Tag: Author

Notions

Published on by Jaye2 Comments
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smok...
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking cigar. Español: Sigmund Freud, fundador del psicoanálisis, fumando. Česky: Zakladatel psychoanalýzy Sigmund Freud kouří doutník. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In reading and writing, who owes what to whom, I wonder.

Does the author owe it to the reader, to pander to their preconceived ideas and ideals?  Or is it the duty of the reader to put those notions aside at the door and open their mind to the text before them?  Perhaps both?

In a perfect world, to me, there would be no genre.  It’s a sticky thing.  It’s a useful tool, somewhat, for knowing what themes and tropes — what tools and building blocks — were used to create the story, but at the same time it can be a detrimental thing as readers may flock to a book thinking it’s something it isn’t, or scorn it for the same reason and all because of which shelf in the store it’s on, or which cute little sticker the library put on the spine.

In some ways, I do think authors owe a little to the reader.  I think, for example, that an author should not write a book that has signs of being built on fantasy themes and tropes, then call the short stocky things with beards and axes ‘elves’.  Most certainly she could do this.  It’s her world and story after all!  B’God write your story, not what someone else tells you it ought to be; but, and this is important, make a little concession to the reader by introducing that the short stocky bearded things are elves.  It comes down to description.  Don’t take for granted that your reader will decide that an elf is short stocky and bearded with an axe penchant.  However, if your elves are tall willowy and fae, then you need only say ‘elf’, because you’ve hit the natural assumptions.

The reader, however, owes the author a bit of slack.  Tropes, stereotypes, genre conventions, and so forth can only take us so far — we can only combine those in so many ways before we’ve run out of stories, unless we tinker and tamper with them.  We need to sometimes have dwarves that love trees, elves who love axes, and dragons who dance ballet.  We need redheads with the temperament of Mother Theresa, and blondes who’re super-geniuses.  We need sex-crazed Bible-thumpers, and professional companions who’ve taken vows of chastity.

Some notions, too, aren’t … natural.  These are personal notions.  This is nudity does not equal sex.  ‘He stood before her, admiring her nude form …’ can be the start of a sex scene or the start of a session in a photography studio.  Even if he’s naked as well.  And gay does not equal horny.  It means happy or homosexual.  ‘Jillian admired Ariel’s full, round breasts as she shifted her grip on the tattoo gun and …’ isn’t going to start a sex scene, Ariel is getting a tattoo from Jillian, who happens to admire women.

When we enjoy fiction created by another, we should consider that this person does not think as we think, do as we do, know as we know.  The fiction creator should ask himself, what is my audience going to absolutely know?

If you’re Michael Bay, agreeing to make the Transformers movie, you know your audience knows there ought to be giant robots, and they ought to fight; strangely some of the critics turned out to not know this … but that’s just proof that you’ll never please everyone.  If you’re Professor Tolkien, you know your audience does not know what a hobbit is.  Thus, ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’ is going to be met with confusion; thus you continue further on with ‘What is a hobbit?  Well, I suppose they do need …’

As the reader however, you must maintain something of an open mind.  Allow the author that chance to explain to you what is a hobbit.  Also, give the author the benefit of the doubt as to just what a cigar is.  As Freud said, ‘sometimes [it] is just a cigar’, but as George Carlin stated ‘sometimes it’s a big brown dick’.  As writers we should be sure to give context to when it is which; a metaphor, after all, is lost if one is not given enough clues to know to look for and thus see it.

The nudity equals sex thing especially gets to me.  I find it a fascinating modern concept.  Once upon a time, people gathered to swim — even in some of the most conservative periods of the previous couple of centuries (not all, mind, I’m not a revisionist historian, I accept that normal was relative to time and place as much in 1763 as in 1996) — in nought but what God gave them.  Because that is how one swam, it wasn’t sex.  In some periods women and men swam together unashamedly, others they were to keep separate, and still more they could not even share the water in the first place.  But to say that two people were naked together could just as likely, more so in those days, speak to the reader that bathing/swimming was to ensue, or that some misadventure had just transpired.  Today, it means sex.  What puzzles me is that people will read sex even when there isn’t any.

