to work. However, I had a lovely eureka moment not to long ago where I was whining to the therapist about my failures and she asked me what specific goals I'd failed to achieved, and I told her and she asked me under what circumstances I'd set those goals and I was like... hold up. I didn't make them. They aren't mine. 

I never wanted to be a bestseller. I mean, it wouldn't have sucked, but I personally wasn't disappointed by a lesser splash on the scene. A writing career is a slow-burn love affair, right, not a hookup on page 1. Plus, I got goals number 1 and 2 right out of the gate, so I was good. 

Then therapist -- who is exceptionally wise, which is absolutely what I pay her for -- suggested I think up new ways of defining what Success as a Writer Means for Me. 

And it's this:

1. Success is that moment when I'm writing and my kid is reading over my shoulder and she laughs out loud at one of my jokes. (<--the BEST)

2. Success is writing "The End" on something, regardless of whether I have any intention of selling it ever.

3. Success is seeing hearts--or the odd "fucktacular!"--in the margins of my manuscripts after my critique partners have read a thing.

4. Success is making myself cry when I write a scene that's particularly difficult. Bonus if it ever makes someone else cry.

There will be other goals as I continue on this path through Writing Land. So far, I've gotten 1, 2, and 3 to happen and hope to replicate them. Number 4 eludes me, but it's something that is entirely within my control as a craftsperson and wordflinger.

And that's the trick, I think, to forming an identity as Yeah, I Really Am a Writer, Legit: making my own goals. Defining them clearly. Developing only goals that I have one hundred percent control over--i.e., not sales or reviews or awards. 

Sticking to it, focusing...

...and letting myself, sometimes, when no one else is looking, win.

You don't have to write every day to be a real writer

I took a creative writing class once, several years after I graduated college and had been slogging it in the workforce and dreaming of writing a novel. My teacher in this class said that the way to write a novel is to write 500 words a day. Don't miss a day. Butt in chair, fingers on keyboard. Do the thing. It worked for him, and clearly, you know, if it worked for one person, it'll work for everybody. Right?

Er, except no.

Still, even after I knew it wouldn't work for me, that 500-words-a-day advice was so baked into the aspiring-writer dogma that I didn't dare question it. I kept going to workshop after workshop and reading craft book after craft book -- even Stephen King's canonical On Writing, ffs -- that insisted the only way you can be a legit writer is to set a daily word count goal and meet it. Every. Day.

Hell, the cult of NaNoWriMo is built on this philosophy.

I started to think that because this advice did not work at all for me, I wasn't a real writer. There was surely something wrong with me. I was the only person who failed at NaNoWriMo annually, who joined and chronically and consistently failed at those daily word-count accountability groups. I wrote two books on deadline believing completely that because I didn't draft them in daily, predictable word chunks, I had done them all wrong.

If you can imagine how fun all this failure and self-loathing were, you can also understand how amazing and liberating it was when I found out the write-every-day advice was utter horsepucky.  Here's how it happened: I took a writing productivity course called Write Better Faster, taught by Becca Syme. The course starts out with students taking a series of personality tests -- Myers-Briggs, DISC, and Gallup Strengthsfinder -- and then Becca helps you tweak your process to best fit the way your brain works.

Y'all people, the Eureka hit me so hard I was literally crying.

My highest strength on the Gallup Strengthsfinder is Intellection*. This means that I do a lot of my best creative work when I'm not actually working. So all that time I spend driving around and thinking about my plots and characters and conflicts and trying out what-ifs and never writing them down? IS work time. IS writing time. Even though no words make it onto the doc, I am still working.

I was a writer. I am a writer.

My process just doesn't look like Stephen King's process or the NaNoWriMo bulk-word-vomit process. Slow and steady does not and will never win my race. I'm a think about the book for three months, get a strong handle on the kind of story I want to tell, which characters will best tell that story, what the jump-off conflict is, and how I plan to resolve it by the end. And at that point, when all of that work is complete and lighting up the inside of my skull, I can sit down and burn through a year's worth of accountability-group words and not even count the suckers.

Counting the words, writing every day, scheduling my creative brain, stalls me fatally. Which is why I hate hate HATE that piece of writing advice.

---

* Becca Syme did a whole video about us high-Intellection weirdos. If you think you might be one, I highly recommend taking her classes ultimately, but you can also preview a little of her wisdom here. Full disclosure: I'm in the video and it looks like there's something seriously wrong with my mouth. Not to worry. That was just nerves.

Come play in my vortex (reader group)

Following the accumulated wisdom of How to Be a Writer in Public, I have developed all the things a writer is supposed to have: web site, at least two social media presences, newsletter, public Facebook page, and so on. But the common thread on all those is pushiness: I'm pushing info at folks. Even worse, sometimes I'm just pushing info out into the void, like "buy my book" pollution that nobody's ever going to pick up.

It's hard for authors to get a handle on the value of some of these one-way communication paths. We can count our followers or likes or whatever, but it still feels, to me, very bleak.

My goal in writing has never been to make money or get awards. It has always been to connect with other people, via a story. I can't even tell you how exciting it is to write a thing -- any thing -- when I know for certain that someone is going to read it. Even better when I know someone is looking forward to reading it. Those people make this sometimes dismal job worthwhile.

