On Professional Jealousy - and Three Ways to Shut It Down

Last weekend I got to visit my lovely writer friend Grace Draven - that's me enjoying the gorgeous trees in Texas hill country - and this weekend my fantastic writer friend Anne Calhoun came to visit me. As a result, I've had about ten days worth of intense writer conversation and am wrung out.

I'm also late with this post because of it. Last week I didn't do one at all, though that was largely because the topic was Flash Fiction and I just don't much like doing those. Flash fiction can be an interesting form, but my fiction-writing energy goes into my current project and I find working on anything other than that feels tangential at best and counter-productive at worst.

I am, however, blessed by having these friends to talk writing with and my well has been refilled to brimming.

And this week's topic is about writing relationships: A Cringeworthy Moment of Professional Jealousy & How You Dealt With It.

One aspect of having friends who are also writers, especially those who write in the same genre, is that competition can rear its inevitable head. It's an unfortunate aspect of the business. Even if we are not competitive by nature, the industry thrusts us into competition with each other. Who wins the award? Who made that Top Ten list? Who got a more lucrative publishing contract? And then there are the "tournaments" that well-meaning readers and bloggers construct to celebrate their favorite books. In many of these, authors are encouraged to recruit votes to get their book to "win" and even to trash-talk "rival" authors and books.

It can all be very difficult. We can intellectually understand that the business is variable, book love is subjective, and all of the fandom is good and goes toward exposure for everyone.

But the truth is that professional jealousy can be a huge problem.

It can kill friendships.

It's happened to me. It's happened to writers I know.

No matter how valiantly we may try to fend off the demons of jealousy, they are insidious and pervasive. Frankly, I would never give the advice not to be jealous or competitive. That's like advising people not to get angry at bad drivers in heavy traffic. Sometimes we can be Zen. Sometimes we lose our shit.

That's being human. And we wouldn't be human if we didn't occasionally note that the other monkey got a great big handful of berries and we didn't.

FOR NO GOOD REASON.

So what would be my cringeworthy moment of professional jealousy? There are so many to choose from. There was the time my crit partner who was querying at the same time as I was got a three-book deal for $30K and I didn't sell my book for two more years and then for no advance. Or when an agent who passed on my book picked someone else's and got her a six-figure deal.

Or every time a Top Ten List features a book in my genre that isn't mine.

Or every time someone recommends another author's book instead of mine.

I mean, I tell you people - I could easily spend every day in the throes of professional jealousy. There are so many opportunities to do so. There are plenty of authors who succumb to this.

And I'd be lying if I didn't admit to you that I sometimes feel it. I also sometimes suggest that other drivers do anatomically impossible actions with the brains they clearly don't have.

The key is not to pretend we don't feel it, but instead to deal productively with that energy.

1. Channel

Jealousy - or covetousness - is wanting what someone else has. Do I want that award, that contract, that spot on the Top Ten List? That's good energy that drives me to improve. I remind myself to channel it into my work to make it better. It's good to want things. It's better to work hard for them.

2. Consider the Big Picture

It's easy to covet that one thing someone else got, but I always ask myself if I'd trade places with them. A lot of times I might want that contract, but I wouldn't want their asshole of a spouse or chronically ill parent. Everyone struggles with their own pain - I make myself consider what that person's burden is, and if I'd take that along with their blessings.

3. Eyes on Your Own Work

This is one of my personal mottoes. Why am I even looking at a list I'm not on, at contract numbers for a sale that isn't mine? I learned it in school and I learn it again every day. I don't need to see how the kids next to me are doing. I have to keep my eyes on my OWN work.

Heavens know, I've got plenty to keep me occupied!

4. Celebrate Others

I'm adding this one after some online conversations, because it's been pointed out to me that I do this, too. Yes - I make a deliberate effort to celebrate the successes of others. By taking that energy and channeling it into joy, I refuse to let jealousy take hold. It becomes easier and easier to feel like when someone else - particularly a friend I love and who loves me in return - triumphs, it's my happiness, too. I'm not sure it's fair to expect anyone to do this automatically, but it's a skill in generosity of spirit that can be deliberately cultivated. Practice, practice, practice!

Snowflake Flash Fiction for Winter

VS Note: I'm not a fan of writing flash fiction actually but someone in this group keeps proposing it. (Glares suspiciously at all the other Days.) I grew up in Upstate New York, so I'm very familiar with snow and winter and coldness; however, having lived in sunny Southern California for a long time, it was a bit hard to get myself into the mood.

