Sunday, February 4, 2018

Why You Haven't Written the Novel That's in You

Another photo of the lunar eclipse as the full moon set over Santa Fe.

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is "Why do you think people DON'T write?"

It's a different take on a familiar topic. Because all writers hear - and, I confess, dread - the standard line from people: "I've always thought I had a novel in me, if I had the time to write."

Or some variation on this. Almost every person who says they want to write a novel and hasn't blames not having the time to do it. Which makes the person who HAS written novels want to throttle the person speaking. Maybe very gently - just a light squeeze to the larynx to stop those hated words.

Because here's the deal: WE ALL HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME.

Right? 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year.

No, no - don't start explaining or making excuses or mentally going over your incredibly tight schedule. I'm sure your days are packed. I don't doubt that you don't have an empty three or four hours - or whatever it is you think you need - to write in. None of us have that. Nobody I've ever known has had HOURS to kill every day, with absolutely nothing to fill them, so they might as well write a book.

Except maybe people in prison? I dunno - seems like they're kept pretty busy, too.

People don't like being idle. We're not built for it. If we don't have work to do, we like to be entertained. If we do a lot of work, as many people do, then we need to be able to relax in between. We need to sleep, to eat, to take care of children and the elderly and the infirm. We have homes to maintain, pets to nurture, volunteer obligations that are important to us.

I'm going to let you in on a secret that isn't much of a secret: occupations are like gas - they expand to fit the available time.

This means that, your allotted 24 hours a day will always be filled. If you have empty hours for some miraculous reason? They'll get filled. Nature abhors a vacuum, yes? Empty time sucks other things into it.

So, the reason these people haven't written their novels - or short stories, or poems, or essay, or what have you - is NEVER because they don't have the time. It's because they chose to do something else with that time.

Now, I'm not going to pretend making time to write is easy. It's not. In fact, I suspect making time to write is harder than making time to do most anything else. That's because it's solitary, it's producing and contributing nothing to the world apparently (maybe for a long time), and it looks to other people like you're not doing anything at all. Except maybe taking away from the stuff they approve of you doing - like stuff that benefits them.

Decide to start an exercise regime? Look at all the people at the gym doing the same thing! You come home sweaty? You lose weight and get stronger. All awesome observable stuff.

Take up gourmet cooking? People are so happy with you! Yummy food for all!

Get a second job? Wow, you're not around as much, but yay for more money! And the people at the job are happy you're doing stuff they need you to do badly enough that they'll PAY you to do it.

Start writing a novel? None of these things. You take time away from other stuff, nothing happens for a long time, and - because writing is difficult, mentally and emotionally draining - you probably won't even seem happy about it.

When most of us start writing, the time we make - that is, steal from another part of our life - is usually from something that was fun and relaxing. It's hard to cut out the things we need to do to live, like cooking food and making money. So we steal from reading time, or movie-watching time, or gaming time. Then not only are you trying to learn a New Thing, which is tedious and draining, you've also lost the things that made you happy.

It's really hard to get through this phase. Especially if the people who love you are saying, "Not only do I see you less, but you also seem miserable. Are you sure you want to do this?"

Yes. Yes, you really do.

Writing might be the most delayed-gratification project I've ever engaged in. But the rewards are worth it. IF you stick through all the garbage and difficulty. And that means well past the publication of your first book, or even the first ten.

I can vouch that making a living as a writer is even BETTER than I imagined it would be.

So: MAKE THE TIME TO WRITE.

Beg, borrow, and steal the time! Don't wait for the day that never comes, when time to write magically falls from the sky.

TAKE THE TIME AND SQUEEZE EVERY DROP FROM IT.

I believe in you.






Saturday, February 3, 2018

Not Into Unreliable Narrators

DepositPhoto

I have only one thing to say about this week's topic - I don't have any time or patience for unreliable narrators, not in books, movies or real life. Nothing will send me running faster... Okayyy then, that's kind of a short post.

What can I add to this?

 Here's the only sort of unreliable narrator I've ever written to my knowledge and it's because she was about 100 years old, in ancient Egypt and her grasp on everything is pretty tenuous at this advanced age. The man asking her questions is a 200 year old ghost (or "akh"), sent back to life by the goddess of second chances to solve his own murder. I guess he was a bit of an unreliable narrator for most of the novel, come to think of it, but not to the reader, only to his fellow Egyptians. But he tried very hard not to outright lie! Edited a bit from the published version, which is one of my older ancient world paranormal romances.

To not be promo-y, I won't even add the buy links!