And I will never meet them by shoving out news items into email inboxes and swiftly flowing Twitter feeds. So I made a place where they could hang out, and I could hang out, and we can talk. People who might have an interest in my stories or worlds can tell me what they like, what they don't, what they would be interested in reading in the future. We exchange recipes and pet pics and memes and fandom and science info.

That place is Viv's Vortex of Readers and Space Vodka. It's not a fan group per se. It's more of a gathering of friends. I think we all know each other, and we welcome new members rarely enough that anybody joining is going to get a lot of attention.

The coolest part of the group so far is that I've noticed friends from one area of my life (for instance, my fandom friends from way back) meeting folks from another area (like my writing friends), and interacting and forming relationships that detach from me completely and grow into awesome things on their own.

I don't run contests in the group. I don't have rules about posting or reviewing or any of that. I make no demands on your time. We're small enough that we don't even have rules about members promoting their own work (though I wouldn't be against that... we should discuss). It's as close to a safe place on the internet as I've found.

You are cordially invited to join.

Ode to fanfiction

In 1997 I attended LoneStarCon2 (which was the nickname-type thing of the WorldCon that was held in San Antonio that year). Not sure what the panel topic was, but one discussion drifted toward where writers get their inspiration, and after lots of experting and panelisting, the panelists asked for audience questions. Intrepidly stupid, I raised my hand and asked what they thought of writing fanfiction as a way to, you know, learn the basics, practice, find your voice.

Bad move, younger-me.

The pros were all a unified voice in declaring the villainy of fanfiction. Terms like "lazy" and "derivative" and "waste of time" were thrown around. I think "illegal" might have been uttered. I slunk off afterward, embarrassed...but undaunted.

See, I was already writing fic when I asked that question, and I was probably hoping for personal validation -- yeah, good start, kid! -- as much as anything. Technically I'd been fanficcing in secret since I was five and wrote a story about Han Solo. It always seemed like a natural thing to do. Like doing football at school and then going home and playing some Madden. Or diligently practicing guitar and also playing Rock Band on the XBox. One source of joy did not, in my mind, nullify the other.

It still doesn't. I still believe writing fanfiction is real writing. I mean, last I checked, writing was about making words into sentences into scenes into stories. Fanficcers absolutely do that.

There. So I'm a proponent.

This week SFF Seven asks what fandoms I'd write for. My answer: any that inspire me to read between the scenes. So far those have included Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Star Wars, Firefly, Heroes, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The X-Files, Pinky and the Brain, Farscape, and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. Some of those fics were novel-length stories. Most were flash-fiction or drabbles (stories told in exactly 100 words). Some were poems -- I experimented with several of the major forms, including sonnets and odes and even limericks. I did character pieces, action-heavy adventures, romances, angsty weird bleak things, incredibly silly things, and plenty of "I bet you can't" challenges. Mostly, I made words into sentences into scenes into stories, and in the process, I learned.

I believe that anything you do with words is an opportunity for learning and growth as a writer. It doesn't matter if the thing you create is sellable or even shareable. In fact, sometimes it's best not to. Share, I mean.

However, despite that sage advice, I'ma break it right now. Here's a  River Tam POV Firefly (post-Serenity, but no spoilers) piece I wrote a really long time ago. I share it here because I'm not ashamed of my fanfiction past and also because this particular piece is about found family and faith in myself, two things fanfiction gave me:

"Thanks From the Inside"

God, these are my thanks,

whispered so no one else will hear

and launched into the vasty Black

like a love-bladed boomerang.

I read it all, you know, the Book,

both paper and sinew,

and understand the origin of things.

It all comes from you, apparently, so here:

Thanks for the genius 

that cushions my solitude;

for the sometime intrusion of others,

who share this strange space;

for the brother who learned to be fearless;

for the thrum of home beneath my feet;

for this family, better than the last;

and for the Captain's fierce love

that keeps us aloft.

Um, it's *all* world-building?

This week, we're talking about time management in general and specifically how much time world-building gets in the schedule versus actual word-making time. And to that I say... uh, I have no idea.

My process is very organic. I write a ton of scenes, read a ton of researchy things, make notes, write dialogue in Sharpie on my arms, listen to a ton of mood music, and eventually the story inhabits my brain and I can't not tell it. I fall in love with the characters. They start talking to me. I do mean things to them. It's a party!

World-building happens somewhere in there. Or maybe everywhere in there. There is no boundary, for me, between world-building and writing. The story is the world is the story is the characters. If I start separating those out as discrete items, I lose the big picture brain denizen Sharpie-written fugue of awesomeness. This is the same reason I can't do those character interview doodads before I write the story.

Because for the story, it doesn't matter that my protagonist has brown eyes or that her society uses a barter system instead of currency or that the planet she lives on is old and has lost its atmosphere... until the story happens. When the story happens, all of those details matter, and cooking them in with the rest takes all of the time.

Sure I stew ideas in my brain before I start typing. I mean, of course I do that. But write it all down, draw a map, and make index cards in advance? Nope. I can't.

And I know this utter truth -- that world-building and story-telling are the same thing at the same time -- because I've tried it the other way. You have no idea how many character interviews and world-map sketches I have lying around. But they never cooked themselves into something tastier. They're all just bland. And nobody wants to read dry, bland author notes when there's no story to go along with them. I mean, ugh, right?

