Treasure Hunting

I have to give props to my local Borders bookstore. It has an amazing romance novel section. At least two full aisles are devoted to the genre, with shelves that reach over my head. They pull hardbacks and over-sized paperbacks together, analogies are shelved with each other, and the rest is the normal by-author alphabetized.

The Barnes and Noble nearest me, which just so happens to be about 1/16th of a mile down the street from Borders, isn't quite as nicely organized. I imagine they devote the same amount of shelf space to romance because the B&N shelves go way higher than the ones at Borders. But they don't cull out special titles other than newest offerings. For some reason, shopping for romance at B&N makes me feel slightly inferior. Perhaps this is because the romance aisle is set toward the back of the store, whereas at Borders they are located in the dead center of the store. I don't feel like I'm slinking off to the back room.

Actually, though, I rarely buy romance novels at brick-and-mortar bookstores. I prefer to get them either on-line or at Walmart/KMart/Target. The former is preferable because I can buy in batches and find every single title I'm looking for at one stop. This is never the case when I go to B&N or Borders. In fact, I usually mean both stores when I throw out a "I'm going to the bookstore" because I always try B&N first (I have a membership card there and can save 10% right off the top) but then end up heading to Borders if I can't find what I'm looking for. And as shamed as I am to admit it, I like saving the buck or so I get when I buy paperbacks at the discount stores. Especially if I'm taking a gamble on a new author.

The only books I buy at B&N/Borders not on-line are new releases that I just can't wait to get my hands on. This causes its own frustration when I cruise on down, my heart thumping in anticipation, only to find out the book isn't shelved. I'm the type of person who loathes to ask for any help, so I'm stuck between wanting my book and dealing with the angst of sending a sales person to the stockroom in search of it.

One thing B&N/Borders stores have that I can't find elsewhere are the bargain books. I love love love bargain books. Especially bargain reference books. I have more books on various topics I've picked up this way, books on everything from the history of firearms to the haunted castles of Scotland. These are books I'd never go searching for on their own, books I'd normally just check out of the library on an as-needed basis, but that I just love having at my fingertips should I require an immediate fact or another. Since you never quite know what you'll find at any given moment, wandering the bargain aisles is a bit like going on a treasure hunt. And it's just not the same cruising the bargain pages of the B&N/Borders' websites.

Before kids, when my husband and I lived in the city, a favorite form of Friday and/or Saturday night entertainment was dinner and a trip to the bookstore. We could spend hours just browsing the shelves. My husband would use the bookstore as a magazine library - pull up a chair and flip through a mag while I wandered the aisles. I always felt guilty on his behalf and would nag him to just buy the dang thing and read it at home. We seldom bought books, or at least rarely ever more than one. Or two.

Now, when I find myself in a bookstore without kids, I'm like a kid in a candy store. I rarely walk out with only one book. In fact, going with the hubby has lost its charm because he always eyes my growing stack with disapproval.

And unlike my purchases from Amazon or B&N.com, I can't just mingle the new books into the shelves with the old. He knows what I'm up to.

How I'm feeding my book addiction.

Tying Up Strings

I've confessed before that I got my bug for writing by first writing fanfic. Regardless of the legal grayness involved in borrowing other people's characters and worlds and using them in your own creations, I still think fanfic is a great way to test your writing wings. Not to mention the ego boost it offers if you prove good enough to earn some positive feedback. For the fledgling writer, a bit of back patting is as essential as a good dictionary and word processing program to get you going. Heaven knows there's far too little of it once you enter the scary world of publishing.

My appreciation for fanfic not withstanding, I haven't written fanfic in well over a year and half now. All of my creative energies are focused on my own, original stuff, and the voices of those favorite characters no longer speak to me loud enough to be heard over the din of original characters. I pushed them as far as their pre-established universe (and the readers of associated fanfic) would allow. When I started adding my own, new characters to the old character's stories, new characters who I fell in love with even more so than the originals, I knew it was time to break out on my own.

But in doing so, I've left some loose strings. Particularly, I began a fairly lengthy story that I didn't finish. I put all the players in position, sent them into a deep chasm of problems and conflict, only to leave them flailing about with no light in sight at the end of their proverbial tunnels. No HEA. No resolution. Only a message promising to finish the story. At some point.

Even worse, I posted as much of this story as I had written. I put it out there and some people came and read. And then I left them high and dry. The worst thing a writer can do to a reader, and I'm guilty.

Every once in a while a reader will enquire when/if I plan to finish it. I feel huge amounts of guilt when this happens because I don't blame them for feeling abandoned. I dragged these folks on a dark ride and have left them there. It's like watching a television show that leaves one season on a horrible cliffhanger, only to have it be cancelled while on hiatus with no resolution.

So I'm thinking I should pick up the pen again on this one. I should finish it and close the box. Get those characters out of trouble, satisfy those readers that stuck with me, finish what I started.

Except, it's been 18 months since I worked on this story, and those characters aren't talking to me anymore. Those scenes aren't playing in my head on endless loop. I've tried everything to get it back. I've reread what I've already written, hoping to get back in the mood. I've looked over the snippets of scenes that I'd gotten down before I became distracted by other things. I've spent time in the shower, thinking it over. Nada. I'm about to dive into the DVDs, hoping if I watch some episodes I'll find those voices again. Hoping.

Because when I sit down with the laptop, I don't want to see that file on my desktop any longer. I'm ready to move on. Guilt free.

Other voices are calling.

I've Found Him...

...My hero to end all heroes. Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds.

This weekend I rented Serenity. I wasn't a fan of the ill-fated Firefly series on which the movie was based until after Fox cancelled the television show because it wasn't until then that I discovered Buffy and the genius that is Joss Whedon. Once I realized I might have missed a great thing, I put the Firefly series DVD on my Amazon wish list, and a dear friend got it for me for my birthday. (Dear Friend, if you are reading this, you know who you are and I HEART you!) The hubby and I watched the pilot, which I loved, but I never got around to watching the other 13 episodes.

Until now.

Mal Reynolds is not perfect as a man. Far from it. He's morally ambiguous far too often, he's too stubborn by far, and sometimes he just needs a good smack upside the head because he can't see a good thing standing right under his nose. He believes in nothing other than his own ability to survive and won't hesistate to dispatch of anyone or anything that endangers that one goal.

But he's loyal. He loves his crew and will do anything for them, despite the bluster he puts out when asked to do so. He's fearless but not stupid. He gets his butt kicked by those who are bigger and stronger, but mostly he wins the battle with quick thinking, a confidence that borders on cocky, and the simple refusal to go down without a fight. Push him too far and he becomes your worst enemy, earn his respect and love and he'll fight for you 'til death.

Sexy and nice looking yet not too pretty, his face reveals a dangerous life lived hard. His sense of humor is dry and irreverant; he doesn't take himself or the universe too seriously because he's a hair's breadth away from the edge at all times.

His backstory is noble and tragic. A rebel soldier who fought against a totalitarian government, his side lost the war, leaving him unable to fit into the society created by those who conquered him and forced to make his own place any way necesary. He'll step pretty far over the line to make a living, but he's no petty criminal or mean-spirited villain-wannabe. He simply does what he has to do to get by.

He's a cross between the old western gunslinger and the Hans Solo mold of space pirate. He'll let loose a string of Chinese expletives in one breath and banish from the dinner table a crewmember who offends a female with off-humour commentary with the very next. His shell is granite-hard, but you just know that if you can manage to crack it, inside is a tender center very few have ever encountered. His biggest fault by far is his inability to let himself be vulnerable. A challenge no girl could resist.

Nathan Fillion, the actor to whom all the credit goes for creating my shiny new perfect hero mold (along with Joss for creating Mal Reynolds in the first place) has only one flaw - his choice in other roles. As I watched Serenity, I kept trying to place where it was I'd seen him before. An IMDB search answered the question. After Firefly was cancelled, Fillion appeared in the final handful of Buffy episodes as a vile, evil murdering preacher named Caleb. The character was beyond creepy. For the role, Fillion dyed his hair darker and adopted a southern accent, but the face is the same. And I just can't get that out of my head.

But I figure with a few dozen viewings of my Firefly DVDs, all I will see will be Mal.

Meanwhile, I need to get busy campaigning with the rest of the Browncoats. Serenity needs a sequel.

Time Travel Trouble

I suppose I should change my blog header, as this, the last and perhaps the next post are about movies rather than books or writing. It's summer time, though, and I've given my brain permission to indulge in pleasures that don't require it to work so much, thus movies instead of books.