Ed Greenwood has stated that his character Storm, is often naked as a place-holder for having sex due to the constraints of the TSR editors — he has also said that, sometimes, she was simply naked; also, if he had never said that, many would never have once suspected that a single sex scene was intended between the pages of any of those stories.  But many an author has no reason to have this.  If a character gets undressed it’s due to weather or other circumstance.

I think that one bothers me because it shows a kind of issue that goes beyond fiction.  That’s a social sickness in our own culture.  We’ve gone from believing that two characters in a book swimming together nude is a euphemistic sex scene, to believing that two people discovered together swimming nude are doing so to have sex.

It causes panic in the streets, CPA and the police are called if a mother attempts to develop film upon which she’d snapped a cute picture of her child in the bath — something that once upon a time was considered perfectly natural thing to want to do, and something to embarrass them with in a decade or so when her young beaus started showing up to take her out.  If a father catches his son naked with another boy ‘Oh my God!  They’re gay!’

We carry this into our reading.  Once upon a time, I would not have had to have anything more in the narrative of Love or Lust‘s second chapter but to say

Sally joined her new friend in the warm waters, eager to help revive the poor dear from the stresses of the encounter with Darrien.

Yvette showed Sally how to massage the arms, temple, chest, and side of the tiny form to seemingly wipe away the memory and the tears.  As the music began the two were lulled to a nap.

True, the real scene is, essentially, that, but my point is that it’s all I’d have had to say.  There’d have been no build up.  To put it into perspective, in the era of the later portions of the Little House series Laura is being taken out for rides in the country of a Sunday afternoon.  Pa and Ma trusted Almanzo, and they trusted Laura.  Simply put, the two had plenty  of opportunity to ensure that, once more, a blushing bride accomplished in 7 months, what takes 9 for cow or countess.  Certainly that expression means that, sometimes, that trust was misplaced — or was it?  She was a blushing bride in a slightly too tight dress, after all, so perhaps the trust was less misplaced and perhaps a bit overextended?  Or was it even that?  Maybe part of that trust was that, should such activity take place, and should it lead to a child, that the young man would marry the young woman without Pa needing to have a few words while holding a shotgun.  Certainly more than a few young gentlemen never even needed Pa’s words sans the shotgun — he came forward and proposed.  Oh, sure, sometimes those marriages weren’t so great — but that’s a risk no matter how you decide who to marry.  Give me a break, I’m a romance writer, we like (or at least I like) ‘and they lived happily ever after’.

It’s not just sex and nudity.  I just think that’sthe strangest one.  In the beginning half of the 20th century our good friend Mr Robert A Heinlein wrote a line that wowed, awed, stunned, and amazed:  ‘The door irised open.’

He’s acknowledging that people have a preconceived notion how a door works and looks — he also explained it no further, thus showing that the preconceived notion in the story is that they work and look this way.

This is the give and take between author and reader at it’s finest.  It is.  On his side, Heinlein acknowledged that the reader would not think of iris, thus he did not simply say ‘the door opened’.  For the reader’s part, they accepted (or were meant to, and as I understand it did back then — not so much now, but that’s a discussion for another time) that it was as unimportant to the story, the characters, and the moment than if we were to say ‘the door swung shut’ — the purpose of saying ‘irised’ was much as ‘swung’ a little extra description, a sharper image of the scene.

One curiosity I’ve found with regards to notions is a mode of thought I find most often in my American friends, though it isn’t exclusive there:  My experiences are what is perfectly normal and the way that it always works.  No, of course no one has said that sentence outright … at least no one I’ve met.  Rather it’s the mentality they seem wont to approach life with.  Take a conversation that happened when I showed a few friends my blurb for Love or Lust

It’s a week before her freshman year when Lauren Conners is thinking, for what feels like the billionth time, of breaking up with her boyfriend of the past couple of years. In a seeming answer to her fervent prayers for guidance she looks up into the hypnotic eyes of the quiet little Washington town’s exotic, dark, and alluring new addition.

