I have no pets.

I know that I'm supposed to show pictures of my pets here, but I have none. Instead, I will simply cut and paste a story about the last pet that I had. I still miss the little guy.


Dinner For One: Part Twenty-Eight “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” –Mark Twain“Only love lets us see normal things in an extraordinary way.” –Author UnknownAs I write this I’ve turned in the latest rewrites on two rather long short stories, resubmitted a series proposal to my agent and have also spent the better part of the last week working the day job without a break. This is my first day off in a while. As you might have guessed, I don’t really do days off very well. There’s not much to them for me. I do the day job and I work: I stay at home and I work. There are exceptions, of course, but not really that many.  That’s okay. I’ve always been a bit of a workaholic. Okay, maybe not always, but since I met Bonnie at the very least. It’s not that I don’t like having fun. I do. I happen to find the notion of having fun high on my list of things I like, in fact, but I don’t always have the same definitions as a lot of people around me. I genuinely enjoy both the day job and the writing. They both help pay my bills, and as an added bonus, the retail gig at Starbucks lets me get out of the house and meet people. Without that one I’d very likely be a hermit.In the morning I will be burying another pet. One of my very rare exceptions and a constant companion for several years. This time around a very special little fellow whose formal name was “Donnie Ducko.” He was named, rather tongue-in-cheek, by Bonnie after the movie we’d watched about a week before, Donnie Darko. As you might have guessed by the name, he was another duck. He was also raised by us from the time he was one day old or less, and he was a bit unique. His nickname was Little Bit, because, of course, he was just a little bit of fluff when we got him.
While we were at the park one day, handling the feeding and care of Bonnie’s adopted masses and keeping them from the road, a man came up with a small blue bucket and asked if we knew anything about baby ducks. Said bucket contained heavily chlorinated pool water and one very tiny duckling. Bonnie immediately said yes. Long story short, we adopted another duck. In this case he’d been caught on the filter door of a swimming pool that had just been bleached. He was caught on the door. His five siblings were pulled into the filtration system and drowned.
Little Bit was not waterproof. The chlorine from the pool had stripped most of his new-hatched glands and he would never be properly waterproof. He was also agoraphobic, and so was an indoor duck.For around nine years he’s been my constant companion. For the last couple of years we mourned Bonnie together, two bachelors in a house with too many rooms and too much junk.
And he is gone. I have no doubt whatsoever that he is winging his way to Bonnie even as I write this. I will miss him very much and I already miss him enough to leave me feeling a little punch-drunk again.
I am remembering in particular a time about five months before Bonnie passed away. As I have said on more than one occasion I was often astounded by her strength: with everything she was going through she kept her good spirits by and large and she fought hard to keep herself alive.  But on that particular night, just as I was putting Little Bit to bed (in his cage in the bathroom, where he could not get into any mischief) I came out and she had tears in her eyes.
Naturally I asked what was wrong. Bonnie looked at me and shook her head and said, “I just love him so much and it kills me to think that he won’t be around as long as me. I don’t think I could take it if he died.” What could I do or say? I held her and reminded her that he would not have even been alive if not for her, and that whatever time he had in the world was a blessing. She cried a bit more and said she knew she was being silly. I told her she wasn't being silly at all. The heart wants what the heart wants, and I have never run across a person who had a good heart that wished to be without their loved ones in this world.
One more reason not to be angry with Bonnie’s passing, I suppose. She did not have the heartbreak of losing her little boy, the closest she truly ever had to a child to call her own.
When I put him in his bath tonight he was quiet and barely swam around. I knew what was coming. As mentioned previously, you get to understand the signs if you look for them. Within an hour he was gone. Nine years, give or take. More than he’d have had in the outside world. Seven years of bringing Bonnie joy every day, even on the rare occasions when she dreaded life without him.
One last time then, I will cry over the loss of a duck. Foolish man that I am, I opened my heart again. It’s almost a guarantee of pain. A promise of suffering to come. I should know that I suppose. Had I a lick of common sense, I would look at the words of Mark Twain that are posted at the top of this particular essay and I would wish desperately to be sane above and beyond all else. Sanity would be wiser, I think. Sanity would mean not opening my heart, not risking my feelings any longer. Not once again testing the human soul’s capacity for grief.
A duck. A waterfowl. A feathered bird that always made Bonnie happier and yes, made the loss of my wife just a tiny bit more tolerable. If sanity and happiness are an impossible combination, than surely sanity and grief must also be impossible. So surely sanity would be the wiser choice.
But there are still people out there who have already won their way past my defenses. And even if I wanted to shut myself off completely from the world, I don’t genuinely believe that would be the wiser thing to do here.
As I write this, a friend of mine is just leaving the hospital with heart troubles. As I write this, another friend is hours or days away from giving birth. As I write this there are people laughing and crying all over the world. As I write this, life is occurring all around us, and death, too. They still go hand in hand, much as I might currently wish for a different end result.
As I write this I find I am once again crying, and trying to find the damned keys on my keyboard past the tears that are blurring my vision. That’s fairly common when I write these particular articles. They deal, unfortunately, with matters of the heart.
As I write this, the logical part of my mind is telling me I’m an ass for crying over a duck and I am gleefully, insanely, telling my mind exactly where it can go and how little I care what logic has to say.Because as I write this, I can remember the sound of Bonnie calling out “Little Bit!” In a loud, joyous voice after we got back from dialysis and I settled her on the bed to rest, and I can also hear the sound of our house duck lifting his head and calling back to her with excitement.
Bonnie was always happy to see her baby boy. And Little Bit, the silly little duck we rescued from a very certain death, the waterfowl who we took home and raised and kept and fed, who spent part of each night on the bed between us and who liked eating lettuce shreds almost as much as he liked throwing them across the room when he was eating them, he was always happy to see his momma. It may not have been a biological thing, but there was most decidedly love and joy between the two of them.
I’m a romantic. I asked him to tell his momma I said hi and that I love her and miss her.
I suspect she already knows.
It is what it is.
  