Last night my friend and I took in a 12:01 viewing of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie (woohoo - I had a movie date!!). Won't talk on that now, since there's a good chance I'll go with the hubby this weekend and may have more to say later. It's good. Really good. Kind of long, but since they feed you up some Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp eye candy, who can complain?

This afternoon I found myself with some rare kid-free time and took in a matinee of the romantic 100% chick-flick, The Lake House. It stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, both of whom I thought had oodles of chemistry between them in Speed.

Before I go any further, I want to warn about some major SPOILERS in this review. If you haven't seen it and have any plans to see it, don't read any further. I think the key to enjoying this film is seeing it cold, without knowing how it all plays out, which I explain soon.

If you've seen it or don't care about spoilers and are reading on, the premise of the movie is great. Keanu plays architect Alex Wyler, Sandra Bullock a doctor, Kate Forester. Both characters spend time in a glass-and-steel lake house designed and built by Alex's father. The story begins when Kate moves out of the lake house and leaves a note behind asking the next tennant to forward her mail. When Alex shows up and pulls Kate's letter out of the mailbox then replies to it, a correspondence between the two begins and love soon follows. The twist comes in the form of time; Alex is living in the year 2004 while Kate exists two years later, in 2006.

Up front, I can tell you that the conflict facing Alex and Kate is perfect. Until the very end of the movie, I had no idea of how the two could overcome the barrier of time to be together. I went into the movie figuring that they must be living in some kind of parallel universe situation, where his life track is simply shifted two years earlier than her life track, and the possibility of either one jumping tracks pretty much non-existent.

However, their time distance seemed to be based on some other idea of multiple time dimensions, one I never could quite figure out. Then again, time travel always leaves me befuddled.

I love the idea of time travel romances. I'm always up for the awkwardness of someone who goes back in time and has to figure out how to make due without modern conveniences. I'm not as big on the ones where characters come forward in time as I always figured the shock of life today would kill people use to the past. Either way, it's interesting for me to see how a writer (or director) can pull it off.

But I always get hung up on the whole time/space continuum deal. All of that physics stuff, about what might happen if the same person meets him or herself or if events of the past are changed, how will it affect the future? My mind starts to whirl a bit when it gets going on what seems to me an endless cycle of cause and effect and cause and effect...

Which leads me to my biggest issue of this otherwise intriguing film. Okay - here are those big SPOILERS I warned you about!

In the movie, Kate has a particularly bad day after moving from the lake house to downtown Chicago. She's having lunch with her mother in Daley Plaza and sees a man get hit by a bus. Being a doctor, she rushes to the scene and does her best to save him, but he dies anyway. Her work colleague sees her, despondent, and tells Kate she needs to get out of town to get her mind off things. Kate returns to the lake house, the one place she really felt at home. It's then that she discovers that Alex has left a response to her "please forward my mail" letter and their correspondence - and discovery of their situation - begins.

Fast forward to the end of the movie and the twist I predicted about half way through happens. Come to find out, Alex was the man killed by the bus. He'd been on his way to meet her, having learned via one of her letters that she'd be at Daley Plaza on Valentine's Day, 2006, so when his own time hit that point, he headed there. Kate figures this out and races time to send Alex a message not to come, that he'll be hit by a bus if he does.

Yes, Alex gets the message in time. So, no, he's not killed by the bus.

BUT!!! But...but...but...

If Alex isn't killed by the bus, Kate can't be despondent over having lost a patient whose life she'd tried to save. And her colleague can't see her and suggest that she go someplace she feels good. And Kate can't then go to the lake house and discover Alex's return message. And none of their correspondence would happen. So Kate warning Alex changes what happens, which means everything from that point forward is null and void. The two never know each other. Alex has no reason to be going to Daley Plaza....

See? Circles. And I'm so confused.

But more simply, the entire movie falls apart on that first unraveling. The death of the supposed stranger hit by a bus can't be the thing that inspires Kate to go back to the lake house. A huge plot hole as far as I can figure.

I think the problem comes from having the time distance between the two be only two years. I kept wondering why in the world Kate didn't just do a Google search on the name "Alex Wyler" and find out where he was in her time. In fact, her doing a Google search would have revealed to her that Alex Wyler had been killed by a bus on Valentine's Day, 2006 and she could have warned him much sooner. Eventually - accidentally - she does land in the offices of the architectural firm he created with is brother, and it's then that she discovers that he'd died two years earlier (in her past 2006, her current time now being 2008). She would have learned about his architectural firm much sooner than 2008 if she would have just fired up the old laptop in the first place.

Also, at one point, Alex and Kate do meet. Alex knows who she is, but Kate thinks he's just some stranger since in her timeline, she hasn't even lived at the lake house yet. I kept wondering why in the world Alex didn't just tell her everything or stick to her like glue. But, then again, his doing that would change Kate's future, meaning the two of them might not ever meet in the first place.

My point being, I kept seeing ways the two could meet, but when neither of them followed such a path, I tried to understand what was going on in their world that made it impossible for them to do something so simple. At one point, they do try to pre-arrange a meeting. Alex has to wait two years for it, but they pick a date and place in Kate's present/Alex's future to meet. Alex doesn't show up. Because...wait for it...he's dead. So their meeting once they've learned of each other becomes impossible because Alex was killed the day they "met" via their letters...

Aaughh! My head hurts.

So...all of this to say that the movie was good to a certain degree, but my mind just can't deal with the weirdness of time travel. I'm just not able to suspend my disbelief enough to ignore what seems to me illogicalities in the basic construct of the story.

I will say this. I love Keanu Reeves. But seeing him today makes me realize how time affects us all. He's starting to show his age, which makes me feel a lot better since I've been showing mine for some time now.

My recommendation? If you don't think too hard, this is a sweet movie, with a few tear-enducing moments and a lot of edge-of-the-seating as you wonder how and if these two will ever get together. If your mind can't deviate too far from logical, then you might want to skip it.

Supes Lite

I'm a huge Superman fan.

Actually, I'm a huge fan of the relationship between Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane.

In fact, I'd never read a Superman comic or had seen more than the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies before I fell in love with the Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman television series, starring Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain. That show made me a Superman fan...or a fan of the Superman love story, that is.

So naturally I was excited about the recently released Superman Returns movie starring Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth. Kind of accidentally, we ended up going to see it on opening night last week. I had no idea when my husband suggested we see it that it was the first night, nor how lucky we ended up being to score tickets.

Anyway, we went and we saw. And the movie is really good. I know it's getting mixed reviews, but I count myself as one of the satisfied.

Sort of.

Because as far as the Superman part of the movie went, I'm totally in the thumbs-up column.

But as for the romance between Superman/Clark and Lois, well...the movie left me a bit cold.

I won't spoil it for those who plan to see the movie. I think it's safe to offer up a brief synopsis: Superman has been gone from Earth for 5 years. During his absence, Lois has had a child and become engaged to Richard White, the nephew of her editor Perry White and played by the very nice looking James Marsden. She's moved on with her life, something that both Clark and Superman find not a little bit disconcerting upon their mutual return.

And as anyone would expect, poor Lois finds herself in quite the emotional pickle when she first glimpses those sexy blue tights and all of the muscles bulging inside of them. Her true love is back, it seems. But she's moved on. Can she press rewind and go back in time, knowing then what she knows now will happen, thus making different choices? Can she have her cake and fly with it, too?

I did feel for her. Richard White isn't a bad consolation prize by any means. Plus there's the boy child making things messy. She can't just walk away from her new life just because the bird in the bush is back. She's faced with the same choice Helen Hunt dealt with in Cast Away, when Tom Hanks shows up about 50 pounds skinnier and a lot less frenetic, but her first and truest love all the same. Does she walk away from her husband and daughter, abandon them to be with the man she loves? Or does she resign herself to a future of settling, always regretting what could have been all in the name of responsibility to those who love her now?

My problem with the romance in the new Superman movie, though, isn't Lois's dilemma or even how she eventually solves it. My issue is that I feel jipped. We viewers are dropped into the story five years after Lois and Superman had their big affair. We didn't get to see any of their falling in love or the bolt of instant heat between them or even the simmer of growing attraction. All of this is implied; we are told that Superman and Lois had some great love before he took off without so much as a see ya round.

Wha...??

But that's my favorite part!! The falling in love junk. The attraction. The heat.

