Three Tips for Staying Grounded in a Crazy World

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to 2018!

I feel confident in putting this as a fait accompli, even though I'm writing this midday on 12/31/17 because I imagine most of you will be reading this in 2018, or as near to it as functionally doesn't matter. I'm also confident that 2018 will arrive, which hasn't always been the case.

It's funny looking back at the turn of the millennium and thinking the whole banking/computer change from a two-digit year to a four-digit year was the worst thing that could happen... I look forward to the day when we can look back, shake our heads at the 2016 election, and trade our "where were you when you found out Trump was actually elected?" stories.

Until then, we do what we can to resist an increasingly authoritarian regime while still keeping our sanity. Thus, my take on this week's topic: Keeping Your Sanity: 3 Things You Do To Stay Balanced/Grounded/In Control.

While resistance is critical, so is keeping our sanity. In fact, it's important to keep grounded, in balance, and at peace with ourselves, in order to resist from a foundation of strength. There's a reason sleep-deprivation is a tried-and-true brainwashing technique: because exhaustion lowers our defenses. Being healthy and at peace is key to everything else we wish to accomplish.

I've counseled more than one friend in the following. One was having nightmares about being in a nuclear war with North Korea. Another had become depressed and anxious with all the political changes and programs being cut and destroyed entirely. So, here are three ways I keep myself balanced and grounded.

Stay Away from the News

Seriously. This is the first thing I told my friends above. I truly believe part of the reason things seem so awful is the sensationalistic news media and the echo chamber of social media. I know a lot of people regard it as their responsibility to "stay informed." There are three problems here:

1. There are major forces wanting to control what we're informed of
2. News shows on TV are about entertainment. They skew to shocking and exciting content
3. This has been exacerbated by click-bait headlines and the availability of news on our phones, etc. 

The news on TV and on social media is, by its very nature, sensationalized. Choose a reliable newspaper to read. If you want news from Twitter, carefully choose who you follow for it. Look for reliable sources. I also give you permission - *waves permission wand* - not to look at all. (See Make Your Life a Paradise.) At the very least, stop reading articles on your phone to kill time. That's setting yourself up for the most sensationalized, most upsetting news without deep understanding or context. Remember when we used to see waiting rooms as an opportunity to read books? See next.

Deep Read*

That's my mom in the pic above. We spent some time over Christmas just sitting in the sun and reading. She has a lovely patio for it. But now that I'm home, I'm spending time in my favorite armchair, reading by the fire. The benefits of deep reading have been well documented. (I'm using it here to mean reading a narrative, as opposed to reading Facebook posts, Tweets, etc. I really don't think reading on a paper book vs. an ereader makes a difference, so long as I'm reading without interruption.) It's more than me being an author and being a fan of reading in general. (Buy my book!) Reading is relaxing, restorative, hones the intellect, and gives us time away from all the voices. It's also a skill that's easy to lose in our current culture of So Many Things shrieking for a piece of our attention.

I've been reading Robin Hobbs' SHIP OF MAGIC, which is *long* - 880 pages in paperback, though I'm reading in digital. At first I felt impatient with the slow, elaborate pace. As I've settled in, I'm remembering how much I loved fat books in my youth. The more pages, the better, because I could enjoy them longer. I don't have data to back it up, but I'm pretty confident in saying that my reading declined immensely with my increasing involvement with social media. Time I once spent buried in a book, I began to spend scrolling Facebook and Twitter.

Recently I've made several changes. I've removed Facebook and Twitter notifications from my phone. I've taken them both off my array of tabs to display when I open my web browser.

(I realize this is a total reversal because I used to tell people who said "I always forget to check Facebook," to make it one of their home pages. Don't. Run away. Look at it if you like, because it's still the best way to keepup with some people, but choose when.)

I've also gone back to an ereader (a paperwhite, which I'm loving) that has no functions for people to message, text or otherwise interrupt me while I'm reading. I can feel the difference in myself as my attention span relaxes.

*One note on deep reading: I've noticed, and a number of other people I've talked to have noticed, that at first it's difficult to get back into deep reading. It's as if we've lost the "muscle" for it. Start back slowly and give it time. We've all found that the more we practice, the better it feels.