That paragraph really tripped one gentleman up.  He just could not fathom the idea of a fourteen year old who’d been dating anyone for a couple of years.  And it wasn’t ‘oh what a novel idea’ it was ‘this is just horribly unrealistic’ (not the exact quote, but I can’t recall his words precisely, but that’s pretty close).  A mutual friend and I just stared for a moment.  We could understand, because we’d known of the idea of people not being allowed to date till they’re 14/15/16/35, but we also knew plenty of kids who’d been dating in one form or another … well, in my case, as far back as 7 or 8 years old.  Because, like with nudity, dating doesn’t have to mean sex.  It floored me, and worried me somewhat — was my experience so unusual?  So I asked around, and no … a lot of people were rather surprised by his reaction.  Some understood, but not how he could think it unrealistic — just that depending what state you’re standing in, it might be more or less normal.

This would be an example of the reader not keeping up his end of the bargain.  I’ve given the context: Washington (a traditionally quite progressive and open minded state) and ‘fervent prayers’ (a clue that this young lady is not likely to be a member of the Boy of the Week Club).  It was his job, on the flip side, to accept that — within the context of the story — fourteen year olds might have been dating since some time in 6th or 7th grade.  It’s also an example of what I mean about the sex.  In the more conservative past, it would be seen as odd that the young lady was courting at 12-14 (barring certain eras and social classes, we could discuss that in several volumes — just stay with me here, please) but it would raise an eyebrow or seven, but they would wait to understand the rest of the context.  Certainly their objections to it would simply be ‘well, it’s not time to be finding her a husband yet’.  However, today, in this era of Boy/Girl of the Week Club and dating from some point in middle or high school and through college, which eliminates the ‘that’s no time to be finding her a husband’ now we object?!  In the era of homosexuality being a mental illness and criminal offence young Sally and Lauren sharing a bath is seen as a sweet friendship (let’s just ignore the having decided to be girlfriends from the preceding chapter for the sake of argument, shall we?); today in the era of gay marriages and a push (dare I say shift to?) acceptance it’s ‘oh my God!  I can’t believe the parents allowed, even encouraged such a thing!’

Why not?  Nothing happens, there’s no hint that something will or should happen.  Why mayn’t two friends — regardless of how long known — share a soothing tub?  Is it because Sally is !GASP! a lesbian!?  [cue dramatic chord]  Why should that matter?  I’ve known two men, one gay and attracted to the other who was not gay, to share a bed.  They slept.  No euphemism, they simply slept together.  The gay friend might have wanted there to be more, and even suggested it a few times — but, strangely enough, gay men and lesbian women seem to speak a language that includes the word ‘no’ (or nej, or nein, or geen, or 不是 …) just as doe their heterosexual counterparts.  Would it somehow be overlooked as sweet if it isn’t known, at the time of that scene, that Sally prefers the ladies?  How about if it is, but the two girls are not yet a couple?

It’s back to the iris door.  Do we accept that this is normal and move on, now that we’ve been given — in four words!  that’s what I find amazing — the pertinent information about the visual scenery and the simple fact that this is not our today and world?  Or do we clamour ‘it isn’t realistic that the door would iris!  it would mean …’ and ‘why does the door iris!?  Oh God!  I can’t continue!  He has left me hanging here wondering just what catastrophe in history destroyed the humble door hinge!  Where’s the historical dissertation regarding this change in human habit!?’

Personally?  I say the former.  Authors, drop your hints.  Don’t forget your irises; don’t forget to establish your hippies don’t forget to describe your short, axeweilding, beer swigging, hairy faced elves!  You owe it to your readers sense of understanding.  Readers, you’ve a job too!  Acceptance.  If the door irises open, just accept that it does and that history has a reason and that the reason is not important right now.  It’s one adjective, relax.  If a hippie isn’t shy about being naked with someone, or allowing her daughter to be so, then relax … she’s not your daughter.  If the elves want to grow beards and destroy the tavern in a drunken brawl then so be it … it isn’t your setting.