But I said to myself sternly, I am a WRITER so I can WRITE. Here's my story:

She and her sister snowflakes drifted in the wind, to and fro, sparkling as they spun and twirled. This was her favorite part of being a snowflake – the ride through the sky, so far about everything, dancing carefree.

The swirling winds began to subside and she drifted lower and lower, but still enjoying the sensation of flying.

Music wafted from below, seeming to surround her. It was a lovely tune, repeating over and over. She saw flashes of color beneath her, where the snow had failed to settle or been brushed aside. There was a castle, with stone turrets and gallant banners waving in the same wind that cushioned her descent. A small pond lay beside the castle, frozen over, and skaters moved about in time to the music. She saw the handsome prince, heir to the kingdom, waltzing with his lovely princess, her long blue skirts and blond hair flaring out as he spun her in one giddy turn after another. Two other couples kept them company, their clothing less sumptuous but still bright and cheery on this gray afternoon.

Snowflake hoped they were warm enough but there was nothing she could do about it. The nature of winter was to be cold outside, after all.

She received an unexpected lift  from an eddy and sailed over the pond, almost wishing she could have drifted onto the princess’s gloved hand, to receive the admiration she knew she was owed, for being a unique, delicate crystalline beauty.

Apparently she was destined to land in a spiky evergreen tree, there to nestle on the branches with her sisters until the wind or an animal disturbed them. She put an extra spin into her forward motion, to make the landing as spectacular as she possibly could. If one couldn’t fly forever, one could at least demonstrate one’s superb abilities until the flight was over.

The music stopped.

“Again, Daddy, again!”

The monstrous voice filled the air and the snowflake shuddered. A moment later the wind blew from everywhere, the castle and the pond were above her for an impossible moment and then snowflake was flying way up into the sky again.

Giddy with joy, she realized her journey was starting all over. Maybe this time she could land on the princess’s hand as she waltzed to the tune the musical snow globe played.

Cold Outside - Flash Fiction for the Frozen

     Fire painted the stone walls of the throne room red. Corva Frostmache stood before her mother's throne, surrounded armed men. Dortel, the self-styled lord of the clan, sat forward, studying her, a hint of triumph in his too wide smile.
     "The charge is sedition, Corva," he said. "How do you plead?"
     "You sit upon the throne of the clans, my mother's rightful place, and you ask that question? The Gods strike you down for the murder of the queen and for usurping her throne," she replied.
     "Enough." Dortel waved a plump sausage of a hand and sat back. "Put her out."
     Elmat, a wizened skeleton of an advisor, hesitated, looking between Corva and his lord. "Sir. The vote."
     "Am I not lord here? There will be no vote. Put her out."
     "It's the frost moon!" the older man protested. "The cold . . ."
     Dortel's self-satisfied smile turned Corva's stomach. "Mayhap the cold will cool Corva's temper and her attempts to stir up treason."
     Her fists clenched. "We are the Frostmache. Justice is our call."
     "You were the Frostmache," he corrected. "A new age has come. No more will our mothers rule our clans. The might of our arms will bring riches and new glory to our age. . . Damn your plucking at my sleeve, old man! What do you want?"
     "You sought my wisdom, sir," Elmat said.
     "Speak it, then!"
     "You are young, yet. Much has been forgotten. Legend says the Forstmache draw their power from winter itself. If you mean to stamp out the line, you would do well to cut this one down where she stands."
     "This is your advice? Fairy tales and the means to make a martyr of her?" Dortal demanded. "You're older than I thought. You would give a rallying cry to those mired in a past swept away."
     "By your brutality," Corva said.
     "I will not sully the edge of my blade with her blood," he spat. "Get out and die, witch. We'll seek your corpse for burial come the thaw."
     The huge, iron-banded oak doors boomed. Snow and razor sharp crystals of ice snarled in on the wail of the wind.
     Corva lifted her chin lifted and strode for the door the usurper's soldiers held.
     Elmat met her at the door, a frown upon his lips that deepened the furrows already plowed across his brow. He held out a hand.
     A single coal from the hall fire. That much tradition they'd observe?
     Corva sneered. "Keep your pity, old fool."
     His frown deepened and he thrust the warm clay holder into her hand. "It's cold outside."
     She nodded. "Your wisdom is wasted when you speak it to one who will not hear. Cold you say? I'm counting on it."