The excerpt:  He’d asked the cook, oh so casually, who was the oldest servant remaining on the estate, working his question in among other topics. She’d directed him to a woman named Benerib. “You’ll get little sense from her. Dreams in the sun, she does, and waits for her ka to be ready for the Afterlife. She must be more than one hundred years old.” Wiping her hands on her apron, Khensa went to a shelf at the rear of the kitchen, beckoning him to follow. She selected a clay jar, removing the stopper, and taking a deep sniff of the contents. Then she took a small bowl and ladled a generous serving of honeyed figs from the jar. “Here, my special recipe. Benerib loves these, greedy as a child she is. I don’t know what you want of her, but with these as your greeting, you’re more likely to get her to talk. Don’t expect much sense.”

Taking the treat with a murmured word of thanks, he left the house in search of the old woman. Asking people he met in the yard, he was directed to where the elder sat in the shade of a willow tree, a cat purring on her lap. Clearing his throat to get her attention, he bowed. “Old mother, I’m told you’ve been in service in this house for a hundred years.”

She laughed, peering at him from rheumy eyes. “Not quite that long, but yes, I’ve been a body servant to all the women of the family, including young Neity. I started running errands at the age of five, holding combs and wigs and pins and ironing linen, and I don’t know what all else over the years. Until I got too old and bent. My hands don’t work well anymore.” She showed him her gnarled fingers. “Do I know you? Are you a noble of the house, home after the war?”

Wondering which war she was thinking of, in her age-addled mind, he seated himself next to her. “No, I’m Periseneb, a guest, only here to help Lady Neithamun until the tax collection day. I’ve brought you something.”

Shooing the cat off her lap, she accepted his offering and popped one of the figs into her mouth. Eyes closed in contentment, she said, “Many years since I had a suitor bring me treats.” She giggled like a girl. "Oh yes, I had many men chasing my skirts, let me tell you.” Benerib swayed in her chair and began enumerating the swains of her youth.

Remembering the cook’s warning about getting anything sensible from such an elderly person, Periseneb felt the akh’s power pushing at him, feeding on his barely suppressed frustration. Benerib was his only chance to learn things about the family history which would never appear in the dusty scribes’ records. “Have another fig?” When she reached for the treat, he clasped his hand around her wrist and let a small amount of the pent up anger leach from him where their skin touched.

Benerib gasped, clutching at her chest, and slumped against the back of the chair. The cat, which had been purring as it twined around her ankles, hissed and spat at Periseneb before scurrying away. Dismayed at the effect he’d wrought, he prayed he hadn’t killed her. One so old didn’t deserve to die at the hands of an akh.

A moment later, opening one rheumy eye, she peered at him flirtatiously. “What is it you want to ask?”

With a huge sigh of relief, he offered her the figs, taking great care not to touch her again in his unsettled emotional state. “I’m curious about the family that owns Heron Marsh. Not this generation or even the generation before. Older times. Have you any tales of a great great aunt? Sitre by name?”

Both of Benerib’s eyes popped open and she slapped her knee as she sat up. “Oh, that one! She was a handful right enough, sir. Not at all like our Neity. Oh no, Sitre was mean, through and through. My mother used to tell me tales about her.”

He was surprised by the harsh characterization of the woman he’d known. Searching for a kinder description, he asked, “Headstrong perhaps?” Certainly many had labelled her thus in his time, with a degree of understatement. No one told Sitre what to do or denied any impulse she took into her head. Spoiled from birth by indulgent parents is what the servants in his time had said.

The elderly woman he was questioning cackled. “As a child, my mother was one of Lady Sitre’s attendants. Mind you, only for the last few years of the harridan’s life. The noblewoman must have been nigh onto the age I am now. Nothing ever pleased her. Threw her mirror at my mother, she did, or was it a cosmetics box? Maybe both! Mother said she didn’t move fast enough to please the high and mighty lady. None of the maids did. Bitter, nasty woman, according to my mother.” Falling silent, Benerib plucked another fig from the bowl and chewed noisily with her few remaining teeth. “Afraid to die, Sitre was. Tried all sorts of nostrums and spells to live forever. Most superstitious woman anyone ever met. Might even have dabbled in black magic in her last years, or so it was whispered. She never spoke of her fears, at least not in my mother’s hearing, but plainly the lady was terrified of what awaited her at the Judging of her heart.”

Discomfited by this description of the apparent harridan Sitre had evolved into before her death, Periseneb waited. This third-hand account was the closest he was going to come to anyone who’d met the woman he’d once hoped to marry. As he handed the old woman the water skin, he prayed silently that Benerib had more to share.