Meet the Pets!

Check out the awesome cover for the fourth Sorcerous Moons book!! It releases Tuesday, January 24, but you can preorder at a few retailers. The blurb:

An Enemy Land

Once Princess Oria spun wicked daydreams from the legends of sorceresses kidnapped by the barbarian Destrye. Now, though she’s come willingly, she finds herself in a mirror of the old tales: the king’s foreign trophy of war, starved of magic, surrounded by snowy forest and hostile strangers. But this place has secrets, too—and Oria must learn them quickly if she is to survive.

A Treacherous Court

Instead of the refuge he sought, King Lonen finds his homeland desperate and angry, simmering with distrust of his wife. With open challenge to his rule, he knows he and Oria—the warrior wounded and weak, the sorceress wrung dry of power—must somehow make a display of might. And despite the desire that threatens to undo them both, he still cannot so much as brush her skin.

A Fight for the Future

With war looming and nowhere left to run, Lonen and Oria must use every intrigue and instinct they can devise: to plumb Dru’s mysteries, to protect their people—and to hold fast to each other. Because they know better than any what terrifying trial awaits…

****************

This week on the blog, we're featuring the pets of the SFF Seven.

(Or ferns, in some cases, maybe. Or the neighbor's pet - we shall see!)

Here at Chez Kennedy, we have two semi-famous pet residents. At any rate, pics of my Maine coon cats get more attention than posts about my books a lot of the time.

Not that I'm jealous.

Much.

Okay, I'm not bothered at all because Jackson and Isabel bring light and love into our lives. They're an integral part of my and David's day to day. 

Isabel is the older kitty. In fact, tomorrow, January 23, is her eleventh birthday!! Happy birthday, Isabelly!! I'm not saying I sing to my cats, but if I did, my song for her might be to the tune of "Cinderelly" from the Disney version and goes "Isabelly, Isabelly, she's a beauty, Isabelly." She is, too. She's a blue smoke, and does look blue in some lights. She also has a lovely smile. 