It's like watching the two of them smoking their post-coital cigarettes without even seeing them meet for the first time. I know they have this great, passionate love only because I'm already familiar with the Superman mythos. If I'd been an alien from another planet who'd never heard of Superman before, I'd have been thoroughly confused. You mean these two once were in love? Go figure. And why am I supposed to care?

I suppose since this is a superhero action movie, the romance rides second fiddle to everything else. Fair enough. It's not billed as a romance or a chick film or anything of that sort. Guys wrote it for other guys, thinking if the gals didn't mind the ride, well, bonus dude. But for those of us who are Superman/Clark loves Lois fans, a big piece of the puzzle went missing.

In the end, I still loved the movie for what it ended up being. I guess I need to remove my romantic expectations for Superman and take the story as is. Kind of like Batman. There is no specific lady I expect to see as Batman's one true love, therefore I don't miss the missing romance and enjoy the movie as an action flick about a cool superhero.

I suppose this is what I get for calling myself a Superman fan without having read maybe more than three Superman comics. Does it count that I've seen every episode of Lois and Clark at least half-a-dozen times and every epi of Smallville at least twice?

Oh well. 4.5 stars out of 5 ain't bad.

Vacation, Have To Get Away

I'm heading off on vacation. Two guesses where we're going. My kids would call it the happiest place on Earth. Me? Well, I'd call it a place on Earth.

Anyway, won't be back until after July 4th. And then it's a straight shot down until school starts up again.

In 80-some-odd days.

Not that I'm counting.

Yours, Mine, Not Sure About Ours

I'm out of town this weekend. Heading down to spend some time with my family, which is always interesting and fun.

I got an e-mail from my cousin telling me she had a fabulous story idea. I can't wait to hear it. She's hilarious and highly entertaining, so I have no doubt her idea will be great.

Her e-mail got me to thinking, though, how hard I think it would be to work as a write-for-hire writer. Taking someone else's idea and very specific instructions and making it all work out. Part of the fun for me - the biggest part - is coming up with a new idea. Rolling it around in my head, listening while the characters begin speaking and telling me their stories. I could spend hours sitting in a quiet room, just thinking through ideas. You all know about me and my shower time.

Once before a writer friend and I came up with the idea of co-writing a story. Problem was, we both had different ideas of what should happen and how, and we both thought our ideas were pretty cool and good - on both sides. Hers were great ideas. Just not my ideas. And I didn't have the ability to move my creative brain in a different direction. In the end, we agreed not to write the story together, no hard feelings at all.

So, I'll listen to my cousin's idea. And I'll mull it around. See what happens.

Political Dissonance

Recently I’ve been visiting the blog of a soldier stationed in Iraq. I find his view on things over there very interesting, and he's a very good writer. Not to mention how helpful I find the descriptions, slang, and other real-world bits and pieces he offers up in a context I personally will never have the opportunity to experience (and for that, I thank him since I don’t believe I’d want to experience such a thing as war). Mil blogs are a great resource to those of us writing mil roms.

Yesterday, however, I was very much turned off by his rant against basically anyone who wasn’t like him or didn’t agree with his personal political world view. He’s staunchly hard-right conservative, with all the George Bush worshipping, anti-liberal-hippy-do-gooder bashing and media conspiracy theory pushing it involves. I found his post offensive not so much because of his beliefs – I’m a firm believer that everyone is entitled to believe as he or she chooses – but more of his overall attitude towards those who disagree with him. He claims to be a hard-core American, but I guess I find such intolerance and outspoken hatred of fellow Americans who are using their own freedom of speech to disagree with him more than a little hypocritical. Not to mention his convenient forgetting of American history in which the French had a big hand in helping the colonials out back in that first Revolutionary War, resulting in a United States of America in the first place and thus making any reminders of how the U.S. saved France’s butt from the Nazis during WWII kind of...well, not only arrogant but completely tasteless and ignorant. Regardless of what France is doing now, the past is in the past, and all debts have been paid.

All of this is not to air my disgust with this guy and his views (although, hey, it’s my blog and where else can I do it if not here?) but rather how what he thinks and believes and how he chose to express it really got to me. Long after I turned off the computer having determined maybe I wouldn’t be haunting his blog so much after all, I lay in bed fuming. And wondering how this country manages to keep going when so many of us seem to be so completely divided on such key issues. And what could this guy’s life have been like to have him end up where he is, while I’m so different.

Which led me to realize that, as a writer, I think it would be completely impossible for me to depict a character who held viewpoints so fundamentally different from my own. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine writing a character who sounds like this blogger. While I can understand some of what he’s saying – and even agree with bits of it – I don’t really like him very much. I would never be able to spend an entire book-writing’s worth of time in his company, listening to his rhetoric all the while wanting nothing more than to tell him to shut the hell up already.

I do think I have the ability to deviate from my own point of view to a certain degree. I have no problem writing characters whose religions differ from my own. I’m okay with people who are more conservative than I am or people who are more liberal than I am. I don’t get reality TV, the WWF, or jazz, but I can understand there are people out there who do. But when the needle hits the extremes, I balk. I simply don’t know how to put my own mind in a place where I can understand such attitudes. In fact, when I do go there, these characters tend to take on a more villain like-role in my mind and in the story. These people become cartoons, someone I can’t take seriously or who I use as an example of how not to be. They are never, ever the heroes or heroines in my story.

Is this the way it is with most writers or do I have a serious design flaw? Do most writers revolve a pre-determined circumference away from their own moral center, unable to reach beyond into the dark corners where their own understanding comes up empty? And if they are able to break free and write real people who think 180 degrees away from their own beliefs, how do they pull it off?

The only chance I have of working against my own belief system is when I build a character from the ground up. Rather than starting with a “Republican, pro-life, NRA card carrying member, homophobic middle-aged man”, I have to start with a child who had experiences in his life that made him turn towards a certain state of mind. I have to avoid the labels on the back end that make me want to back away slowly, my hands raised to ward off danger. I end up with something along the lines of yes, my hero is a member of the NRA, but that’s because his father was killed by a gun-toting maniac while the hero looked on helplessly, and the hero vowed he’d never be that defenseless again. There have to be concrete experiences for the reasons my characters turned out as they did rather than simply that they born into that sort of family and that’s what they were taught to believe.

No matter how I get there, I have to like the person I end up with. No matter what my characters believe – even if it does differ from my own beliefs – I can’t dislike them fundamentally. I can’t view them as boorish louts who insist on hoisting their own opinions on everyone they come in contact with and then vilifying those who don’t agree with them. I don’t have the ability to write ugly Americans unless it’s to make fun of them, and if that makes me a bad writer, then I suppose the title fits.

In the end, for me anyway, it’s not so much the beliefs a person holds but rather how that person chooses to express them. Like I said above, I do think that everyone is entitled to believe what he or she chooses. I do not, however, believe that those people have a right to inflict their beliefs on the greater public, nor to I think that hatred and intolerance towards those who are inclined otherwise is acceptable. You get a lot further with me when you respect my viewpoints while making valid, non-judgmental points to support your own cause. Calling me pro-abortion (and implying that I think abortions are to be carried out willy-nilly and just because some goofball forgot to wear a condom but no big deal) just because I support a woman’s right to choose doesn’t do much to make me want to listen to why you feel abortion is wrong.

Telling me I’m anti-American just because I question some of the decisions my government has made sure doesn’t make me want to consider the possibly valid reasons why you disagree with my viewpoint.

It’s all in the delivery. It’s why they say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Them old wives, they knew a few things.

Is It Here Yet?

Know how sherbet is supposed to cleanse the palate in anticipation of a fabu desert after a satisfying meal? I've just dished me up a heaping helping of orange because today, Lynn Viehl's long anticipated Dark Need hits the shelves. After the mundane of a Nora, I am sooo ready for this book.

I'm so ready, in fact, that I've been haunting both Wal-Mart and Borders hoping that I might scam a copy earlier than the June 6 release date. Ever since I got lucky with J.R. Ward's Lover Eternal, I've hoped I might strike gold again with some accidental early-display of a much anticipated release. I'm not so ridiculous to think I'll have my hands on Harry Potter 7 a week in advance, but, hey, it happens.

But since I'm a pragmatist, I ordered Dark Need from Barnes & Noble last week. As much as I'm dying to jump into this book, I get a 10% discount by being a B&N member (annual birthday gift from my mother which is much appreciated!) and I had a wish list long enough to qualify me for free shipping, I figured I could wait the extra couple of days for shipping. I'm going out of town this weekend and only hoped that the book would show up in time for me to take it along.