Make Your Life a Paradise

Alert readers might notice I left out "in control." That's because I think control is elusive and must be judiciously sought. As far as national politics are concerned, we have very little control. We can vote and campaign for our candidates. We can donate to campaigns. We can participate in our communities. Fretting about North Korea? Not really in our control.

So, this is my best advice: take action, then walk away and work on your own life.

For example, because it's become clear to me that senators elected in other states will influence my life in profound ways - like whether or not I can afford health insurance - I donated to Doug Jones' campaign in Alabama. I felt good about that action. Immediately, however, the campaign began sending me emails - every couple of hours - with hysterical doomsday headlines. They wanted me to contribute more. But I had already taken my action. And I could feel just the subject lines upsetting me. So I labeled them spam and didn't look at another email from them. I'm delighted to report that Jones won! One small step. I took my action and got the result I wanted.

The walking away and working on my own life? That's key.

I mentioned above about turning off notifications. I'm selective about who can grab my attention. Bigger than this, however, is the idea that if each of us made ourselves and our lives a paradise, then by extension, the world would be, too.

I make a lot of choices for personal happiness. To the extent I can, I focus on doing what brings joy and beauty to both my life and the world. This includes friends, family, the organizations I volunteer for, and in the books I write. I find that if I enjoy my daily life to the utmost, I worry much less about the larger world. Which I can't control anyway.

This last is the foundation of being grounded and at peace for me. It really works.

And, at the risk of being accused of having lured you here for marketing purposes... if you do want to read, Smashword’s is having a site-wide promotion! https://www.smashwords.com
This is only good through January 1, 2018, so I felt I should tell you now, just in case!

Star Wars Last Jedi Rant With Spoilers.

Tis the season wherein no one knows who they are, much less what day of the week it is. No one reads the blog this last week of the year. Therefore. I CAN RUN AMOK. Haha. I will bring it back around to writing/story craft, though. I promise.

If you haven't yet seen the latest Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, TURN BACK NOW. I have seen the movie and I HAZ OPINIONS. There will be swearing. There will be spoilers. You have been warned.

Here. Have a winter sunrise to shield your tender eyes from what is to come whilst you attempt to flee this spoiler-laden rant.

All righty. Let's get straight to the geek talk. For that silent ten seconds of the most glorious and gorgeous bit of film I've seen outside of the Wonder Woman movie, I adore this film. However. I am sorry to say that the writer(s) broke faith with their story consumers. Herein lies my rant.

Can we all agree that at heart, the Star Wars franchise is Joseph Campbell's work made space opera manifest? It's a HERO'S JOURNEY. Well. When it's done correctly. And in this case, there's an entire story thread where our intrepid writers got hopelessly lost. Hopelessly. 

I'm talking about the Finn and Rose story line. I wish I could call it an arc, but that's the problem. There isn't one. An arc implies characters in need of change - they begin their story with a flaw, a flaw which prevents them from achieving a goal. You see this done very plainly with Poe, right? Leia demotes the dude because his hubris got people killed. His goal is plain, too: He wants to lead. But he can't until he learns that not every problem can be solved with a gun. What's Finn's flaw? Rose's?

Anyone? I'll wait. That's right. Neither of them HAS a flaw. How about goals? You know. Past playing fetch in order to save everyone? Nopers. Nothing there, either. No clue what either of them wants. 

So you have these two people, sent off on a wild damned goose chase that fails - not because they cannot face and conquer their failings - but because of shitty luck. Not once. Not twice. THREE TIMES they fail to do anything remotely meaningful to contribute to the theme of the story and there's no WHY to the failures.

In a hero's journey, the hero reaches for a goal and fails because internal change has not yet taken place - it's that failure that spurs change - the character must make a choice - own the flaw and mend it or don't. If they cannot mend themselves or learn their lessons, they cannot reach their goals and that character becomes the star either of a tragedy, a literary novel, or a cautionary tale. So when I talk about failures needing a why, for story to work in the Western psyche, we need that flaw/goal/antagonist cycle. These were clear for Rey and for Poe. They were totally absent for Finn and Rose. 