Jackson is our tuxedo boy. He turns five this year in March, and tends to get more press because he's always getting into trouble. Where Isabel is all about Zen grace, Jackson is irrepressible. Just yesterday I found him hanging out by the bouquet of lilies - with orange pollen all over the white of his muzzle. He just HAD to stick his face in the flowers. (Don't worry - he didn't eat any. Neither of them are plant-chewers.)

On the topic of Killing Characters

I'm an author. I realize that there are times when a plot may have more impact if a character dies. Do I like it? No. Have I done it? Yes, once or twice, as far as named characters with whom the reader had spent time during the course of the book. People my main characters loved and respected. (Versus unnamed throngs of bystanders people the reader never met and doesn't know...). In those cases, the story really was better served by the person not living to see the HEA occur. But I made sure these weren't meaningless deaths - they accomplished something important with the sacrifice they made.

Ever since - SPOILER - the first time I read Little Women as a child, and was devastated by the death of Beth, I have an aversion to reading books where beloved characters die. Much less to writing them.

No, I'm not Pollyanna. I know - none better - that beloved heroic people die in real life and sad things happen. Every day in fact. I can even handle the occasional death of a character who's been a part of a series for several books and then meets their fate. Do I like it? No. If I enjoy the book or the series enough, I do keep reading and kinda blot that incident out in my head frankly.

Yeah, by now you've guessed I'm not a Game of Thrones fan. No disrespect intended to those who
are, or to the skills of the author - just not my thing. I'm amazed I hung in there with "The Walking Dead" and "The 100" TV shows...so I guess I do make occasional exceptions in my entertainment choices.(And I admired fellow SFF7 Jeffe's choice regarding Prince Hugh, as she discussed last Sunday in her post. It was a shocking scene, it had impact, it set up lots of key stuff for the later books...and I kinda never liked him all that much anyway. I love her Twelve Kingdom series by the way.)

When I was contemplating this week's topic, I drafted quite a long and detailed explanation in my head for you, explaining why I quite consciously do NOT write books very often where people I/we love end up dying. But you know what? I decided not to go there. Everyone has sad events in their lives. I'm not unique.

What I decided as an author a LONG time ago, was to write stories I wanted to read, full of action and adventure and romance and a very happy ending for the vast majority of my characters. I may not be able to control real life and fend off tragedies for people, but I can damn sure control the events in my own books.

So if you're in the mood for a dark story where characters you've invested in and care about die, you won't be picking up one of my novels, and that's perfectly FINE. I have nothing but respect for authors who write in that style.

It's just not me and I'm happy writing what I write. (Waves from my happy optimistic corner.)

Ding Dong the Dude Is Dead

Weeeeeell. Could last week's meme post have segued any more smoothly into this week's? I don't think it could.

I think I've provide graphic proof that I have no issue with killing of whoever needs killing. Bad guys. Innocents. Not so innocents. Folks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time - few are safe from me. And it's probably a character flaw of mine, but since those deaths happen solely to serve the story, I may be guilty of using death as plot device.

Remember fairytales? Not the ones Disney fed you - the dark and creepy tales the Brothers Grimm actually wrote - where Cinderella's step mother maimed her own daughters to get the glass slipper to fit? The penalty in those old, dark stories is almost always death. There's something ancient and bloodthirsty in the human psyche - something that whispers for the deaths of those who transgress, who keep the hero or heroine from what is rightfully theirs. No wonder genre fiction likes to off the bad guys. On some primitive level, it just feels right.