All of this, however, before PBW (writer extraordinaire of the Darkyn series) posted this excerpt from Dark Need. Can I just tell you that I'm twitching already? Thinking maybe waiting two or three days for shipping might not cut it, I figured I could always return my extra copy or give it to a friend (my cousin likes dark books, if I recall correctly...) if I might be able to find an early copy.

No such luck. And as the kids are now officially out of school and shopping for anything, even books, has taken on the appeal of a trip to the OB/GYN, I'm resigned to waiting another couple of days. It's only Tuesday, after all. So my chances of having it to read on my trip are still pretty good.

Did I ever mention that I'm not a very patient person?

I'm Trying, Part 2

Okay, I did it. I finished Sea Swept, just as I promised I would.

Was it good? I give it a solid C.

I didn't hate it. The heroine was a delight; a woman who knew what she wanted, enjoyed sex without apology, and took responsibility for her own broken heart when the inevitable Big Mis happened. Not only did she take responsibility, she saw the situation as disappointing to be sure but not life-ending or wallowing-endlessly-worthy, and she showed the proper amount of anger toward the hero and his part in hurting her. Neither a martyr nor a shrew was she.

As for the hero, he was okay. I could never get a real read on him. Cameron Quinn is supposed to be some sort of ex-playboy rakish sort, although I never really got that.

Story in a nutshell: Playboy professional racer (boats, cars, motorcycles, I got the idea he'd race anything that moved) Cameron Quinn returns to his hometown after his father dies in a car crash and leaves behind a young boy he was in process of adopting. Along with his brothers, Ethan and Phillip, Cam must convince social worker Anna Spinezzi that 10-year-old Seth belongs with them as their father had requested. While the three men try to figure out a way to mesh their individual lives in such a way as to care for Seth properly, they battle the growing rumors that their father's death wasn't an accident but rather a suicide. As you might expect, Anna and Cam begin a relationship, one which is questionable since clearly Anna's position as Seth's caseworker presents a conflict of interest between the two.

I'd chosen this story because I'd read in several reviews that the interaction between Cam, Ethan and Phillip is an amazing example of how men really act with each other. Supposedly Roberts has nailed the dialogue and sibling rivalry and nuances that make some fictional men read like real men and others like womanized-men. Too, so many had chosen this as the best Nora Roberts title out there I figured it was the best place to start.

My biggest problem with the book was that I found it a tad bit...well, boring. Sure, the characters talked like real people for the most part. And the brothers did bicker and snarl at each other like siblings sometimes do. As I mentioned above, Anna was quite refreshing as a heroine with a damaged past but a realistic outlook on life. No quaking virginal miss here, but rather a true-to-life woman who isn't afraid to look a good thing in the eye and grab it.

But the conflict throughout the story was less than intriguing. I never had any doubt that the three brothers would eventually prove acceptable guardians for Seth. And I never had any doubt that Cam wouldn't end up with Anna. The biggest obstacle in their relationship seemed to be Cam's carefree lifestyle before his return home and the fact that Cam hid inconsequential details about the insurance investigation into his father's accident from Anna. Except, I never got the idea that Cam was dying to return to his old life. Sure, he grouched around about having to wash dishes and do laundry and thought about his Porsche and felt bad when he had to turn down a lucrative racing gig. But once he and Anna were doing the horizontal mamba, he seemed fairly satisfied. Nor did Anna seem like she'd be devastated when he left, at least not until the story required that she mind it.

Too, when the big showdown hit the fan and Anna learned what it Cam had kept from her, I kept shaking my head wondering what the big deal was. I didn't blame Cam at all from not telling her; none of the information had anything to do with Seth's need for a stable homelife. Nor had Cam and Anna been a couple long enough for Anna's feelings of betrayal to ring true.

All this being said, I do have to give Roberts her due props in writing a story that I kept reading. While I wasn't dying to find out what happened, I did want to know how she'd play it all out.

The whole experience reminds me of eating comfort food. It isn't devine, it doesn't make you want to eat the entire plate and lick it clean, begging for more. The experience was pleasant and filling in a non-bothersome way, much as a slice of meatloaf fills you up, tastes pretty good, but doesn't necessarily sighing in rapture.

I do think part of my reaction to this story is my overall preferences for books with higher stakes at hand. I'm not big on family sagas, where kids play a big role and the ultimate goal of everyone seems to be the quaint little house with the white picket fence, matching minivan and SUVs sitting in the driveway, 2.8 kids, a puppy, kitten and hamster inside. I live that life. I really have no desire to read about it.

I have on hand the other three books in the Chesapeake Bay series. I have no doubt I'll read them eventually. Maybe even sooner rather than later, as they make good airplane reads and I'm heading to Florida in a few weeks.

But I'm still baffled on the whole Nora phenomenon. I just don't get the appeal - not the general appeal, just the avalanche of success that she's achieved and the legions of fans who claim her stuff is solid gold. I think it all needs to be chalked up to that old adage, different strokes for different folks.

I'm just different folks.

I'm Trying. Really.

I finally caved and picked up my first Nora Roberts.

Actually, that's not quite true. I have read a couple of the J.D. Robb "In Death" books, and once upon a time I read a novella-length Roberts in an anthology. Only thing I remember is that it was set at Christmas time and involved a poor girl and her father and some guy who was wounded and hiding out in their barn.

But yesterday I broke down and picked up a copy of Sea Swept from the library, and today I toddled over to the UBS to pick up Born in Fire, as well as the final three titles in the Chesapeake Bay series.

Up to this point, I have ignored La Nora on principle. Now, I don't know Ms. Roberts in person. I'm sure she's a wonderful, lovely woman. And I know she's paid her dues and works very, very hard for the overwhelming success she's attained. I hold no personal grudges against her and wish her only good health, long life, much happiness, and many more stories to tell. She's truly a talent and deserves the respect of the entire romance community, if for nothing else than because she's our permanent ambassador to the NYT Best Sellers list and has done more than probably any other genre writer in giving the old one-finger-salute to the literary snobs by making gazillions on those "formulaic trashy novels."

That being said, I have steadfastly refused to purchase a Nora Roberts novel because the woman is everywhere. You can't swing a figurative dead cat without hitting a Nora title or a Nora re-release or a Nora anthology, trilogy, series or stand alone. She's everywhere.

And some impish bitch inside of me simply refuses to contribute to the epidemic of Nora books blanketing the world. She certainly doesn't need my money. And she clearly doesn't need my support since there are masses upon masses who adore and worship at the altar of La Nora. I'm an eye-dropper droplet in the Pacific Ocean of Nora fans or potential fans, thus my boycott on principle doesn't hurt her a bit. I prefer to spend my bookbuying dollars on writers who actually might benefit from the sale of another copy, those who are trying to build a career from the ground up rather than raking in the gazillions from re-releases and various permutations of combining past titles while at the same time cranking out dozens of new books to glut the market, leading to a full 1/3 of the space devoted to romance novels in any given bookstore to be lined with Nora Roberts spines and face-outs. Not to mention all those NYT endcaps...

But someone answering a question I had posed over on the AAR potpourri message board suggested a Nora title to solve my problem. Then that very same title showed up in a recent AAR At the Back Fence column. When Sea Swept also appeared as the number one title on the reader-recommended top ten Nora Roberts titles list as well as earning a DIK review, I figured the gods were trying to tell me something. Maybe I should stop being a snob for no reason and give Nora a try. Maybe I was cutting off my nose to spite my face, missing the best flavor of ice cream simply because I refused to try it only because everyone else told me to.

I'm about 150 pages into Sea Swept. And my feelings so far?...Ambivalent.

Yes, I do want to finish the book. This is a humongous hurdle overcome already, since I have at least a dozen books on my TBR shelf that I gave the old 50-page college try only to put them down without any burning desire to pick them back up again. I do want to know what happens to the characters I've met so far. Sort of.

But even so, I'm still not getting it. Why the huge appeal of this woman? Why do so many sing her praises and whisper her name in reverent tones?

And I'm not just saying this because I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Texas. I have legitimate, real beefs that I truly believe would be the downfall of any writer of lesser fame and stature.

For example, head hopping in the extreme. I've heard tell that La Nora can pull off head hopping in such a way as to make it nearly invisible to the reader. She's one of a handful that can get away with it. But in my opinion, it's not invisible. Especially in a book where the POV hops not just from hero to heroine and back again but between several brothers and other characters. I always notice when it happens, and it pulls me out of the story. No, I'm not dizzy. Nor am I ever confused about who is thinking what, so to that end she does pull it off. But I'd just as soon remain in one person's head throughout the entire scene, especially since much of the hopping about seems more about giving the readers visual images of the characters rather than for better story telling.