So, my answer: I make the story and the world and the characters at the same time, all the time. Writing? For me?* Is all world-building.


----
* You know, just because the writing process works this way for me does not in any way mean it has to work the same way for you. We are all different. Doing all that pre-planning might really stoke your creative engine, and good for you! But I don't want you to feel bad if you don't have a detailed outline and map of your fantasy realm drawn out and labelled before you write Chapter One. You're okay. And you aren't alone.

Vow to ignore the world more

The main thing I’m planning to do in 2019 is ignore the noise. Used to, in the dark ages before DVR and streaming, when we watched live TV, commercials (or adverts, if you’re across the pond) would blare into the interstices, wresting our attention and spoiling our groove. Nowadays we can avoid those ads, but the persistent low hum of mental friction may be worse: 24-hour news, push notifications on my phone, Twitter, Facebook, Insta all e-mailing me constantly to tell me I’ve missed something important. (To be fair, updates from that lady on Twitter who raises sled dogs and posts puppy pictures is SUPER IMPORTANT and don’t keep me from the sled puppy pics don’t you dare.)

I was exhausted and overwhelmed and didn’t even realize it.

Until August, when the cosmos reminded me of the melody in all the noise. August 15 my mom was in a car crash and broke her neck. She had to wear a halo device for four months and couldn’t do much for herself, which as you can imagine was frustrating and heartbreaking. I took care of her for a while, and then my mother-in-law moved closer and we both focused on helping Mom. Between that and all the usual family responsibilities, I didn’t have time to listen to the noise. I didn’t read social media. I didn’t listen to TV news. I didn’t read headlines. I just existed. I did the thing, went to sleep, woke up, and did the thing some more.

And you know what? Even with all that stress of health crises and family drama and pet angst (for the duration, I had five dogs living at my house, all with special diets and diva personalities), my life was, well, not stressless but ... content? Focused, definitely.

And man did I get shit done.

So that’s my chief resolution in 2019: to hear the signal, not the noise. To read, to write, to focus on the things that are important to my tiny circle and let the rest of the world be as crazy as it wants. I can’t fix the crazy. But maybe, if I do the things I’m meant to do, I can add to the melody and with enough of us trying, we can lift music out of the noise.

P.s. — Mom got her halo off about a week before Christmas and is doing really well. I am so, so grateful to still have her around.

Ye olde holiday boozy chat

Happy happy, everybody! My family contains many Catholic people plus some Jewish, Baptist, pagan, and agnostic folk as well, so winter holidays are a mishmash of we-all-like-each-other-ness, which makes for a heckuva celebration. It does not require adult beverages, but they aren't discouraged either.

Sadly, it hasn't been cold enough here in Austin for my favorite winter cocktail -- hot cocoa, Bailey's, and mini marshmallows -- but we have made do despite. Last year we didn't cocktail but instead drank a ... well, rather a lot of this South American red wine with llamas on the label, but I couldn't find that stuff this year. (Sadness.) We tried this as an alternative:

...which turned out not to be a complete abomination. I mean, if you accept the fact that you're drinking berry juice that's just a touch bitter, it's really okay.

My preferred cocktailish drink is always whiskey sour made with Makers Mark (I'm a cheap date) or Deep Eddy Ruby Red Vodka with something fizzy like Topo Chico. When accomplished bartenders or trusted friends are in charge, I love me a good Old Fashioned.

But you know what the best holiday mix is? A cozy fire, a good board game, some people who respect each other and can behave like adults despite any differences they may have, and time set aside just for each other. Snuggled, not stirred, and served warm with a side of giggles.

Perfect.

Grabby-hands about these 2019 releases

Mostly what I'm looking forward to in 2019 is it not being 2018 anymore. This was a blegh year for me all around, and I am ready to move on.

Looking at these particular things to help with that:

Anthem (video game) should have a demo ready for public consumption on February 1, 2019. I'm excited about this game because the dev studio produced Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and DragonAge, but somewhat less jazzed because this one is looking more combat-centered than story-centered (and also, you can't romance your NPCs the way you could in other BioWare games... booo). So, basically, it's another game chiefly for dudes who enjoy killing their friends. Because they don't have enough entertainment options already. Still, it's BioWare, and their storytelling in the past has been top-notch. I'll give it a shot.

Battle Angel (movie) is coming to theaters for Valentines: February 14, 2019. What happens when you add one part "damn, that was a fun anime," two parts badass director and producer, and cyborgs (transhumanism, for the win), and mix it all together? Dunno, but what a date movie! (pleasedon'tsuckpleasedon'tsuckpleasedon'tsuck.)  Trailer.

Avengers: Endgame (movie) is coming April 26, 2019. "Part of the journey is the end." Yes, I have some theories of how we're gonna fix that snap at the end of Infinity War. The lump is already forming in my throat. Trailer.

Game of Thrones (TV show; HBO) final season begins April, 2019. Winter has come. Let's end this. I have no hope that the book will ever get done, so watching the thing is the next best option. I'm all for Lady Lyanna Mormont taking them all out and sitting her sassy self on the throne. Bring it, Little Queen.