That's the bad guys sorted, but what about when it's a good guy or gal who bites it? I'll be straight with you here. It's emotional manipulation. Yep. Truth. You are being twisted into giving a crap about a character, you're being led to invest emotionally, and then you're being hauled nose first right into your own fear of death. Have I killed off good guys? Of course. SPOILER ALERT: There are likely to be more who take a dirt nap. Why? Not because I intend for you to work through your existential dread over what happens when you die - though, according the ancient Greeks, that's exactly what you're doing - that's the premise for all those tragedies they wrote. Catharsis - purging emotion. I'm not Greek. I kill off good guys because in every battle, in every crisis, in every situation with high stakes, some people learn the lessons that allow them to survive and some don't. Every action a hero or heroine takes has consequences. Sometimes, those consequences include the deaths of allies. Characters who could have been the heroes of their own stories. These are the deaths I try to be most careful with. I roll my eyes at every movie that murders some dude's family/girlfriend/partner in the first ten minutes (y'know, to motivate him) so I am very careful to not use character death as some kind of goad. That's just my particular peeve. If a character is to die, it needs to be the culmination of that character's arc - NOT a blip on someone else's arc, if you see the difference.

The one thing I can say is that I ended a book on a character's death. The series was later canceled by the publisher (not because of the death!) I'd intended to answer the question of whether that character had actually lived or died in the third book - only I didn't get to do a third book. This was not a happy thing for anyone. So. Killing characters is often necessary. Both from a story standpoint and from a character standpoint. But if there's any ambiguity about the demise, don't leave yourself and your readers hanging unless you're already contracted for the next book.

Perils of the Writer: When Characters Have To Die, When Characters Have to Kill

I'm fortunate so far, in that I've yet to get any significant pushback on killing any characters in my books.  To which I saw: wait for Imposters of Aventil.  

(Because I'm not entirely truthful about no blowback-- there's something there that one of my betas found devastating.)

I tend not to be the "let's be horrible to my characters" kind of writer.  Not out of any specific gentleness-- deaths and serious injury are abound.  But I think you need to make those moments matter, and therefore you can't cheapen it too much with frequency.

Or, rather, you need to set a tone.  If the tone is set at "Horror", then you've got to kill characters left and right.  That's what Horror is supposed to be: a setting where You Will Not Survive is the default that characters have to work out of.  

I write Fantasy Adventure books where the tone is equivalent to, say, the superhero shows on the CW.  Each one has it's own specific rules about killing and death, of course, and as the writer I have to respect that tone.

By which I mean, it's not just about if characters die, it's how my characters approach lethal force.  To continue the CW parallels:

• Veranix in the Thorn books is closest to Arrow, in that using lethal force isn't necessarily an ideal, but it's also not off the table.  Sometimes the situation will-- in Veranix's mind-- render it necessary.  He's out there in life-or-death fights, so he can't hold back in the moment.
• Minox and Satrine in the Maradaine Constabulary are closest to The Flash.  They serve as officers of the law, and so their mandate is a clean arrest and proper justice.  They strive to do things the "right" way, bring someone in alive.  That doesn't mean that lethal force never happens, and they don't struggle with it... but they take it very seriously.  Also, most of the time the people who die in these stories start out dead to begin with.
• Asti, Verci and the rest of the Holver Alley Crew of the Streets of Maradaine are closest to Legends of Tomorrow, in that between their darker pasts and operating outside of the system, they don't hesitate at lethal force when the situation calls for it.  They're anti-heroes who do what they have to.
• Finally, Dayne of the (hopefully) upcoming Maradaine Elite series is very much Supergirl.  That's all I'll say about him for now.

  Hopefully, when a beloved character does get killed (perhaps in Imposters of Aventil, now available for pre-order?), you'll understand the brave and bold choices I've made there.

A reminder that I'll be at ConFusion this weekend, and if you are there and want to get you're hands on an ARC for The Holver Alley Crew, there's a way detailed here.

On Killing Characters

A List of Killed Characters off the Top of my Head:

  Numerous characters from Game of Thrones

  Numerous characters from the Walking Dead

  Spock/Kirk when facing Khan

  Mary on Sherlock

  Jack from Titanic

           **I could go on but I have a post to write. (; 

I consider myself a level-headed, thoughtful person. I believe the Golden Rule is valuable and that the commandments were a pretty good list overall. And yet:

1.) I want Arya or Tyrion or Daenerys or Grayworm or SOMEONE to beat the shit out of Cersei Lannister and cut her vile throat.

2.) I want someone to take out Negan.