Another problem is the use of phrases that make no sense to me or are so over-the-top poetic as to be outright silly. I encountered this phrase that made me read it over three times because I found it so bizarre: "Huddled in the dark, his body weeping at every bump, he promised himself he'd kill or he'd die before he went back." Um...body weeping? I'm not getting what that's supposed to represent. And not more than six paragraphs later, there's this to further confuse the issue: "His shirt stuck to his back; his feet began to weep." We won't go into the use of a fairly unique word as weep within two pages, but I do think it fair to question what exact imagery she is trying to conjure.

My last bitch-fest complaint is that she gets away with something that no fledgling writer in her right mind would ever even attempt. The first time we meet the heroine of Sea Swept, she's all alone, driving in her car. We are in her POV and only her POV since there is no-one else around to have a POV. Yet we get a description of her physical features, from hair color and style down to her pale gold skin and almond-shaped eyes, including such un-modesty as "Her mouth was full, with a ripe bottom lip." It's as close to the old looking-in-the-mirror technique as you can get without a piece of shiny glass nearby. Now, I understand that such descriptive works in a distant third-person narrative. Perhaps that's what's happening in this case. We aren't really in the heroine's brain but looking at her from high above. Not only does this cause a distance from the character for me, but with such phrasing it actually serves to make the heroine seem pretty darn full of herself, thinking she's a sexy mama with that ripe bottom lip. What woman thinks of her own lower lip as ripe?

Before I come off as the she-bitch-from-hell, these issues with craft really aren't any big deal. I've enjoyed many a book with much worse. I'm the kind who believes that a great story can overcome craft flaws easily, and because I'm intending to finish Sea Swept, obviously nothing in it so far has offended my writer sensibilities to the extreme.

It's just that for someone so entirely famous, so clearly the icon of an entire genre and so frequently held aloft as the bar for which we all strive, I expected perfection. I expected to be blown out of my socks, so swept away in the story that any craft issues would be invisible. I even went the extra mile to choose what many people say is the best of the best of her work. But I keep getting jerked out of the story.

I know. Maybe it's just that I'm looking for problems. Maybe I want this poor woman to fail in my estimation, so I'm just being a nitpicking fussbudget determined to be displeased. Maybe I should just shut my mouth and my writer's brain and try to enjoy the story.

To that end, I can promise to finish the book. To give it the entire go rather than judge it after only a few pages. I do have my principles, though. No guarantee I won't get any necessary Nora fixes via the library or the UBS. She won't miss me at all.

Three's A Crowd

A couple weeks ago, I rented the movie Tristan & Isolde. I'd wanted to see it when it was in theatres but, you know, those pesky kids and their inability to see rated R movies.

Funny thing is that the DVD sat on the TV cabinet for nearly two full weeks before I was in the mood to actually watch it. This is the kind of movie practically written to my personal tastes: a romance, set in medieval times, with a hunky knight hero and a beautiful lady. Throw in a handful of action scenes that aren't too gruesome and I'm in movie Nirvana. But, for whatever reason, until last night I just wasn't in the mood for it. Weird.

Anyway, the movie itself was pretty good. Not buy-the-DVD fantastic, but worth the two-hours to watch it good. Which leads me to ask why I didn't love love LOVE it since, like noted above, it contains all of the elements I want most in a good story.

For those unfamiliar, Tristan and Isolde is actually an ancient legend about starcrossed lovers and forbidden love. There are a variety of incarnations of the story, and on the DVD's Behind the Scenes featurette, the screenwriter said he felt this gave him some creative license to do what he wanted with the script since there was no "definitive" original. I'm fine with that. I'm even more fine because the writer chose to leave out the love potions that you often find in the traditional Tristan and Isolde tales. I want real love, not manufactured lust.

Anyway, the story is frameworked on the Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere love triangle almost exactly, although technically Tristan and Isolde came first so it's the other way around. Tristan is a knight, serving Lord Marke during the period in history after the Romans had withdrawn from Britain and all of the tribes were fueding with each other. These tribes face a common enemy - the king of Ireland - yet they can't seem to get it together enough to fight as one entity and defeat him. During one battle with the Irish, Tristan is wounded with a poisoned sword. The wound isn't mortal, but the poison paralyzes him enough that his comrades determine he's good and dead and send him out to sea on a funeral pyre boat. Thankfully a passing rain shower keeps the not-dead Tristan from burning to a crisp.

Eventually Tristan's boat washes up on the Irish shore, where he is discovered by the king's daughter, Isolde. She tends to his wounds and heals him, hiding the Englishman from her father while giving Tristan a false name so he won't know who she really is (not sure why she does this). During his recouperation, Tristan and Isolde fall in love. This is the best part of the movie, IMO, the only part that inspired me to rewatch all of ten minutes.

Tristan must return to England since it is rather suicidal of him to stay in Ireland, and when he gets back, he's adequately mopey, despondent over having had to leave Isolde behind. He'd asked her to come with, but she declined for reasons I'm still not quite sure about. When the Irish king offers his daughter as a prize in a tournament, hoping that this contest will further alienate the various English tribes from each other, Tristan leaps at the chance to go back to Ireland and fight in Lord Marke's name, no doubt hoping he'll score a bride for his master and find his own lady love and convince her to come back to England this time. Or maybe just drag her off by her hair so he can stop moping.

Naturally, Tristan wins the tournament. And, naturally, he is devastated to learn that the bride he has won for Lord Marke is none other than Isolde.

Okay...from here on out are SPOILERS, so read on at your own risk.

Tristan and Isolde return to England. Despite her pleas for them to run off and be together, Tristan remains firm and insists that honor and duty are more important than love, telling Isolde she must marry Marke and they must forget about their feelings for each other. Isolde marries Marke. What follows is probably the most realistic portrayal of wedding night sex between two strangers in an arranged marriage I've ever encountered. But Isolde holds up like a trooper. Marke is a good man, she can't help but like him, and even if she wishes every single second that it was Tristan in her life and bed, she sucks it up fairly well.

Tristan, on the other hand, doesn't do so good. He walks around with perpetual tears in his eyes, slowly going crazy over the idea of Isolde with Marke. When he accuses her of liking Marke too much, she throws it back at him that it was him who told her she had to do her duty. But she also tells him she will meet him whenever he wants for a little on-the-side nookie. Tristan folds like a house of cards, and their affair begins.

As you might suspect, everything falls apart when enemies of Marke conspire with the Irish king and the lovers are revealed. I won't be specific, suffice it to say, the ending is far from the normal romance HEA. Tristan and Isolde is, was, and always will be a tragedy in the fine Romeo and Juliet tradition.

So, other than the ending, what was it about this movie that didn't quite nail it for me? I'm hard pressed to say. The actors chosen for the roles were well placed. Sophia Myles was beautiful as Isolde, but not so gorgeous as to make her completely unreal. Rufus Sewell fit the idea of an Arthur-like ruler, strong yet capable of falling in love with Isolde and feeling real pain when he thinks she has feelings for another man. And James Franco made an amazing young knight, handsome and brave and sexy enough to entice any married woman to stray.

Although, I do think Franco played the despondent lover a little too damply. He spent a healthy portion of the movie with tears in his eyes. While I think it an admiral trait for an actor - especially a male one - to be able to summon tears when necessary, it's hard to imagine a real man of that time walking around looking as if he were about to burst out sobbing at any second. Sure, you really got the sense that Tristan was suffering, but I don't know that the constant waterworks made me believe Tristan and Isolde's love was any deeper or more passionate or more tragic than any other love. More, I got the idea that if the movie had been set in modern times, Tristan would have been the type to write bad poetry and listen to Air Supply ad nauseum. He was just a bit too nouveaux sensitive man for the time being portrayed.

Another thing that got me because it bordered on the Big Mis. After Marke discovers Tristan and Isolde's affair, he locks Tristan in the dungeon (of course). When he asks Tristan to explain, I'm screaming at the screen for Tristan to tell Marke how he had met Isolde in Ireland, before the contest and before knowing who she really was and what winning her would mean. But Tristan - tearfully - keeps his silence. As if nothing he could say would justify what he had done. Thing is, Marke wasn't an evil character who would be so consumed by the affront to his ego that he wouldn't have understood the situation.