Note this is not the fault of the actors! This debacle rests firmly at the feet of whoever wrote that story thread. In every single case, they fail their short term goals (find the code breaker! Oh no! Arrested for parking violation! But they find a different code breaker, but they get caught because luck! So code breaker betrays everyone. Need I go on? I swear. If it weren't for bad luck, Finn and Rose would have no luck at all.)

There was no character development of these two people because neither of them changed. Neither of them were called to change. They merely went galloping off into danger because - I dunno - they'd just mainlined every last episode of the original Scooby Doo and kids cruising into danger sounded like fun? Sure, sure, we find out some backstory on Rose, but frankly, without knowing what her goal is, I have no reason to care. And those segments that followed the pair of them dragged. The scenes were hollow and wooden. They didn't resonate. Not the way scene of Poe turning away from a fight to yell at everyone to listen - and then, having learned his lesson, leading them to escape.

So anyway. I'd like to slap some sense into the Last Jedi writer(s). Years and years ago, L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp put together a how to book for writing speculative fiction as they preferred to call it. They spent a chapter convincing the reader that luck and twists of cruel fate were lazy writing. If you spend pages and pages getting your character off that planet filled with man-eating iguana people, tuck the heroes safe into their get away ship only to have them hit and destroyed by an asteroid, you aren't clever. You're just a jerk. Though maybe the how to guided didn't actually use that wording. Whoever wrote the Finn and Rose story thread never read this how to guide, apparently, and subsequently robbed the characters and the viewers of the hero's journey we'd signed up for. 

Books for a Happy 2018

So, the new year is coming, and the question is inevitably asked, "What are you looking forward to in the new year?"

And the answer for me is always: books.  But let's not talk about my books, which I certainly talk about plenty.  Instead, which books am I looking forward to reading in 2018?  Here's an incomplete list of the things on my radar, and they're all things I think you should be wanting to pick up in the coming year.  (In addition to the two I have coming out, but you've already got those wired in, yes?  Yes.)


Still So Strange by Amanda Downum
I've made no secret that Amanda is one of my favorite writers working in fantasy today, and one of my favorite people in the industry as well.  Her collection of short stories and poetry is coming out this year, and you should totally get your hands on it.


The Armored Saint by Myke Cole

Myke has been doing excellent things blending military fiction with urban, modern fantasy, and everything I've been hearing about his first dive into traditional epic fantasy has been incredible.  So I'm very excited to get my hands on this one.




Head On by John Scalzi
I've enjoyed just about everything John's written, including and especially Locked In, which this is the sequel to.  It's a very fascinating setting (in which a disease has rendered some people completely unable to use their bodies, but the use of robot avatars called "threeps" lets them interact with the world), and in the first book John did an excellent job of exploring the implications of the core ideas.  So I'm very intrigued to see where it goes.



Stone Mad by Elizabeth Bear
In another example of "Yes, more of that, please," I really enjoyed 2015's Karen Memory, so I'm looking forward to more western-steampunk adventures with Karen and her people.  I don't know if we'll get another steam-powered-sewing-machine-mecha fight, but a boy can dream.





From Unseen Fire by Cass Morris
This is the debut novel from the newest DAW Author, and it's been on my radar for a while now, so I'm quite excited to see it's going to come out this April.  It's set in an Ancient Rome With Magic, and everything I've seen from Cass Morris shows that she's really done the work in her research and worldbuilding, so I'm fascinated to see the results.  Plus, of course: she's DAW, so she's family.


Temper by Nicky Drayden
Nicky already has a follow-up to Prey of the Gods, but not a sequel.  Nicky is another one of my favorite-writers/favorite-people out there.  I swear, she once wrote a short story that was so funny it nearly killed me I was laughing so hard.  So, yeah, she writes so well, you could die.  This is definitely a book to get for next year.  It's a new book by Nicky Drayden, how could it not be?





The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

The Traitor Baru Cormorant was a fascinating work of worldbuilding and structure and defying expectations, and exactly the sort of book I want to see more of.  So of course I want to read the sequel.  I need to know what happens next, as Baru is possibly one of the most fascinating characters in fantasy in recent years.  We've already seen how far she'll go to achieve her goals.  I'm very curious what more there can be to get the title "monster".

So, what's on your radar for 2018?