Stranger Things (TV show; Netflix) season 3 is supposed to come out sometime in Summer 2019. I wish they'd be a teensy bit more specific. Vacations to book and camps to register for, you know. Gotta start planning the binge early.

Star Wars: Episode IX (movie) arriving in theaters December 20, 2019. Always my princess, may they not screw up your legacy.

And books? SO MANY. But especially these two debuts:

Jen DeLuca's Well Met (preorderable now, releasing September 3, 2019), which, even though it's not SFF, is set in a Renaissance Faire, which might feel familiar to a lot of folks who live/write/breathe fantasy. Lots of fun Shakespeare jokes and kilts and  jousting and pirates and discussions of how difficult it is to breathe in a corset. I have gotten a peek at this book, and it is so lovely, you guys.

Also, Maxym Martineau's Kingdom of Exiles (releasing June 25, 2019), a fantasy romance billed as Assassin's Creed meets Fantastic Beasts. Yaaasss.

So what about you? Tell me what is guaranteed to make 2019 better than 2018.

Four books I loved in 2018

2018 was a weird year for me personally, and my reading habits reflect that. For the first time in a long time, I read books I just plain wanted to read -- not for market research or contest judging or what-have-you, but merely because I knew this particular thing was going to engage my brain and remove me from real life for a little while. And by and large, my selections did just that. These ones especially:

The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas. I have loved all of Thomas's Lady Sherlock books, but this

one especially rocked. Charlotte Holmes protags in this gloriously feminist in-your-face-Victorian-England way, and I dig it so hard. In my estimation, she is the awesomest Sherlock ever. Fight me, Cumberbatch fans.

The Jane Hawk series by Dean Koontz, starting with The Silent Corner. I binge-read through this series and then pre-ordered the new one coming in May 2019. Jane Hawk y'all. Fear her. But also respect her.

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking. If popular science is your happy thing, this one won't disappoint. Also, the framing -- the book was published posthumously and has a long foreword by a colleague and an epilogue by Hawking's daughter, Lucy--is unexpectedly poignant.

And finally, John Scalzi's second Interdependency book, The Consuming Fire. Gotta confess I had two problems with this read: first, there's a lot of discussion of horrible people doing horrible things to each other, which is not my thing and frustrated me (horribly?); second, someone needs to, as Gwynne Jackson puts it, "de-fuck" this book. Seriously, the swearing is off the charts, and I am not in the least bit a prude when it comes to salty language. So, those two things might have caused some face-palming, but the story is strong and when the actual heroic characters get their hero on, they are such a pleasure to read. Plus, I won't spoil anything, but Scalzi threw some of my all-time-favorite tropes in here, and I luff them they are my own my precious. So yes, I enjoyed this book.

What about you? You got a 2018 read that we should all read?

Sex or violence? Sex definitely. And a free read.

The way I see it, if character arc is something you're shooting for, you have to strip your character down and leave them excruciatingly vulnerable at least once. You can, of course, do that by lobbing cruelties at them. Or you can hook them up.

Now, I don't mind a bit of gore in a book, but I way prefer sex. Writing sex is funner than writing violence, and reading it certainly is.

So my Q&A for this week's topic goes as follows:

Sex in your novels...

1. When do you use it?

When I need the character to be vulnerable, to trust, or to protag (*).

2. How graphic do you get?

It sort of depends on the audience. I've written sweet, euphemistic sex, a smooch and a closed door, balls-deep wildthing sex, and a 12,000-word bondage menage. Each was appropriate for the publisher's line or anthology or market. I build the characters around the required heat level. For instance, I wrote two short stories for Circlet Press(**) anthologies, and those shorts use all the words and body parts. (Man, were they fun.) Wanted & Wired got some extra skin time in revisions, to lean it further into the romance market. So, how graphic do I get, in general? About as graphic as readers can stand.

3. How does it change your character?

Um... a lot? I mean, to be readable, it sort of has to. Nobody wants to read an ending and then a tacked-on gratuitous bang. We want all the bangs to be part of the story, either building or breaking a character or a relationship. So, I guess the characters change by being either built or broken.

Finally, if you've read all the way through my advice-giving and authority-pretending, you deserve a cookie. How about a free read cookie? Here's a link to my very explicit but also romantic epic fantasy quest erotica story, "Orin's Strand." It's only 8k words. You have time.

--

* Having your character make decisions, have agency, and be proactive (i.e., "protagging") is crucial in a story. Books about people reacting to everything aren't fun. So if you write sex to get your character vulnerable, you must deal with consent. If you're creating vulnerability through cruelty, sex without consent is an option. And it's a gross one, and I don't want to read that book. If you're creating vulnerability through trust, bring on the sex and the enthusiastic consent. If you click that link for my free read, you'll get a better idea of what I mean by protagging through sex.

** Circlet Press is a speculative fiction erotica publisher run by the amazing Cecilia Tan. Circlet was supportive of LGBTQ stories before the rest of the world caught on, and publishing with them has been a lovely experience. You don't need an agent to submit there, so if you're just starting out and looking to make contacts and hone your skills--not necessarily to make a lot of money--I recommend looking into them. If you're searching for some top-quality erotica to read, they're also a fantastic source.