In fact, when Isolde - wisely - tells Marke the truth of the matter, he forgives them both. He can see that this wasn't a betrayal of him based on the over-active libido of two people who should have controlled it, but rather the continuation of something that had started long before he entered the picture. In fact, in light of his feelings for Isolde, Tristan's actions were almost heroic. Instead of running off with her as he most likely wanted to do more than anything, he brought her home to Lord Marke and watched the woman he loved become the wife of another man.

Finally, because of the situation of the story, there was no way to acheive any sort of happily ever after. Not that I need to always have the HEA to enjoy something. But I need to feel good about what happened before the unhappily ever after. At one point, Isolde asks Tristan why loving him felt so wrong. I agreed with her. No matter how deep or passionate or true their love for each other was, because of the situation, no one could ever feel good about it. Even if Marke had died and the two of them could have been together legitimately, it all felt wrong.

And this isn't even because the two were committing adultry. Because their love pre-dated Isolde's marriage to Marke, because she didn't have any choice in marrying Marke, I didn't feel that Isolde wronged anyone by having an affair with Tristan. It's not as if she promised Marke she would remain faithful because she had feelings for the man. Her marriage was all about duty, and for Isolde, love trumped duty hands down. Tristan, on the other hand, felt the opposite, so his betrayal of Marke struck him more deeply. The sacrifice for being with Isolde was simply too great, or at least too great for the love we'd been shown on screen. That love didn't ring strong enough for me to bear the burden of the crimes the two lovers were committing.

I think the mistake happened when Isolde refused to return to England with Tristan at the very beginning. After that, there was no going back. And since I'm still not quite sure why she didn't just go with him - her sense of love being more important than any duty to her father or her people - all that followed felt false.

Which explains much to me about the Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere scenario. I always wondered why Lancelot and Guinevere never got together after Arthur was killed. Even if those around them would have accepted such a match, something about it would have always been wrong.

I suppose this is why I'm not a big fan of love triangle stories. I'm not liking much the Jack/Kate/Sawyer thing on Lost, either. Someone is going to get hurt. And when no-one is a bad guy, even the winners become losers.

In the end, I give Tristan & Isolde a B-. Worth watching once because it does get a couple things right. But I guess I just like a little less tragedy in my Tragic Love Stories.

Good For You and Tastes Good, Too

I tend to hold a reverse prejudice against literary fiction. Not that I haven't read a lot of it in my day. Honestly, some of the best books I've ever read are literary fiction. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. Sea Glass by Anita Shreve. Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, although this last one might be labeled a romance by the purists among us. I've been in book clubs and I consider myself fairly well read, so it's not like I avoid literary fiction as a rule. My snobbery comes in the form of defense against those who snub their noses at anything non-literary. Any time a group of people shoves something in my face and declares it better than what I do/read/write/enjoy, I'm prewired to reject it as a matter of course.

This said, my latest read is what I would consider a literary novel. It's actually labelled Young Adult, but I enjoyed it thoroughly on a very adult level. Whatever it is, it's certainly not romance in any shape or form.

Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings is the story about 13-year-old Brady Parks, a boy who lives and works on the shores and waterways of the Chesapeake Bay. He's a good kid, mature beyond his years, with loving parents and a good if not easy life. His friends are true, and until one fateful morning changes everything, Brady's future looks bright. A young mother and her son, Brady's neighbors, take a morning kayak ride that turns tragic when the kayak sinks and the three-year-old boy nearly drowns. Brady is instrumental in the rescue of Ben D'Angelo, but his efforts prove fruitless when the boy eventually dies from over-exposure to the chilly water. Brady is crushed and finds it difficult to handle the senseless death of someone so young.

But things become even more complicated when Brady discovers evidence that the kayak accident might not have been so much an accident as sabotage. Even worse, it looks as if his two best friends might have had a hand in it. Brady struggles desperately with what to do; the right thing, which might ruin his own life as well as those of his friends, or the easy thing, which isn't necessarily the easiest when his own conscience begins to pull at him.

The story is told in first person from Brady's POV. He's an amazing kid, level headed and responsible beyond his years. In fact, if I'd have any criticism at all, it might be that Brady is somewhat adult in his outlook on the world considering his lack of time in it. But this didn't detract from the story one bit because when Brady finds himself facing the grieving Mrs. D'Angelo the first time or when he discovers the evidence that implicates his friends, his utter lack of direction rings so very true. He struggles terribly in situations that would make any adult squirm.

The suspense in the story is tightly woven yet so subtly accomplished you don't realize why it is you just can't put the book down. From page to page I turned, wondering what Brady would do. Yet there wasn't that heart-pounding tension in so many suspense novels where the good guy is running from the bad guy, trying to prove himself innocent or them guilty. Brady's struggle was mostly internal, and time after time I ached for him to just tell his parents or his older cousin, Carl, so the poor boy could unload his heavy burden from his own, narrow shoulders.

The ending is not pat. Things don't get easy for anyone. Cummings has a chance to cop out with some easy solutions, giving heart-string-tugging motivation behind the actions of Brady's two misguided friends that could allow her to wash her hands of the mess she's created. But she doesn't do that, even though all loose strings were tied up neatly and there is a definite sense of completion and hope. Brady grew on me as a character in such a way that I want to know what happens to him next. The sign of a truly good book for me is when I'm sad to finish the last page and leave the character behind when I'd just as soon keep on hanging out with him or her. I'll miss Brady Parks. A lot.

This book reminded me a lot of John Knowle's A Separate Peace. I read that book over 20 years ago, in high school, but the theme of the actions of meanness and their repercussions still echo in that dusty corner of my brain occupied by Great Works of Literature I was made to read.

If you are looking for something that goes down smooth yet leaves you with more than empty calories, pick up this book and give it a chance. Red Kayak is up for a 2007 Rebecca Caudill award, and I certainly think it deserves a lot of recognition. At the very least, I hope teachers out there discover this potential classic and encourage kids to read it. It certainly make you think about what's right and what's easy and what you might do in such a situation.

It gives literary fiction a good name.

So...Tempting...

My family got me The Sims 2 for Mother's Day.

It's something I had asked for, so I was quite pleased to receive it.

But here it is, two weeks after Mother's Day, and I have yet to load the program on my machine to start playing with it. Because I'm really scared.

Scared that it's going to suck so much time the entire world will feel the pull toward my exact latitude and longitude, possibly throwing the time-space continuum as we know it into chaos.

I never do anything less than 110%. When I latch onto an idea or interest or hobby or passion, I jump in with both feet, entire torso, arms, fingers, head, hair, everything. I don't believe in dabbling. I go for full life immersion or nothing.

So loading up Sims 2 and creating characters and worlds and building houses - all of which sounds so cool to me - stands to pretty much take over my entire life. This is something I just can't afford right now. We are heading into summer vacation, which means my time already will be sucked dry with kid-things and trips and summer stuff. Last thing I need is a new addiction to a cyber-world.

Funny thing, the reason I wanted Sims 2 in the first place is that I thought it might allow me to take my characters and make them three dimensional. I thought, perhaps, I might be able to work out some scenarios on my computer screen, get an idea of how things really look outside the theatre of my brain. But I know what will happen is that I'll get wrapped up in stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with my current WIPs. Before I know, three months will have passed by with not a single word added to anything I'm working on right now, but I'll have a couple dozen new characters clamoring to be heard.

I must follow the advice of Nancy Reagan. I'm just saying No to Sims 2.

For now.

Well, Jim, I Was Walking Down The Street...

Meljean made a comment to Wednesday's post that ties in with my current dialogue issues:

"I find I end up with speeches." Meljean remarked.

I'm with you on that one, too. If my characters aren't exchanging banal banter, one character is monologuing at the other one.

This is an especially tough challenge when I want one character to divulge some bit of backstory to another character. I have yet to master the art of dripping backstory into the main narrative in such a way that readers absorb it by osmosis. Instead, I seem to rely on one character going the "When I was a lad..." approach.

But, in my defense, I feel somewhat as if my hands were tied. A lot of my characters have interesting backstories, and usually there is one or two defining incidences that have put them in the position of being the right character for the particular story at hand. Many times, I have imagined these character-shaping scenes in my head to great detail, and it makes me sick to boil them down to something as simple as "my mother was a bitch" or "my boyfriend left me when I was sixteen." A lot of times, those backstory events are as interesting to me as the story at hand. (And did you notice the liberal use of to me, since I do know that sometimes backstory is boring to everyone else.)