Let's compare the difference in the level of vehemence in my two statements above. 

GOT: Cersei is a horrible, conniving person bent on keeping her family in power. She reads people well, anticipates their motives and acts to thwart any effort she sees as a threat. She's not afraid to unleash her vengeance-but there's a trigger beforehand. I feel she deserves to die more than most on the show who have been killed, but I have to admit last season they made me admire her inner strength. The deaths and the violence, in my opinion, feel in line with the time period and the social constructs. This 'realism,' I think, is part of what maintains my emotional investment.

**I'm no expert on the historical eras GRRM draws on for inspiration, so I have to note that WILLING SUSPENSION of DISBELIEF is a factor here.


TWD: Negan is a horrible and manipulative person, but I find him crossing the line into evil because he enjoys setting people up to fear him and to fail in order to have the excuse to hurt, maim or kill them. Watching the Walking Dead with him in it is something that must be akin to watching a snuff film. And while my writer brain understands that he is the embodiment of a level of evil that will force Rick & Co. to accept the risks of loss to up their game, I find I can no longer suspend my disbelief. I was emotionally invested until the season opener. Since then, there seems to be a personal distance. I still root for Rick & Co., but the fire has dissipated.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH WRITING?

KILLING CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE UNDENIABLE IMPACT. 

I can prove it with one word:

HODOR

In my series, I killed a character in FATAL CIRCLE (#3) who I liked so much I've thought of going back and writing her story, set a few decades earlier. I did not intend at the outset to kill her. I had a different plan. But when that moment came, I knew it was right. How did I know? See #3 below.

In books, characters die (much as they do in life) in a few ways:

1.) Random/unforseeable accident/health issue or complication
      {Guy killed by raptor in Jurassic Park}
       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life   ok, maybe not killed by raptor, but you know what I mean

            the aftermath for the survivors will show their character and possibly growth  

2.) Murdered {Abraham, Glenn; Qui-Gon Jinn}

       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life

            it shows how far your villain is willing to go

            the aftermath for the survivors will show their character and possibly growth

            murder and/or revenge continue to be suscessful stories

3.) Self sacrifice  {Kirk/Spock facing Khan; Hodor; Mary from Sherlock; Obi-Wan}

       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life

            it shows how far your hero/ine is willing to go

            it shows how far the cult leader & group are willing to go

            in the aftermath if the hero/ine is/isn't changed by this tells us something

4.) Suicide

       VALID BECAUSE:

            it happens in real life

            in the aftermath if the hero/ine is/isn't changed by this tells us something

If you're killing a character in your story, 

the real question to me...the real root of it is:

            

How does the story change without them?

Unless you're writing an out of sequence time tale, or plan to write prequels, once you kill a character, they are gone. Their impact should not be. Whether their death hurt the hero/ine or whether it was a two-paragraph entry that defines the villain, if it is there it should have meaning beyond that death scene. If it was a beloved character, the impact for your readers will resonate. Make it count!

Die, Damn You, Random & Beloved Characters, Die!

People die in my books all the time. Unnamed characters are pretty much the Red Shirts. Named characters expire in order to develop the plot or protagonist. Once in a while, for great impact and in the third act, a character who has been pivotal to plot and protagonist will die.

Those third act deaths are either the Great Glorious Come Uppance or the Ghastly Gutting of the Soul. 

Yes, I usually know who is going to kick it in the third act from the beginning of the crap draft.  That character owns the burden of pushing the protagonist the hardest. Their death symbolizes the Goal Achieved. Sometimes it's a merciful death or the final sacrifice. Other times it's hubris.

The trick is balancing the deaths. 

Too many and the reader doesn't care; they're inured. Too few and the story rings hollow; after all, the value of life is driven by the inevitability of death.  Not every death has to be gruesome. Not every set up for the dying should be intricate. Not everyone has to die by the antagonist's or the protagonist's hand. Oh, and don't overlook a good maiming; it can deliver equal--or better--emotional resonance.

All that said, if you're reading one my books, someone will die, folks. Usually a lot of someones. 