Goodbye

It is my sincere wish that you all had a blessed holiday in whatever fashion -- or lack there of  -- that suits you best. 

And yes, this will be my final post as a regular member of the line up.

A few days shy of seven years ago, I clicked the button to publish My Very First Blog Post as a member of this group, back when we were the Word-Whores. 

This is the post that went live on January 5, 2011:

WHY AM I A WORD-WHORE?

I like to get the sheets dirty.

Ahem.

Sheets of paper, that is.

Everyone has something they are passionate about, something to which they willingly, eagerly, devote their time. Surfing. Sewing. Scrapbooking. Dumpster diving. Weight-lifting (which may be part of dumpster diving depending on what you find...). Jewelry making. Wood-working. Volunteering. Writing--ooo--that one's mine!

Sometimes these leisure pursuits make the leap into a life-long career. I've pursued this publishing dream since I was young, and I consider myself blessed to have my writing published. So yeah, I've exchanged my stories for money and that makes me a Word-Whore. That, and the fact that I love yielding my every spare moment to the intense pleasure I derive from writing.

Maybe it's masochistic...because being a Word-Whore sometimes means keeping your backside in the chair until your ass is flat because the muse has been drinking tequila and she's spewing ideas all over the place. It often means conceding that dinner won't make itself and that you don't really need it anyway because there's a pot of coffee you could finish. But it always means consenting to the daily challenge of being creative, engaging, entertaining, logical, and grammatically correct all at the same time--and on deadline.

It is not a goal for the faint-hearted. But then, I suggest that whoring in any form is not for those who are thin-skinned. Consider the fact that Word-Whores bravely release their product out into the wild world where our Johns, bloggers and reviewers will voraciously share their independent opinions...good, bad, and ugly...and writing with professional intentions surely could qualify as a kind of self-torture. (*note I've had really good reviews overall, but authors still experience a nail-biting period of time as a release looms where our inner voices speculate on what awful things they could say...)

Whether it's done for love or the thrill I get, I'm a happy Word-Whore and I hope I get to keep on putting out for happy readers. (Love all the pun-tential with our witty name!)

Your Hump-Day Word-Whore,

Linda

It was fun reconnecting with those long-ago sentiments...and to those words, I still hold. But I share them again with you now because, bittersweet, the time has come for me to go.

Leaving the blog will free up the time I spent (or didn’t) writing about the designated topics and the plan was for me to explore other writing options. But then, only days after I announced to my blog-matesmy intent to leave, I received notice that Ragnarok was dropping all contracts for 2018, including my contract for Immanence #2. 

I have to be honest, it hurt. A lot. And then it didn’t. A weight was removed from my shoulders and suddenly I realized that I didn’t owe anyone anything. I didn’t have a contract pending. I didn’t have a year’s commitment to weekly blog posts.

Now, my only commitments are to myself.

-

I’ve learned a great deal from being a part of this group-blog and I am grateful for the opportunity it has been. I’ll never forget my awesome blogmates, past and present.

Jeffe – It was my pleasure to hang out with you at the conventions we’ve both attended, just as it was my pleasure to watch your career blossom over the past six years. You’re smart and dedicated and I know you’re going up, up, up.

Jim – I was delighted when you joined our group because I already knew you and knew you were an awesome author and a good man. Since we run in many of the same convention circles, I know I’ll be seeing you again, and glad of it.

KAK- I will truly miss the pseudo-chocolate. We should absolutely send some to each other via messenger from time to time. Just because, yanno? Someday, we’ll cross paths at a convention and have some real chocolate together! Rock on!

Marshall – It was great to meet you at this past WFC, but wish we had more time to chat. I look forward to seeing you again at a con in the future and wish you the best with your Maradaine series.

Marcella and Veronica – Both of your websites cite that you started writing when you read through all the books to which you had access. That youthful determination to satisfy your story needs one way or another led to writing and that is something we all have in common. I hope we’ll eventually cross paths at a convention so we can talk about that, how our dads influenced our appreciation for sci-fi/fantasy, and where in the world this wild business is taking us.