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Some advice from an agent

Published on by Jaye1 Comment

Recently I decided to present my mental chaos to a professional.  Agent, not psychiatrist, I mean.  From Query Tacker I found Ms Jordy Albert of The Booker Albert Literary Agency.  As she kindly presented some very helpful answers I decided I would share them with you all.

First, a little about the agent.

Jordy Albert is a Literary Agent and co-founder of The Booker Albert Literary Agency. She holds a B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University, and a M.A. from Millersville University of Pennsylvania. She has worked with Marisa Corvisiero during her time at the L. Perkins Agency and the Corvisiero Literary Agency. Jordy also works as a freelance editor/PR Director. She enjoys studying languages (French/Japanese), spends time teaching herself how to knit, is a HUGE fan of Doctor Who, and loves dogs.

She is looking for stories that capture her attention from beginning to end; stories that have heart, and characters that are hard to forget. She loves intelligent characters with a great sense of humor. She would love to see fresh, well-developed plots featuring travel with unique, exotic settings, competitions, or time travel. Jordy is specifically looking for:

* Middle Grade: contemporary, fantasy, action/adventure, or historical.
* YA: sci-fi, dystopian/post-apocalyptic, contemporary, historical–Though I am open to looking at other sub-genres, I’m looking for YA that has a very strong romantic element.
* NEW ADULT CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
* Romance (contemporary and historical).
** I am open to YA LGBT, and would love to see a YA or NA romance set during WWII (and/or the 1920s) with a time travel element.

Please do not send:

* short stories
* non-fiction
* poetry
* mystery/thrillers, or suspense.

E-mail Jordy at [email protected]
Befriend Jordy on Facebook
Follow Jordy on Twitter

And now the Q&A:

Ms Albert,

I’m an author with a dilemma and would appreciate your professional take on a matter if I may have a moment to trouble you for it, please.

I’ve begun a four book series.  Two books are written, one could be published tomorrow if I chose to self-publish it.  This one, though, is presenting my dilemma.  I know nothing about the YA/Teen market (and haven’t a clue what this “New Adult” mentioned on your agency’s site even is), I know nothing about the market for romantic-comedies.  Or, more to the point, I’ve researched it enough to know:  I’m really confused.

New Adult is a relatively new genre, but it has gained momentum in the last year. In fact, a number of self-published New Adult titles have gone on to do amazingly well. New Adult falls in the age range 18-25 (college age or just out of college).

On one hand I’ve found a lot of things saying there’s nothing a traditional publisher + agent can offer me that isn’t perfectly counterable with a plus of being self-published.  On the other I’ve learnt that this may not be true.  I’d appreciate the voice of experience to untangle this nonsense.

Examples:

“You get no more or better promotion from a publisher — they just stick an ad in the trade mags which are only seen by bookstore book buyers”.  A counter to that I’ve seen is that one shouldn’t underestimate the power of being on a physical bookstore shelf; something that CreateSpace can’t offer, as their sizes are non-standard and there’s nothing to influence the store’s buyer to pick it over Penguin or Tor’s latest offerings.  The counter to that, being that word of mouth is the most important thing, just get some people talking, sit back and wait.  Then there’re arguments that a good agent is also a good publicist and would get your book talked about by … Ellen, Oprah, or whomever.  I assume that’s true to some extent, but can imagine the person saying it was being overly optimistic.

Publishers have resources that an individual might not have, such as contacts as newspaper, magazines, etc….publishers also have years of experience. While the publisher does help market a title, how well the book sells or does not sell doesn’t rest solely with the publisher. It’s important to market yourself: do a blog tour, do book signings, review another authors’ work and see if they’d be willing to return the favor, have a cover reveal, etc. 

“You’ll never get a movie deal as a self-published author, no matter how well you sell.”  Now this one I did hear from someone in the publishing industry as a reason to take an agent.  Supposedly, a traditionally published book with 2000 copies sold is actually going to have less trouble selling movie rights than a self-published book on any best sellers list you care to name.