She took a long drink and wiped her lips. “Where was I?”

Hoping she hadn’t retreated into senile dreams again, he gave her a prompt. “You were telling me how your mother was a servant to Lady Sitre—”

“Oh, yes, after she was widowed. She’d married Lord Haqaptah. Well, the one in that day, not the one plaguing us.”

Periseneb’s heart thumped hard in his chest and he rocked on his heels. “She—she married Haqaptah?” Well, what had he expected? He never showed up to claim her, so of course she’d married someone else.

“Aye.” Lips working as she chewed, Benerib calculated and made some tallies on her fingers. “Sitre was the great great grandaunt of the current Haqaptah. She never got over her bitterness at not inheriting this estate either, let me tell you. My mother talked of it often. Cursed, the servants used to whisper, all Sitre’s schemes and efforts going for naught. Any more figs?”

A shiver ran down his spine at her words, surprising him. Curses shouldn’t concern him—he was a ghost himself, after all. Rolling his shoulders to dispel whatever momentary twinge the idea of a curse had given him, he held the bowl closer to her. “As many as you want, old one.”

“You must have flirted with the cook,” Benerib said, tilting her head to see him more closely. “She never gives anyone so many of her special figs.”

“The cook and I have come to an understanding,” he answered. “Why didn’t Sitre or her sons inherit Heron Marsh?”

The elderly woman leaned close, as if to prevent anyone else who might be interested in centuries’ old gossip from overhearing....

Friday, February 2, 2018

I'm Nuts Enough, I Do Not Need an Unreliable Narrator's Help

Yesterday was my father's birthday. January 31st. He wanted to have dinner at a tiki bar. So we found something that was on the water. As luck would have it, we were in perfect position for the sunset over Tampa Bay.

I imagine the person pointing is telling stories - fish stories, maybe. Or tales about what lies in the direction they're pointing. Which leads us to unreliable narrators. I had been going to say I don't know much about unreliable narrators, but in fact, I now more than I want. It's just not from fiction.

I think the important thing to keep in mind about unreliable narrators is that they are giving you the truth as they see it. It's a truth they utterly believe, that they are invested in. Chances are, that even if you catch them out in what you'd swear was a dead on lie, they'll deny it to their graves. I admit this is not my favorite story trope. Maybe in part because I am not entirely certain I could pull it off as a writer. Or maybe because I knew one. For real. And I tried to be her friend. It went well. For a little while.

Let's call her Joan. There's no way to put too fine a point on it. She lied. All the time. Funny thing, there was zero malice behind it. It was 100% telling you what you wanted to hear - things like, 'I'm coming to your house to pick up the Very Important Thing you wanted me to pick up!' Then I'd get a text - 'hey traffic is terrible.' Then another text. 'Accident on freeway.' That's about the point I worked out she wasn't on the road at all. Hadn't, in fact, even left her house. Called out on it, the next lie was that she was desperately ill and had to undergo radical treatment that oddly, never had any physical impact. The final straw came when she lied to someone else to the point of attempting to impersonate someone in authority in email.

We'd gone from saying what she believed her friends wanted to hear to actual criminal activity in that last case. And yet. When confronted, she denied that any of it was a lie. Honestly, looking back, I think she believed that no one would or could like her for her. They'd only like her for what they believed she could do for them. So she'd constructed fiction after fiction and then convinced herself they were fact. But that's me. Attempting to rationalize something that may not be at all rational.

So maybe you'll understand when I say I've sort of had my fill of unreliable narrators in real life.  I don't deal with Joan anymore, but there are a few other people with tenuous grips on consensual reality that I can't avoid. And can't safely describe here. It means that since I have to live unreliable narration, I really do not want it anywhere near my entertainment.

Real life doesn't have to make sense. It's a relief to me when my fiction does make at least a little bit of sense. Am I weird here? If you like an unreliable narrator in a book, do you have people in your life who actually DO that? I'm wondering if my distaste is colored by my exposure or if everyone has had similar experiences in life and me not liking an unreliable narrator in fiction is just me.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Grand Announcements for Maradaine

I've been hinting for quite some time about big news, and finally I'm ready to tell you about it. 
First, the slightly sad news: the third Maradaine Constabulary novel, A Parliament of Bodieswill not be released until Spring 2019.  I know many of you have been anxious for the next installment with Satrine and Minox, and it is going to come out, just a few months later.  This is entirely due to production schedule and release strategy-- because we've got something else planned for release in the fall of 2018.  And so much more.