Since prologues in general are a no-no, that leaves me either to ignore backstory-critical moments or to find another way to reveal what happened. I know flashback can be used to great advantage, but I also know that it takes a master to work flashback in such a way as to keep the current story from grinding to a sickening halt. I'm working on mastering that technique.

Meanwhile, I seem to rely on the old "Tell me what happened..." dialogue, wherein said characters are in such a place with some time to kill that they can bare their deepest darkest secrets. I find that this method accomplishes a couple things for me.

1) It demonstrates that the characters - usually the hero and heroine, but sometimes two good friends - have reached a point in their relationship where trust has solidified enough to reveal their damaged selves.

2) It establishes a new sense of intimacy between the characters. After the confessing, they know each other better than anyone else. There is a new level of connection there.

3) It explains to Character A why Character B behaves in a certain way and clears up any Big or Not-So-Big Misunderstandings that hover beneath the surface.

4) It allows me to portray relevant backstory in such a way that it (hopefully) effects the reader on an emotional level, helping her (or him) to empathise with the character more deeply. Well, yeah, if the evil step-dad killed her puppy, no wonder she hates all men with a passion.

5) It allows me to show, not tell. Sort of. Technically, one character is telling the other character what happened. But in the words chosen, it the depth of description and details revealed, you can achieve so much more than what could happen in straight narrative.

6) Because the injured character is reliving the past vicariously in the telling of it, you can bring to fore emotions that character might have experienced at the time. Nothing more effective than that big, strong Alpha-male breaking down sobbing as he explains how devastated he was when his mother died when he was only 10.

So, as I see it, lots of good reasons to use conversation as a place for backstory dumpage. But I do know it needs to be done with some finesse. That's the part I'm struggling with. How to go about things so you don't end up with pages and pages of paragraphs with only the occasional quotation mark to remind the reader that someone is speaking and that they haven't accidentally walked into a 1st person POV story run amok.

A final benefit to this method, albeit one the readers might not ever see or appreciate, is the ability to have the character tell his or her story in his or her voice (allowing practice in nailing that voice) and having all the pertinent details spelled out in one place. Kind of akin to having a character write his or her own biography during the character creation phase, only on an incident-specific level.

I'm a big fan of the "Tell me what happenened..." approach. Hope that's okay.

Speech Impediments

I love writing dialogue. A lot of times, I'll type dialogue without any quotation marks or speech tags, just letting the back-and-forth flow from my fingers as if I were transcribing a conversation. I then go back and add in who's saying what to whom, what they are doing, expressions and reactions, the like.

Only thing is, I'm finding my dialogue is chock full of speech tics. Not so much the "ums" we all stammer on occasion, especially when we feel put on the spot. I'm talking about the "Ohs" and the "Wells" and the "Yeahs." Not to mentions quite a few "Sos".

I end up with something like this.

"Well, I think it's time we have a talk," Brenda said.

"Oh?" Barney replied. "I'm don't know. We've gone this long - "

"Yeah, and I'm getting pretty tired of it. When we started this relationship, I thought things were going to be fifty-fifty. Full partners."

"So, what's the problem?" Barney steeled himself, preparing for the worst.

"Well?" Brenda glared at him. "Are you ever going to let me hold the remote?"

I also find that my characters do a lot of echoing, as if they stood at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

"I can't believe you're accusing me of that," Barney said.

"Accusing you of what?" Brenda replied.

"Of hogging the remote. Didn't you have it just last night?"

Brenda snorted. "Last night? I was out with the girls last night."

"Oh, yeah," he said. "That's right. But I know you had it the night before."

If my characters aren't throwing around empty-calorie words or repeating each other, they're asking "what" way more than they should, as if they'd been hit with some hearing problem or are kind of on the obtuse side.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"What?" Barney said.

"The remote. How are we going to work this out?" Brenda demanded.

"Well, we could go with the Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday approach, with alternate Sundays thrown in."

Brenda studied him a long moment. "You know something?"

"What?"

"I love you."

I think my problem comes from transcribing dialogue as I hear it in real life. I want things to sound and flow naturally, hoping that if my characters sound like they are talking like real, living and breathing human beings do, they will come across as three-dimensional, real people. It's not so much that I engage in bagels n' coffee talk, wherein my characters go through the whole hello-how are you-I'm fine-how's the family-great, and yours song and dance. Nor do they discuss weather or the state of current sports scores. The dialogue I write is necessary to move the story forward and reveals things about the characters and their relationships with each other.

It just seems to take them a long time to get anywhere. Not to mention, this habit is killer on my word count. I might reach 10,000 words and discover a good 2,000 of them are filler speech tics.

I need to work on this. Yeah.

This 'N That

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day.

Mine was quite nice. My husband, for all he loves to drive me crazy, knows exactly how to give me a lovely Mother's Day. He wrangled the kids - took them shopping and out to lunch - in order to give me some peace and quiet. I used this time to write and ended up spending almost the entire day lost in my story. I honestly can't think of a nicer way to spend a dreary Sunday, so I'd have to say my day was pretty close to perfect.

And, to end it all, the final episode of The West Wing aired. I'm sad the show is over. It was one of only a couple that both hubby and I enjoyed and could watch together. The characters were wonderfully three-dimensional, the dialogue so sharp and quick I often had to watch a second or third time to get it all. The cast was extraordinary: I honestly don't think I can recall a single performance by a regular or guest that I didn't find spot on.

I'm going to miss the show a lot. I understand that this was the best time for it to end, while it was still good and at the natural break between the Bartlett administration and the one to follow. But over the past two seasons, I've gotten to know the new characters well enough that I think another season or two following their progress might have been nice.

My daughter and I watched Bridget Jones' Diary this weekend. I'd seen it before, of course, but I'd forgotten how funny the movie is. The fight between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant is laugh-out-loud worthy. I don't know what the British folks out there think, because I know they were a bit miffed over the casting of Renee Zellweger as Bridget, but I think she did an amazing job in the role. And of course Colin Firth knocked me out with his Mark Darcy.

Funny thing is that I have the book but I've never read it. Now I'm motivated to do so, and after the first chapter or so, I'm really enjoying it.

Which leads me to declare that I honestly believe I may be one of only 10 people in the whole wide world who hasn't read Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. I'm actually holding off now until I see the movie, because I figure I'm one of the very few who will be able to give an honest assessment of the movie as a movie rather than how it compares to the book. Newspapers should call me up for interviews, don't you think?

Only three and half weeks until school lets out for the summer. I'm starting to panic.

Be All That You Want to Be

Know what the very best thing about having a writer's brain is? It's the ability to be anyone and to do anything.

The other day I happened to cruise past my local UBS, and I thought about how cool it would be to own a used book store. I thought about how crammed full of books my UBS - called Cornerstone Books - is, how it has floor-to-ceiling shelves from wall to wall overflowing with used books of every genre and subgenre. The romance section is situated all the way in the back, with overflow heading into the stock room (and I've mentioned how I'm never sure if I'm allowed to peruse the offerings in this stock room, but I do anyway). I thought about how the UBS in my mother's town has an amazing romance novel section, with books divided and subdivided by theme, author, subgenre, etc.

Which led me to thinking about how I would do it if I owned a UBS.

Then I wondered if a UBS dedicated to selling only (or primarily) romance books would ever be viable as a business entity. Would it go under because there isn't a big enough market or would it be a smashing success because it focuses on one small slice of the reading pie in such a way as to do it justice? I even thought of a great name for it: Romancelandia Books.

But, being practical and a realist, I do know the downside of owning a bookstore, or any service-related business for that matter. You have to work crazy hours, including weekends. You have to stress about employees, inventory, vendors, payroll, rent, etc. All those minute details required to operate a business. Owning your own store/restaurant/whatever involves pretty much an entire-life commitment, and unless you are unique in some way, chances of long-term success are pretty slim.

BUT...I rationalized as I drove around...no reason one of my fictional characters couldn't own a bookstore. No reason I couldn't live out the fantasy, even including the downside, on paper. Talk about low risk, no risk, right? And because it's my world I'm creating, my character's endeavor CAN be a smashing success simply because I say so, assuming, of course, I've made a reasonably realistic case for it.

So, no matter what zany idea occurs to me - like back during my junior year of college when my roommate and I went to Sea World over spring break and I decided I wanted to become a dolphin trainer - I can find a way to make it happen. In the course of my small lifetime, I can be anything I want to be via the characters that I bring to life.

How cool is that?!

Free At Last

We're coming to the end of the television season, and I'm so glad.