5 Christmas Books to Read Nightly

Eep. Just had a bout of mild panic because it's twenty-seven days to Christmas and I couldn't find the books. The important books. The books we read almost nightly but definitely eleventy billion times at least in this interstice between Thanksgiving and Go Day. What in the world did I do with The Books?!

Outside of house is festively bedazzled. Tree is lit (in the lighting sense, though we also do have nog). Mantle is strung with Yoda lights and littered with figurines of mice and chihuahuas in winter clothing. (I have no idea why this is my thing, but this is my thing.)

But the books are the most important part. Because the books are family. We read them together, and recite the funny parts and make up silly voices and ... aha! There they are. Downstairs by the board games cabinet. Well of course.

Now, which books? Oh, right. These ones:

1. The de rigueur no-movie-will-ever-be-as-good-as-the-original seasonal classic.

2. For the emotional heft and modern sensibility, and also because we are a pet-centered family:

 3. Read before 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. It adds context. Also muy relatable if you've ever had the flu on Go Day. Which we have. As a family. Twice. Good times.

4. Of all the versions, I like this one with Mary Engelbreit's illustrations best. Good old Santa, creepy as ever. And yet we all still keep letting him invade our homes in the middle of the night and eat our cookies. We are a weird people.

5. And this one, to cap off the night of readings. Berk Breathed is mostly known as the writer of the long-running Bloom County comic strip, but he also turned out this gem of a book. If you haven't read it, you need to. I don't care what you believe, the message in this book will resonate. Also, that last page. *grin*

So THANK YOU to SFF Seven for putting the fire under my feet to locate these books before The People come home from work and school and such and settle down for a warm winter's read. When they ask tonight, I will be prepared.

Now to practice my silly voices.

Plz read these new releases cuz I can't

Dude! There is a lot of brand-new (very probably) excellent stuff out in the land of speculative fiction. But because I'm spending most of my time tending to a sick family member (she's recovering, and she's gonna be okay; this is just time-consuming for all of us), I haven't really been able to read much lately. Here are four books I've bought in the last month and am *itching* to read but can't, so click 'em and let me know what you think:

Cara Bristol's latest Intergalactic Dating Agency SFR, Caid: Dakonian Alien Mail Order Brides #3, released November 8 and is sitting purchased but unopened on my Kindle. Cara started out writing erotic spanking stories but bloomed on the science fiction romance scene with Breeder, which is awesome and the first book I rec to folks who have read a lot of romance and are considering a jaunt on the spec-fic side. She wields language with sophistication and ease, pays a lot of attention to details in her worldbuilding, and bundles it all up with charm. I have no doubt this one will be as fun as her previous books.

Chanta Rand's brand-new Androids and Anarchy (Intergalactic Huntress Book 1) looks super tasty. I mean, intergalactic bounty hunter facing mutants and rebellions and an evil aristocrat villain and she is a badass gal with superpowers? Yeah, this one presses all my buy-this buttons. Sadly it has no reviews yet, so please, if you do read it, put some stars upon thars.

I've been reading Rebecca Royce for years. She started out writing shifters, but she's gone in several fun directions since, including SFR. Her latest co-written piece with Ripley Prosperpina, Lightning Strikes, is a post-apocalyptic zombie reverse-harem adventure, and I have no idea how Rebecca and Ripley have made that work, but they are both accomplished writers and I trust I'm gonna like this one.

And that's about all.. Oh, wait. I actually have read one new release in the last few weeks. Well, okay, I listened to it. Does that count? John Scalzi's The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency Book 2) came out back in October but was released simultaneously in audiobook, so I spent an Audible credit on it and enjoyed the hell out of it. It's short, especially considering the price tag on the ebook (whoa), but it's crammed with tropes I adore, excellent pacing, and that signature Scalzi irreverence, so I'd rec it, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it broke records for Most F-bombs Ever in a Book Not Actually About Fing. Or maybe they were just more noticeable in the audiobook? *shrug* Fair warning for pottymouthness.

Anyhow, that's my recent-release reading to-read list. I could tell you loads of others in genres that aren't spec-fic, but here on SFF Seven, if we do nothing else ever, we FOCUS!

(Which is totally why I whiffed on my Wednesday post the week before last. Not that you noticed, probably/hopefully. But still: sorry 'bout that.)

Writer brain: the perpetual machine

“Even when you’re not writing, you’re writing.” That’s our topic this week.

Thing is, I’m not always writing. But I am always writer-braining (totally is a verb).

Example: This morning over coffee, hubs and I were talking about the new Stephen Hawking book and how in it the (sadly, late) professor laments the current glut of published research. Fifty years ago, you could read everything that had been published on a slice of science. Now, though, even if you narrow your field strictly, it is impossible to consume every scientific paper published on the topic. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day… for a human person.

And just that easy, I slip into writer-brain/questions mode: For a computer, though, what if it was possible to process every bit of information, to hold it all in sacred data storage and constantly analyze it? How long would it take the computer to realize it knows more than the humans? I mean, if it was doing deep learning, I’d give us, what, ten years? Twenty? Maybe not even that long.

Would the (omniscient, if not omnipotent) computer, knowing also everything of human psychology research, be kind to us? Or would it judge us? Or would it just let us run on our little hamster wheels while it—the real intelligent species now—went on and took over the world and colonized space because clearly we are too limited a creation to participate in the Big Projects.