What is going on?  Well, I've signed a contract for FOUR new books!


First off, coming out on October 3rd, 2018, we have THE WAY OF THE SHIELD, the first novel of the fourth Maradaine-set series, called The Maradaine Elite.  What is THE WAY OF THE SHIELDand The Maradaine Elite?  Glad you asked!

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Release Day: The Burned Spy by @KAKrantz

Tooting my own horn today as I release the first book in my new Immortal Spy Urban Fantasy Series.

THE BURNED SPY
Gods. Always ready to screw you.

When Bix the Gatekeeper is summoned from exile a hundred and seventy years early by the goddess of the Norse Under World, the former Dark Ops agent knows there’s a catch. On the surface, the terms of the deal are simple. Someone attacked the pantheon’s ambassador to the Mid Worlds and left the ambassador in a coma. In exchange for early parole, Bix must identify the perpetrator and drag their soul to Hel.

It’d be a sweet contract, if not for the details. The ambassador is Bix’s ex-girlfriend, the lead suspect is the key witness from Bix’s trial, and the organization leading the official investigation is the same intelligence guild that disavowed Bix when a covert op went pear-shaped. Undeterred, Bix returns to her old stomping grounds where clues in the smoldering woods of Centralia, Pennsylvania, lead to the waterfront of Washington, DC, and Worlds beyond.

Once valued for her skills creating passageways as small as a capillary or as large as a continent, Bix’s success now depends on the relationships she was forced to abandon. As she squares off against friends who betrayed her and enemies keen to destroy her, Bix follows a trail of secrets, torture, and treason that leads to the very superpowers who banished her. With her freedom on the line and revenge within reach, this highly-trained operative will take on Fates, dragons, angels, and gods to get exactly what she wants.

Hel hath no fury like a burned spy.

Buy It Now in eBook & Paperback: Amazon | iBooks | Kobo | B&N

Monday, January 29, 2018

What's not to Love?

The Unreliable Narrator. That wonderful voice that  tells us what is going on, tells us what has happened and leads us down a rocky path to dubious revelation.

I love that voice. It's a keystone of horror stories and novels.

Poe used that sort of narration in The Tell-Tale Heart to great advantage. Madness tinges the words and leaves the reader wondering what is real and what is not. It's delightful!

I've done several stories with that sort of narration and they are among some of my favorites.  In the right hands it's a wonderful reading experience. In the wrong hands, well, what's true about writers everywhere is true here. If the writing is bad, the story will not work well.

it's certainly something to consider if you intend to write for the Twisted Book Of Shadows, edited by yours truly and Christopher Golden, The guidelines are coming in a couple of days.

Two days until the submission window opens for The Twisted Book of Shadows. Submission info will go live on Wednesday night on the Facebook page. PLEASE share to any and all writers and writers' groups with an interest in horror, but ESPECIALLY to marginalized voices. We want the best horror stories we can find, and that means from everyone. Wherever you fall on any spectrum of race, sexuality, sex, gender, age, or ability, if you have a horror story to tell, we hope you'll submit to The Twisted Book of Shadows.


More information soon!

Sunday, January 28, 2018

The Unreliable Narrator - Love or Hate?

Another photo from Meow Wolf. Nnedi Okorafor and I fell in love with this crazy kitchen and had to photograph each other in it. One of the most fun aspects of this "immersive experience" is not only being able to touch and enter the exhibit, but in a way to become part of it as well. I felt like part of this kitchen and wanted to seem like it, too.

Art of all mediums is interesting in the way it interfaces with reality. It's impossible to recreate reality in art - and maybe not even desirable to do so - but art necessarily reflects and at best deepens our understanding of the real world. Our topic this week is the unreliable narrator - whether we love them, hate them, write them or avoid them.

An unreliable narrator is a point-of-view (POV) character - or characters who delude themselves in some way and thus misdirect the reader. They almost always occur in first-person or deep third-person POVs, though I've read one book where the omniscient narrator turned out at the very end to be deeply unreliable, making the reader realize the entire story was slanted - which was a terrific twist. Recent examples of unreliable narrators are the heroine of The Girl on the Train, who is drunk and emotionally traumatized, with memory gaps, or Gone Girl, where both POV characters are hiding who they really are and keeping secrets from the reader.

Me, I love an unreliable narrator. In fact, I'd make the case that all of my POV characters are unreliable, because I think human beings cannot escape being subjective about their experience in the world. There's no such thing as objective reality. A character will always interpret the world according to their own emotional landscape - which includes denial of some truths about themselves.