It used to be that I was so disappointed when my favorite shows would go on Summer hiatus. I'd lament all the reruns and how there was nothing on to watch, gnashing my teeth over any cliffhangers that needed to be resolved.

Now, I'm excited to get those free hours. Because in the summer, there is nothing I feel compelled to watch.

I know this sounds ridiculous. Like I have no control over what I do with my time, that someone is forcing me to watch The West Wing and Lost and Grey's Anatomy every week. If I don't miss these shows over the summer, why don't I just kick the habit altogether and stop watching?

As many times as I've read about writers who claim they don't watch TV, I don't think there is anything wrong with devoting yourself to a show or two. TV shows, especially those hour-long dramas, offer up some excellent examples of storytelling, both how to do it well (Lost) and how to completely muck it up (Smallville). Watching episodes from an early season as compared to ones from a later season can demonstrate how characters grow and change over time (a la The West Wing's Donna Moss). And the season-finale cliffhangers certainly prove that leaving 'em hanging is the way to keep 'em coming back for more.

Plus, sometimes my writer brain needs a rest. Sometimes I need to not think. Nothing better for this than vegging on the couch for an hour or so and letting someone else do the heavy storytelling lifting.

Besides, I use TiVo, the best invention ever since flush toilets, so I can shift when and how I watch what I want to watch. I don't suffer commercials, so my hour-long dramas really only require a 50 minute commitment. If I miss a week or two, it's a nice evening's worth of time to catch up. Plus, I can't write while I'm eating my lunch anyway, so I might as well enjoy a Buffy rerun.

But, it will still be nice this summer to not have unwatched episodes of Lost hanging over my head. When I pause to think what night it is and what show will be TiVoing and whether or not the hubby will want to watch it with me, I can smile and know that I'm not missing anything at all.

The key, I think, is to use those hours gained over summer hiatus to actually write. If I spend an average of 5 hours a week on TV programs (and there really are only 5 shows I make an effort to watch), I need to log 5 extra hours of writing every week this summer.

Maybe these 5 hours will make up the loss in hours I'm going to experience having two kids home from school 24/7. I got As in math, so I'm pretty sure I'll still end up in the negative column.

Likelihood of Failure? Too High

The other day the thought occurred to me that, maybe, I was making things too hard on myself. Here I was, knee deep in world building and developing a village's worth of characters and trying to interweave the plots and subplots of half-a-dozen hero/heroine pairs, when I began to wonder if maybe I should Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Maybe I should start with something more basic. Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl have issues that keep them apart. Boy and Girl overcome issues and live Happily Ever After. All of it set in today's real world. All of it told without convoluting the picture with brothers and sisters and best friends waiting in the wings for their own stories.

Maybe, what I needed to do, was start with a category romance. Two points of view, max. A sweet (or at least a little spicy) story that centers around one couple and a fairly straightforward problem. Guidelines from the publisher that keep me in line. Something...simple.

Not that writing category romances is simple. There is nothing simple about taking the same old worn out tired plot and stock characters and finding a new, fresh way to employ them, all within a word-count limit that I think of as more of a novella length than a true novel. When it's done well, the category romance is a sight to behold.

But, let's face it, part of the appeal - and demands of the publishers - of category romance is that they follow a straightforward path with jogs and bends that are a bit softer than the single title. Too, the very word limit keeps a writer like me from wandering off the road to explore all kinds of tangents. To write a category romance, you pretty much have to stick with the story at hand. They don't suffer rebels well.

Except, I'm generally not a big reader of category romance. I'm a fan of the more complex, the sub-plots and extra characters and the sweeping worlds you only find in single titles.

And...big admission here...I don't seem to have much luck in regards to quality when it comes to the categories I pick up.

Case in point. I went on line and made a list of all the series lines in Harlequin's and Silhouette's stables. List in hand, I trotted off to the UBS to stock up on a handful of each so I could do some research. Would I be more of a Silhouette Intimate Moments gal (which seemed to be the obvious choice since Suzanne Brockmann's Tall, Dark and Dangerous series SIMs are some of my all-time favs of any genre) or maybe I'm the Harlequin American Romance kind. What, exactly, is the difference between a Harlequin Romance and a Silhouette Romance? And why are the Super Romances super? Since I'm not a big reader of any specific line, I figured maybe I just needed to jump in and find one I really liked, and there I might make a home.

OT - does anyone else notice how the graphics on the eHarlequin website of all of those couples look much like the couples in ED advertisements?

My local UBS has an entire wall of category romance. Granted, it's stuck in the back of the store, through the door that leads to the stock room. Some of the wall was blocked by the towering bags and boxes of books recently dropped off, and I didn't have the guts to go so far as shift stuff around to help myself. In fact, I'm never even sure if I'm really allowed to go back there in the first place unless I have some kind of special access authorization, like the owner of the store only lets her very best most favorite customers see what she has to offer in the way of category. But since I had a mission, I risked it and stood in the stock room eyeing the booty before me.

I was immediately struck by the number of "secret babies" and "virgins" and "brides" that seem to populate the genre. I knew they were out there, but until you see probably a thousand books all in one place, a good 80% of them with either baby, virgin or bride or some combination of two or all of the above in the title, you don't realize how much of a cancer these themes have become.

Since I have no intention of writing about secret babies or virgins or brides (or billionaire Greek/Italian/Texas/Businessmen tycoons), I immediately passed by any with such a title. I tried to look for names I recognized (do you know how many different people write category romance? I had no idea) and general themes that appeal to me - ex-Spec Force guys, tortured pasts, rescue scenarios, friends into lovers, that sort.

I walked out of the UBS with only five books. Because frankly, the whole thing was just too overwhelming for my tiny brain to fathom. Plus, I'd brought the dog with me and could hear her barking up a storm in the car, embarrassing me to no end.

I came home, plopped down in front of the laptop and logged on to AAR to see if the titles I'd chosen had been reviewed. Just curious since I'd chosen these five pretty much working blind.

And here's the reason I don't buy category romance. Of the five books I'd selected, three of them had earned a 'D' grade, two of them flat out 'Fs'. Normally, I won't let a low grade stop me if I really want to read the book. But reading the reviews and the flaws pointed out by the reviewers as reasons for the low grades, my hopes sank immediately that it just might be a matter of personal preference. These books had serious flaws, not just an irritating quirk that irked that specific reviewer but might not bother me a whit.

Out of over 1,000 books at my fingertips, I'd selected five that avoided my hot buttons and should have appealed to my reading preferences, and not a single one of them came recommended in any sort of way. Granted, I was shopping in a UBS, which by it's very nature implies that the books you'd find there aren't necessarily keepers. But come on. Five out five given a failing grade by those who are supposed to like category romance as a genre? This experience completely confirmed my overall experience with category romances I've bought off the shelf in bookstores.

And it solidified my reluctance to read in the genre. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the recent five I've acquired. I still need to do that research (sort of), so I may give them a shot. But with all my other TBRs plus the gazillion other things I have to do, it's not looking good.

The quality of category romance is simply too hit or miss for me. Unless, like Brockmann, it's a proven entity, I just do not see risking my time and money on an unknown because the likelihood that I'm going to be disappointed is just too great.

Again, not to dis the writers of category romance. It's not an easy gig. And I don't think the publishers make it any easier. I have no idea if it's a matter of the high demand leading publishers to accept less than stellar work, or if my expectations are just too damn high. But when the chance that anything I select will rate a D or F is near 100%, I'm just not very motivated to try and try again to find a winner.

It reminds me of those crane games you find at restaurants and pretty much everywhere they think kids will be bored and try to sucker their parents into giving them a couple quarters. You know, the game where you steer the giant claw-on-a-chain until it's poised over the prize you want, usually the only cool stuffed animal in the massive plexiglass box. Then you hit the button, the crane drops the claw which grasps wimpily at your object of lust only to grab air before moving back into position to await the next sucker. It keeps your 50 cents and you walk away with the burn of disappointment in your belly. I try to explain to my kids that you might as well take your 50 cents and drop it down the sewer drain because the likelihood of losing that game is pretty much guaranteed.

I kind of feel that way about category right now. Unless it comes highly, HIGHLY recommended or is someone I've come to know writes very well via their blog (and I do have a stack a mile high of TBR categories by writers I know via their blogs, which I expect will be very good), it's just not worth the risk to come up with nothing but air and a bitter disappointment.

Which, I guess, means I shouldn't consider writing category. If I don't want to read them to do the research to find out how, then I don't have much of chance of succeeding in writing them.