Cold? It mentions ice...

Many things are happening right now, so I don't have a proper blog post for today.  It's supposed to be Flash Fiction (not my forte) on "It's Cold Outside", but I live in Texas and it was 84º today.

Instead, here's a little tease from my secondary Work-in-Progress.  (In other words, not A Parliament of Bodies, or anything to do with Maradaine.)  This is from the Space Opera WIP tentatively called Banshee...

---

“Tell us who she is!  Tell us how to defeat her!”

Hagchlek made a noise that was oddly like laughter.  “You won’t.  You still do not understand what you are dealing with.  She is a human from Mars.  Do you understand what that means?”

Two of the shock troops came hustling around corner.  Kengle switched her rifle to sonic mode, and fired a boom down the hall.  They dropped clutching at their heads.

“She’s coming,” Hagchlek’s interrogator said.  Hagchlek kept going.

“Do you know what Mars is?  It was a desolate, icy rock in the humans’ home system, and humans came and said ‘We’ll make this into a place we can live’ and by fire they did.  They did that on dead moons and toxic planets throughout their system. And then humans piled into ships that crawled slower than light and lived and died in those boxes so their great-grandchildren might find a new home on another world, and when the worlds they found were also desolate rocks, they bent them to their will.  If you think some challenge is impossible, I tell you, you haven’t met humans.”

“What is this mad species?”

“They are what you have brought on your head.  We fought them for generations and no setback, no failure could deter them.  When they collectively decide to defeat a problem, they will not be stopped.”

“But she’s just one human!”

“And one is a plague upon you.  And know this: even if you kill Samantha Kengle, all you’ll succeed in is bringing all of humanity on your head.”

February 2017 Flash Fiction

Its Cold Outside


The days had darkened and the frozen flakes had fallen. The rain came, creating a mist as it threatened to wash away the layer of snow but Winter fought back. The temperature dropped and now the white world wore a glistening topcoat of ice.

In the darkened forest, the bare branches were bowed from the weight, but reflecting the moonlight, the trees glimmered like ghosts. Zaiera viewed it from her open window, raising the fur-lined hood to cover her head. She did not want to mar the unbroken beauty of this crystal-covered ground, but leaving footprints was unavoidable.

She lowered her pack, then moved to sit on the sill.

She was going. The best they could do was follow. But they could not stop her.

Flash Fiction: Baby, It's Not Cold Outside

Seven inches. There should have been a minimum of seven inches of fresh snow on the ground. Those seven inches should have been layered atop ten more, minus two for melt and refreeze. The weather frogs had promised. It was February, after all.

Instead, flowers had not only germinated, they'd begun to bloom.

The only seven inches he'd loll in this year was in his orthopedic bed. The canvas cover had worn to a softness that cradled his aching hips and shoulders. He winced as the degenerative disks in his lower back sent spasms down his left leg.

Next year then. Maybe next year he'd mush across fields blanketed in thick snow. The frigid winds ripping through his coat. The snowflakes clinging to his face, giving the world a lovely haze. The pure silence of a breathless wonderland waiting to echo his call. ...

Next year. Maybe. If the drugs kept the pain at bay. If the next stroke didn't take mobility from both legs. Maybe next year.

With a grunt and a grumble, the old husky shook in his harness and boots and went back inside.

I Am The Interviewer

Jake the Cat does not do interviews BTW.

Our topic this week is remedies for stale interviews.

Well, I'm the Interviewer an awful lot of the time because I interview authors for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog, so perhaps my perspective on this will be a bit different. My day job nowadays is fulltime author but I also love contributing to the HEA blog, and especially discussing scifi and fantasy romance. Occasionally I interview an author like JoAnn Ross or Barbara Delinsky, someone who has always been one of my favorites as a reader, but whose writing lies primarily outside the scifi romance genre, and that's fun too.