I wish you all the very best in your writing careers. If you’re ever going to have to miss a post and need a fill-in, hit me up. If I’m able I’ll step in. (:

-

And to you, dear readers who follow this blog, I do not know who is filling my shoes, but I am confident that whoever the crew brings in will have much to offer.

To those of you who have visited my posts here because you’ve enjoyed the Persephone Alcmedi series or the Immanence series, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you want to keep up on what I’m doing, please subscribe to my monthly newsletter. The sign up is on the home page of my website HERE. www.authorlindarobertson.com

Thank you Word-Whores and SFF7. It’s been a wonderful seven years with you.

Thank you, readers and fans. I promise, there’s more to come.

Blessed Be.

A Wish at the Changing of the Year:

May we live every day of 2018 with courage, compassion, and charity ever-present in our intentions and actions. 

It's Christmas!

Go spend it with your family!

See you next year!

Happy Holidays from Jeffe

Happy Holidays from Santa Fe! May this season be restful and joyous, and may the coming year be merry and bright.

Memorable Books I read in 2017

(Sounds like a school book report assigned for the first day back from vacation, doesn't it?)

It’s always hard to pick books for end of the year lists because I read so many and I don’t keep a spreadsheet (sorry, Jeffe!) nor record them in Goodreads or anywhere else. I also reread my favorites a LOT. Shield of Winter by Nalini Singh would be a perpetual entry on any yearly list of mine!

I have to go by which books come to mind when I start thinking about the subject of a listing (and then just check to see that I read them for the first time this year!).

So my list is ‘memorable’, in no special order.

The Shift of the Tide by Jeffe Kennedy. I love her Twelve kingdoms fantasy world, I was blown away by the details of the shifter heroine’s experiences as various types of creatures, I LOVED how the hero became more and more and MORE wonderful as the book progressed and the ending was  FABULOUS. (I love her covers too...)

Quakeland by Katherine Miles. I’m quite an earthquake buff, having been a Caltech employee (on the business side of the house at JPL), living in Southern California and having had a very famous seismologist you see all the time on TV tell me at daycare one day as we were collecting our toddlers that my house sat directly ON a fault and would go up or down by at least 18’ if that fault ‘broke’. ULP! (I don’t live in that house any more, but not because of the fault LOL.) At any rate, author Miles had new information and some of her experiences in pursuit of her story were AMAZING.

Night’s Templar: A Vampire Queen Novel by Joey W. Hill. I’ve been enjoying her books for years and this one really grabbed me. I loved the relationship between the ancient Knight Templar vampire and the Fae Lord. Just all around cool and spicy hot as always with Ms. Hill’s books. And good glimpses of other favorite characters from earlier in the series.

I just discovered Tracey Cooper-Posey’s Endurance Series, about a generation ship on its way from Earth to a new colony and was fascinated by all the world building and the twists and turns of the plot. I loved jumping a few hundred years for each book and seeing what happened next to the ship and the people (and how I knew things they didn’t). Sadly she’s suspended writing these for the moment, to focus on other genres, but if she does return to the series I’ll be right there!

Found Girl by Pauline Baird Jones has a nice military flavor, with the USAFG ‘flying’ a captured alien ship as if it was an aircraft carrie, and a fascinatingly mysterious alien heroine who learned more about herself  and what she could do on practically every page. Usually any hint of an amnesia plot sends me fleeing for the exits, but this was so well done that I was utterly hooked and can’t wait for a sequel (although rest assured there was a HFN ending.)

I enjoyed the new offerings throughout the year from Anna Hackett (Galactic Gladiators and also her Hell Squad series), Cynthia Sax (Sizzling Cyborgs) and Michelle Diener (Calling the Change). I had fun with Mars Ho by Jennifer Willis, which combined reality shows with colonizing Mars in a very effective fashion…

And I’d better stop now that the memory floodgates are opening wider and wider (aided by a look at my kindle…)

I did also love my fellow authors' stories in our USA Today Best Selling Embrace the Romance: Pets In Space 2 scifi romance anthology. It's only going to be available through January and Amazon has it on sale for $.99 right now! Here's the LINK.  The book is on all major ebook retailer platforms but the sale is only on the Zon, as far as I know...

Best wishes for a Happy Merry Jolly Holiday Season and lots of time to read!