What if there is already a computer right now doing the Big Projects while we run furiously on our political WTFery and social media and vapid entertainment hamster wheels?

And poof, there’s a story seed. Right there in my brain.

I will never write that story. There are literally hundreds of similar “what if…?” files on my computer and in my Things Of Coolness spreadsheet. They might inform pieces of the stories I write someday, but mostly they are the cogworks that make up the squeaky, rusty, slow-moving machinery of my writer brain.

I bet you have those, too. Yours may be shinier.

The point is that you can take a writer’s fingers off the keyboard, but you can’t really stop a stop her brain from iterating. So let it.

The book that scared the crud outta me

Once upon an autumn, I was a lone weirdo in a gothic Texas family. Like, I read a lot of Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkien, and everybody else in my family went bow-hunting and two-stepping and listened to Merle Haggard. My parents clearly didn't know how to shop for me, and my newspaper route paid crap money, so I supplied my book habit at yard sales and the public library five-bucks-for-everything-you-can-fit-into-a-paper-sack sale.

I wasn't old enough to stay at home on the long weekends when the family all went deer hunting, so I got hauled along to leases out west of San Antonio, usually some rocky windswept ranch, usually to murder wildlife, which was very much not my thing.

On one such trip, I brought along one of those library-sale paper sacks full of treasures books.

One of those books was called The Amityville Horror.

The rest of the camp went out on a hunt right before twilight, because deer come out to forage at sundown, and that's apparently the best time to kill them. If someone "got" a deer--i.e., shot one-- they had to wait until the hunt was over to go out and find the unlucky creature and, if it wasn't dead yet, put it out of its misery. Sometimes the search-and-finish could last for hours, long after dark.

I almost always stayed behind in the camper. And read books. It was glorious.

Except that one time. With that one book. 

I didn't know it then, but the evening hunt was pretty successful. Several deer were "got," and several searches ensued. I was alone in the camp with only the wind for company for miles and miles of dark Texas night. Just me and my delicious readable.

I considered myself fairly brave as far as books went. At least, I hadn't read one that stopped me from reading others. King and Koontz and Poe and Susan Cooper, not to mention all those collections of ghost ship stories and unsolved mysteries, had inured me to losing my shit over a book. I mean, they were just books. Just in my mind. All made up, fantasy stuff. 

Right?

So I snuggled down in a sleeping bag, cracked open The Amityville Horror, and read blithely, bravely, decadently.

For those who haven't read the book or seen the movie (movies?) this starts off innocently enough. Normalish family moves into a house. It's a nice house, kind of fancy even, with a boat house. But (SPOILERS!) it's haunted as hell, and freaky stuff starts happening, and the dad goes a little crazy, and suddenly there's a demon pig in a rocking chair up in the attic. 

Which was when something scratched on the side of the camper. 

I kid you not. Something was out there. Scratching. Low, near the ground. Right below my camper window. A sound that was not the wind. It was close.

Scratch, scratch.

Remember, every human person was out in the night wilderness killing Bambi.

So what was scratching out there?

I sure as hell wasn't going to go outside and investigate. And I could not, could not just keep reading.

Demon. Pig.

That was totally a demon pig outside.

I closed that book, shoved it way, way down the sleeping bag, and huddled there in the camper, listening. Terrified. For hours.

Family got back eventually, skinned their kills, and iced down the meat, and then we all went to bed. Next morning, after I slept not at all, I woke up and checked out the side of the camper.

There were scratches on the side. True fact.

Never did finish that book.

(Happy Halloween, y'all.)

The perils of point of view

When I was chiefly a reader and not interested in selling my scribbles, I’d buy a book because it looked fun or was recommended to me, and other than broad categories like romance or fantasy or whatever a book store considered “general fiction,” I didn’t pay attention to its market. I also didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to whether a book was written in first-person, second-person, or third-person point of view. (Aside: If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I reference “point of view” in terms of writing craft, Jeffe Kennedy did a fab run-down earlier this week.) Now that I am trying to sell my stories to other folks, I pay a lot more attention to point of view, and I’ve discovered a few patterns. Here are some quick answers to "which point of view do I use for my story?" quandaries.

Lots of characters with thoughts? You want to use third person.

In books where readers get the interior thoughts of more than two characters, writers tend to use the third-person point of view. Think of, for instance George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series: so, so many characters, and a large number of them are point-of-view characters (i.e., we experience the story through their “eyes” and thoughts). If that epic were in first person, I would be perpetually confused.

Note that I’m careful here to recommend third-person specifically for stories that feature the interior thoughts of more than two characters. I did not say fantasy as a whole. Some fantasy writers manage to tell stories using first-person and make it not at all confusing. However, the successful fantasies that do this typically focus narrowly on one character, sometimes two. Amanda Bouchet’s recent Kingmaker series, for instance, is written in first person, but since we are only given and are only interested in the main character Cat’s point of view, the first-person POV works well.

Main character in the young-adult(ish) range? First person.