However, I guarantee you, it'll never be the dog. 

Sometimes They Have To Die

True story. Once upon a time I turned in a manuscript for a novel (FIREWORKS) and when I got the redlines back the editor had scrawled across an entire page of the MS "NOOOOOO! YOU KILLED HIM!!!!" the Him in question was one of the main characters of the book. To say he went out in a blaze of glory would be an understatement of epic scale.

Here's the thing:I liked that character. I genuinely did. he was a nice guy who was doing his very best to keep a fragile peace in the novel. There's the other thing: I needed that peace to end. The best way to do that was to have my peaceful, kind character with the very smallest modicum of power do something very violent and stupid in retaliation to a bad situation. It is a brief moment, a tight and tense moment and given three second to think he wouldn't have done what he did.

But he did. And I knew it was the right thing to do by the reaction from my editor.

From that moment on the body count gets very, very high, I kill off characters like trees lose leaves in autumn. hell. I have knock off scenes where several hundred people die in one stroke. Those scenes are meant to have an impact, of course, but nothing like with the main characters.

Another of my proudest moments was when I introduced a little, old lady in Las Vegas who won a small fortune and rambled on about her plans about how to spend her money, who she was going to help with the cash, gave a backstory that covered her kids, her grandkids and the fragility of their financial existence. and then had one of the characters in the story shove her out of his way as he's running past. The nice, little old lady then got creamed by a bus. Why? Because I had to show EXACTLY how unimportant she was to the bad guy. He didn't even consider her an afterthought.

The editor's response: "JESUS CHRIST, JIM!!" across the page. But i mean it, Thew sole purpose was to make clear how fragile human life can be and how little that particular vampire considered them.

I'm probably into the megadeaths in my novels. I'm okay with that. Watch the news sometime and you'll see how dark the world can be. But my reason for those deaths is because in a lot of my stories the stakes are cosmic, or close enough.

One more example. In one of my novels SMILE NO MORE the man character is a dead, psychopathic clown who quite literally escaped from Hell seeking revenge. After he's had his way with the town of SERENITY FALLS, a trilogy of novels. I sent him off on his own merry adventures. The chapters were broken down thusly: First Scene: A remembrance as told by Cecil Phelps, a moment of his past after he ran away from home and joined the circus. These tales are set roughly fifty years back. That's when Cecil died, you see. Next Scene, a more recent past event as told by Rufo the Clown, the less-than-sane remainder of Cory's soul that comes back and gets revenge. The difference is, now that he'd gotten revenge he's trying to find any shred of his old family. Of course, it's been fifty years..... Finally, a multiple POV third person scene, where all of the rest of the characters have to deal with Rufo the Clown and his desire for knowledge.

In that novel there are several deeply disturbing scenes of violence Most of them happen because someone has annoyed Rufo. In one scene a man rudely hangs up on Rufo. Rufo then violently murders 12 people to make sure that when he sees the man in person, the man understands that Rufo ain't clowning around. Rufo makes the point and gets the information he needs, becasue, as Rufe later tells the cop that is trying to catch him "You're a detective. I'm not. i had to get the information somehow."

The point? Simple: Scene one and scene two are about getting to know Rufo as a person. Getting to understand and sympathize with him. Really, he's a man out of time who is seeking his family in an effort to reconnect with the world. he just happens to be a murderous psychopath and sociopath, too. I needed to make that clear. There are certain people he cares about. The rest of the world is his plaything.

My crowning achievement for the book were the reviews that made it clear I had succeeded. I wanted him to be sympathetic, so that when he committed his atrocities, it was horrifying on an intimate level. It bothered a lot of readers that they actually LIKED him until he committed his crimes. That was what I was after.

Sometimes they have to die. the characters we like the characters we love, the characters we feel for and empathize with. If they don't the story can't go forward properly. Emotional investment. If your readers don't care about the characters, they may as well be watching a you play chess against yourself. If you don't care about the characters, your readers won't either. And sometimes, just sometimes, the reader needs to suffer the deaths with us.