I typically ask about five questions in one of my interviews. I always read the book first - and wow, it is fun to get one of Nalini Singh's, Ilona Andrews's or Jeffe's books in the Advance Review Copy format, months before the book is released. I've stayed up a few nights reading straight through when one of those treasures hits my kindle! If the author is someone who's been interviewed many times before, I go out and research their interviews because I don't want to ask all the same stuff if I can help it. I take it as a personal challenge, especially if they have a list of Q&A on their blog or website that covers all the standard questions. If I have a book related question that I find someone else has asked before me, I pass and try to dig deeper. I usually end up with about ten questions I'd love to ask but some of them are too nitty gritty, or purely from the author standpoint - something about how the book is written, versus things that might interest a non-author reader. So I may want to know the answer, but it's not general enough to put on HEA.

A couple of my interviews that I did by phone have turned into me-as-an-author asking another author all kinds of craft questions and sharing experiences a little. I did that with John Scalzi and also with Michelle Lovretta, the creator, Executive Producer and writer for the TV show "Killjoys." (Both of them were kind enough to indulge me, within a set time limit, and those interviews were truly hilites of life for me.) All I can do then is laugh at myself and extract the answers from my copious notes that I hope will interest readers most.

So I narrow down my piles of questions, mostly by asking myself what other readers might really like to know about the behind the scenes of a book they love. I have to be respectful of the time the authors can devote to this, even for USA Today, because they have a LOT of promo to do, and other writing commitments.

I do ask some typical questions, like what the author's office looks like, or if they have a pet, because our readers find that of interest.

There's a time and place for those quick and dirty questions - you know the ones I mean: "tea or coffee," "Star Trek or Star Wars", "cats or dogs"? If someone is interviewing me and that's what they feel their readers want to know, then I'll answer.

But my trick I learned a long time ago, is that you do NOT have to answer the question you're asked. You can always turn the answer in a direction you want it to go. "Well, actually, Blog Host Person, "Aliens" is my favorite movie franchise and here's why." Or "what an excellent question but you know the thing to me is..." and off I go to talk about whatever I actually want to talk about. You can watch celebrities do this all the time on TV, very adroitly. (Not that I'm a celebrity but they do have the technique down pat.)

And in other news, pivoting adroitly here, my science fiction romance novels Star Cruise: Outbreak and Hostage to the Stars received SFR Galaxy Awards this past week! (CRUISE got two actually...). The Pets In Space anthology also received two. I as really honored and excited! Here's the website if you'd like to check out the entire list: http://sfrgalaxyawards.blogspot.com/ 

Interview Tips and Tricks

Have you ever been in a play? One that had an actual run - you know - you had to show up and perform every day for a week or more and twice on Sunday? Did you learn how to approach the show and your character as something new each time for the sake of each new audience? Maybe your director or stage manager gave the cast The Pep Talk: "You've done this show a hundred times now between rehearsals and performance, but for this audience, it's the first time. Invest."

Interviews are the same thing. No matter how many you do, no matter how many times you answer the same question over and over again, it may be old hat for you, but it is new to the people reading about you. It helps to approach interviews as a privilege - something you get to do rather than something you have to do. Well. It helps me. Because I still haven't gotten over being tickled to death about someone else actually wanting to talk to the socially awkward geek girl. So yeah. I do have a list of suggestions for anyone undertaking interviews:

1. It's about the honesty of your story telling.
2. Be willing to tell your truth.
3. Be willing to be vulnerable and even a little bit afraid.
4. Your life and your process are only uninteresting to you because they're yours.
5. When all else fails, channel your characters and answer from their voices.

By now, everyone who reads this blog knows the story about my first ever writing project - the princess who was an expert swordswoman and horsewoman who could take down an entire ship full of pirates. Oh. And who had a black panther named Scott for a pet. (Yeah, I dunno. I was twelve.) Let's be honest, that's a pretty embarrassing story, but it's a rich story because most of us have these kinds of stories from when we were kids. Even if the particulars of my story are totally laughable (some of them are and I'm fine with that) everyone can relate.

Relating to people is the whole reason for interviews. It really is a question of being willing to open a vein and invite readers to come swim in the blood of your story (and possibly your life). If you're thinking about it from that perspective, I doubt you'll ever be bored. Terrified, maybe, but bored? Probably not.

PS. If you haven't read James' amazing post about his mother and what she taught him, you should. Because James went on such an eloquent and well considered political bender, I kick my soap box back under the table and sit back nodding in agreement with him. Fight for what you want, people. Not against what you don't. Where your focus goes, so too does your energy. And there are some bastages who do not deserve the tiniest mote of your energy.