YA novels, regardless of their genre, tend to be written in first person. If you read a few, you can see why this POV choice aids the purpose of a YA book. Because a good YA book is about one character’s attempt to grapple with relevance in a world that keeps telling them “you don’t matter yet,” the narrative must of course be all in that character’s head. It must of course be suffused with all the agony and frustration and hope and striving that is typical of not-quite-adult-ness. First-person point of view allows angst-wallowing in a way that no other POV choice can.

Hint: the POV recommendation is applicable to character age and also reader age. If your target audience --  your market – is young adult, first-person POV is a good choice.

Similarly, if your characters are recent teens and now just barely adults – a niche that was until recently called “new adult” – I’d stick with first-person POV. First-person books featuring 22-year-olds in their first post-college job yet still making iffy decisions tend to sell a lot better than third-person omniscient books covering similar topics. Somehow, if the character does a boneheaded thing blithely , optimistically, and with no thought of possible consequences, it feels like a grand adventure rather than a poor life choice. Plus, if such an episode were written in third person, there’s always a danger it might sound judgy.

Are sensory details super important to the story? First person.

I’m going to disagree with my awesome co-SFFSevener, K.A. Krantz, and say that if you’re writing erotica or erotic romance, first-person POV is the way to go. Most erotic stories are written in the first person, so it’s a reader expectation. Also, in erotica, if you’re doing it right, the sensory details are front and center. In a story that is about the character completing his or her arc by having sexual adventures, nothing matters more than how that character feels. I mean both internal thought feeling and also satin-sheets, chocolate-sauce, feather-tipped leather feeling. Do I need to go on?

Often paranormal and urban fantasy stories are written in first person, and again, I think that sensory (or in this case, extrasensory) details are central to those sorts of stories.

Trying to sound literary or experimenting with an unreliable narrator? Either first or second might be fun.

Most of the time, second-person POV is only useful for experimental literary fiction or choose-your-own-adventure stories. Note that the latter are not exclusively for kids. A site called Silkwords used to publish choose-your-own-adventure erotica and erotic romance stories, and they were definitely not for kids.

Do I have to pick just one?

Er… technically no? One of my favorite young adult books, The Farm by Emily McKay, uses first person for the main character and her sister and third person for Carter, whose loyalty and good intentions we are supposed to doubt at the beginning. Although using both point-of-view choices works brilliantly for this story, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for a writer with less experience and storytelling command to try. So, although no, technically you don’t have to pick just one POV, please do realize that picking two complicates your work. A lot.

What about you, Viv?

Oh right. My opinion. Seriously, this is necessary? The truth is, I’m an easy read and have favorites using all kinds of narrative choices. However, though I won’t throw a book against a wall just because it’s, say, in first-person present, most of my DNFs (books I did not finish reading) tend to be told in first-person from the point of view of a character I can’t root for. Sometimes that character is too whiny, too certain he’s funny when he’s not really, too oblivious, or too self-absorbed. Sometimes I just can’t bear to be in the head of that person for 300 pages.

Bottom line, though, think about this before you start writing, make a deliberate choice taking all market and reader and genre expectation variables into consideration, and then tell me your story. If you tell it well enough, I won’t even stop to worry about your POV choice.

Manifesto of a former grammarista

Folk who know me best also know I used to be a copy editor at a book publisher. I mean, for like a decade. And then I managed copy editors. And then I wrote style guides. That sort of work history will scar a girl, and even to this day, despite my best efforts at self-improvement, parts of my brain remain a bit proscriptive. If you could make Strunk & White's Elements of Style into a verb, that would be my brain ("Oh, don't mind me, I'm just over here StrunkNWhiting").

So, even though I'd never harp on these abominations to your face (we don't do this! we never do this!), here is what those brain-parts are screaming as I read your manuscript:

1. Dangling or misplaced modifiers help no one, ever. Unfortunately, I see a bunch of these, even in published books. Educate yourself on these things and avoid them. Please, please, please.

2. Yes, character names ending in S are fun (I love me a Rhys, an Alexis, a Lucius, maybe a...Salacious?). However! Be aware that there are two legit ways of making possessives of a singular noun ending in S: one way has you add an apostrophe+S, and with the other you add just the apostrophe. It's important that you know going in that whichever method you choose, half of your readers will be completely and totally convinced you're doing it wrong. So, just stick with boring non-ending-in-S names, yeah? Also, don't harangue people who are choosing the other method. They're okay, too.

3. There can be only one...space after a period. If you are putting two spaces, congratulations for passing typing in high school all those years ago. Also, welcome to variable-width fonts and the twenty-first century. (Aside: This is the topic at SFF Seven this week. We are seriously discussing whether there should be one space or two. I love this blog so much!)

4. I know you really want to use a semicolon, but restrain yourself. Don't do it. Even if you think you know how to use a semicolon, sadly, you're probably doing it wrong.

Oh, now that you've got me rolling, I can think of SO MANY peeves, things that just make me crazy: sentence fragments with no subjects and a whole buncha -ing phrases, homonym misuses, pronouns that refer to the wrong thing or nothing at all, word repeats, run-on sentences... yikes!PANIC!JUDGMENT!

*in through your nose, then out through pursed lips*

You know what, though? Don't mind me and my ridiculous, proscriptive (adj, StrunkNWhiteous?) brain. Tell your story. Tell the hell out of it. If you tell me a good enough story, I won't even pick nits.