Reading a story with an unreliable narrator requires the reader pay close attention, because you can't just believe what the characters tell you. You have to be alert to subtle cues. I love reading an unreliable narrator in the same way I enjoy solving puzzles. I like writing them, too, though I've been sometimes accused of inconsistent characterization by those who don't understand that my characters are sometimes lying to themselves.

Now, a close friend of mine - and one of my critique partners - hates unreliable narrators. She wants to know what's real and what isn't, with very little tolerance for the gray areas.

What all do you think - love or hate an unreliable narrator? Any great examples?


Saturday, January 27, 2018

What Really Matters When Balancing Your Life?

This week’s topic is how we maintain work/life balance…or whether or not you have a standing desk, a treadmill desk, believe in “butt in chair” or some other mantra. Hmmm, plenty of room there to write a post!

On the micro level, I sit at my writing desk, which is actually my great grandmother’s desk, a fact which pleases me for the continuity. I don’t think she wrote anything other than her own diary (which I’ve never seen – who knows if it even exists but didn’t every woman of her time keep some sort of journal?). My grandmother used the desk for her correspondence and I believe may have written some poetry. Then the desk came to me and I bang out science fiction romance and ancient Egyptian paranormal romance and probably both ladies would clutch their pearls at some of my scenes, but I believe they’d be supportive.

I sit in a cheap Amazon ergonomic chair at the moment, and before that had a cheap Walmart ergonomic chair that was actually better than the extremely elaborate and price-y ergo chair NASA/JPL provided me at the old day job. I used my Walmart chair until it literally fell apart after about eight years. (To be fair to the JPL chair, it had too many levers and controls that I could never figure out. It was probably extremely ergonomic if I’d ever mastered the amenities.)

I (mostly) write for a timed thirty two minute stint and then I get up and walk around, do housework or other activity on my feet for at least ten minutes before resuming my place at the desk. Why that exact time frame, you ask? Well, I used to do forty two minutes but that was too long to sit in this one spot, and thirty minutes feels too short. Go figure! Ten minutes of activity isn’t long enough to kill my creativity if I’m doing well. If I’m in the flow of writing, I never even hear the timer and I just keep writing until I realize my whole body has gotten cramped and stiff.  Forget time limits!
I have a trackball mouse, wrist braces if needed for a bad week, a lower back support and an ergonomic foot rest.

I try to walk a certain number of steps every day and to avoid sugar. Don’t ask me how I do on those goals.

And a cat to supervise my writing. Did I mention Jake?

I TRY to write at least a little bit every day, but most days I can do 2-3K words. Yes, I spend too much time on social media.

On the macro level, two events defined my approach to work/life balance, which that life is too short to waste on things I don’t enjoy or which are stressful, and that life can end at literally any moment so be sure you’re getting the things done you really care about. My family is the most important thing to me and if they need me, I’m there. And of course one has to take the trash out, go to the dentist, have a mammogram, go to the day job to support themselves and their family (before I became a fulltime author)…but life is TOO SHORT to waste forcing myself to finish reading books I’m not into, watching movies or TV shows I’m not into, cleaning the oven, taking on thankless jobs because someone expects me to do so…etc etc etc.

What gave me this attitude? I’ve talked about both things before but briefly, one evening after work my husband went out for a bike ride with his best friend and ten minutes later the neighbors were at my door to tell me there’d been a terrible accident. An athlete and former Marine, he died in the prime of life, in his mid thirties. Our children were 3 and 5. And he was literally hit by a truck, so I don't take that phrase lightly. It happens.

Second, one morning while attending a business conference I came within about 60 seconds of dying (according to the doctors), after choking on food and passing out. Only the fact that I was able to pantomime the Heimlich Maneuver to the co-worker who was at the table with me in the seconds before I lost consciousness saved my life. And the fact he was a big strong guy, who persisted in doing the maneuver fourteen times before the obstruction came loose and my brain got oxygen again. Approximately 5000 people a year die in similar incidents. I would have been done, gone, no more time to write another word or more importantly, to hug my kids.

So when it comes to your allotted time on this Earth there are no guarantees, no promises, perhaps no chance for a few last acts or even words….

I may sound cynical here but I’ve had the experiences to support what I’m saying. It may be an uncomfortable thought and everyone expects to peacefully pass away in their sleep at 105, so they feel there’s plenty of time….


Don’t waste your life on things that don’t matter to you, okay?


NOTE: Photos are Author's own or purchased from DepositPhotos