Letter to my pre-debut self

Dear Me on April 3, 2017,

Tomorrow your first book will be available for sale. Go you, kiddo. You'll get flowers from Christa, and Sloane will drive you all over town from B&N to B&N so you can sign all the paperbacks in Austin. Your writer friends will text and tweet congratulations. Your family will take you out for dinner and pretend you're famous. The whole experience will be a blur of wonder, a party, the sweet fruit of years of hope and work and passion.

Don't look at rankings. Don't look at reviews. Don't think about the next day or the next book or the next anything. Just enjoy the moment. Enjoy the people who make the moment happen.

And when you wake up Wednesday morning, keep on not looking, not at any of it. Because guess what? Nothing will have changed. You'll still be a nobody in the giant soup of writerly folk. You'll still have to work, to struggle, to hope, to fail. You will still have exactly what you had going into this: some amazing and supportive friends and family and a spark that makes you want to tell stories.

Basically what I'm saying is that the debut changes nothing. It's neither an ending nor a beginning -- you've been writing a long time, and it's not like you're going to stop anytime soon. The debut -- the day, the year, the book -- is a nice marker on a longer, bigger, more complicated path.

Enjoy what you can, and keep your expectations to a minimum.

And most of all, just write the next damn book.

So much love,
Me of 2018

p.s. -- Did you guys see that Jeffe Kennedy has a new book out this week? And Marshall Ryan Maresca had one come out last week. SFF Seven is killing it, people. Both are fantasy writers, and I think we could all use a bit of escape from the real world right now.

Do the magic, write the book

I always wanted to write a book. Yet I didn't succeed in doing so until I was almost 40.

Which was totally coincidence and not at all biological. I mean, there's no verifiable link between crackly kneecaps, elongated nose hairs, and understanding of story structure. It's not like I woke up one day, realized my kids were no longer climbing the furniture and watching Dora the Explorer and thought, "Today is the day I will finally write a book, because oh look I finally have scads of time!"

Nope. I'd been writing diligently since childhood, and doing it every day and producing a certain number of words and which-hunting and search-and-destroying the verb "to be" wasn't making me a better storyteller.

Between the ages of 5 and 40, I wrote dozens of [terrible] short stories and possibly hundreds of [even terribler] beginnings of books that never got finished. All that practice was not completely useless. It did yield mad sentence-crafting skills. Eventually I could even produce a fairly decent scene. But when it came to putting together a coherent narrative longer than 10k words, I was worse than incompetent. I was clueless, just a gal consumed by want-to, staring at a wall of thou-shalt-never.

Two things helped me over that wall:

1. I joined my local chapter of Romance Writers of America and attended all their talks and workshops and read the craft books my chapter mates recommended.

2. I found a private ecosystem of critique partners, beta readers, and cheerleaders. 

The Austin RWA built out my resources, but my circle of CPs was the pixie dust. The magic. I have three critique partners, plus a handful of awesome beta readers who are almost CPish in that they know how to offer feedback that is both helpful and not soul-killing. We all write in different subgenres, sometimes in different genres entirely. We are all on a similar level of experience and commitment. We speak this weird story-structure nerd language. We respect each other and lean on each other and support each other. We do not compete. We build up.

At first all I could offer this community was the aforementioned mad sentence-making skills, but the more I learned the more comfortable I got with the process, both mine and theirs.

At this point, we have all completed novel-length books. Some of us have sold those books.

So if you were to come to me and say -- with some sincerity, mind, not just making idle chitchat -- that you've "always wanted to write a book," I would lead you to the head of this path:

1. Find your tribe.
2. Find your crit partners.
3. Read a shitload of craft books.
4. Forget the details of those craft books, but remember the essence of structure.
5. Find your process.
6. Do the magic.

And then I'd applaud like hell when you climbed the wall.

When life drowns the writing

Hoh boy. This week on SFF Seven we're talking about how to stay motivated when life "spirals downward" (<-- poetic way of putting it, yes?).

If you have suggestions, please do feel free to pass them along.

Truth is, I'm a bit under water right now -- family health emergencies, pre-teen drama, pet emergencies, home repair problems, kind of you name it and I'm dealing with it. (You don't want to hear the litany of despair. You really don't.) It would be amazing if I could say the writing was keeping me going or even that I have been able to write whole stories despite.

But it's not and I haven't.

I wake up in the morning with stories in my brain. Sometimes I scribble in the notebook beside my bed. Sometimes I thumb-type dialogue on my phone while I'm waiting in a doctor's office or hospital room or vet clinic or school pick-up line. Back when the words were coming and life was being kind, I got used to assigning a multi-hour stack of time for writing, during which I could deep dive into the story, but nowadays I'm having to train myself to take stories piecemeal, scribbles here and emailed snippets there. It's like I'm rewiring the whole structure of how I work.

And honestly? If this goes well, if I manage to train myself to write books on the run like this, that will be a perfect kind of magic.

Because I don't want to make writing the center point of my universe. My family is already there, I love them, and I have made promises to them. Comparatively, I've promised writing very little -- I have no contracts or deadlines and very few expectant readers, and I can choose either to be depressed about that lack or to be grateful I don't have yet another competing commitment.

I choose to be grateful. Because managing the spiral is about understanding your priorities, and right now, writing is not my priority.