I would sort of agree, and not just about a movie deal. There are foreign rights, audio, tv, merchandise, etc. Agents will be able to negotiate to make sure you get the deal that’s in your best interests.

My own comment on this is, and was in my reply back to her:  most major self-publishing options do include foreign publication.  This is not the same as translation and what have you.  Just, take Apple iBooks for an example:  put your book up there, click a few things, and you’re in 52 countries.

“The publishers are just trying to rip you off — you’ll have to sue to see your royalty cheques.”  Now, admittedly, this was from an author who had to do just that, and then had to sue (then fire) his agent for lying about how much the royalties had been and embezzling some of that.

While I can’t say this has never happened, I think it is really rare. 

While it’s true — she has a vested interest in saying this isn’t true or is rare, but think on it this way:  she could say it’s very common — for the publishers — and that it’s a good reason to have the agent who can keep on them about it.  Either she’s none too clever or this is a perfectly legit answer.  I’m inclined to feel it’s the latter, especially since she acknowledges that it does happen.  Still, we must all make our own opinions.

And one specific to my own newest title(s):  “They’ll never accept a book over 100k words, let alone any kind of series.  You may as well DIY”  I’ve seen little to counter this, actually.  I mean, obviously, someone takes series or Twilight and Harry Potter wouldn’t be with major publishing houses.  And, unless I’m mistaken, Ms Meyers’ book 1 is quite a ways over 100k words.  Still, it does seem to be exceedingly rare.

This is somewhat true. There are exceptions to the rule, as your examples demonstrate. But an agent/editor is unlikely to look at a full manuscript if the word count is over 100k, especially if it a debut author. I’m not saying they won’t, but it would be unlikely.

Looking around you in a given work day … well … what would you say to any or all of those points?  What other critical arguments in favour of one model or another would you care to chime in on?

For a new author, I would definitely recommend trying to secure an agent. Agents will help guide your career, and steer you in the right direction. Also, while I think self-publishing is a wonderful option for an author, I think that it can saturate the market with books that might not be edited, polished, or all that well-written.

Ah, editing.  She’s right, really.  If you do not have a good friend who can edit — and I mean well — and you can’t afford the rather high prices to hire your own professional editor (one who, please remember, is only looking for you to pay them that once — they don’t have any incentive to care if your book does well as the publisher’s professional editor (theoretically) does) then I second her recommendation:  get an agent and/or publisher!  There’re books out there which could be so wonderful, but are unreadable for all the grammar, orthographic, and layout problems!

One point of my own:  I noticed you specifically are looking for YA LGBT stories.  The very few agencies or publishers I ever found looking for those directly — sans your own agency — all seemed to be the very … I tend to put it as the “We’ll get you in every gay pride store in America!” but are no more likely to get me on a B&N shelf than CreateSpace kind of crowd.  Is there any special difficulty, any special … anything … that one ought to look for or consider if their story is LGBT themed that a more old fashioned boy-meets-girl writer would never have to?

I’m open to stories that feature LGBT themes…it might be more difficult to find the novel a home, but it seems like it’s a little more common in the market today.

is there any resource you might recommend for “how to write a query letter”?  I mean, logic and knowing what the word Query means told me most of what a query letter is (thank you Georgia public schools for the fabulous and indispensable education).

From the Query to the Call by Elana Johnson. You can download a copy at http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com/p/books.html …Also Querytracker.com. It lets you search agents and keep track of your queries.

Which brings me to my final decision:  I’m going to continue gathering and examining a list of potential agents.  In the mean time I’ve contacted some options that might make for a resounding voice to start the word of mouth with a bit of a shout.  If I secure that, then I will self-publish.  If I don’t … I believe I will try some more agents.  I just can’t bring myself to give up.  I’m stubborn that way.  I rather sincerely thought I could just give the agent thing a go and then move on if it didn’t pan out, but it’s become something of a challenge.  I’m a sucker for challenges, especially ones I’m sure I can win if I can out-stubborn the problem (Why yes, I do have cats and have had them all my life! How could you tell? ;))

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Because the voices say so

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

It’s funny, but a lot of people tend to ask writers: where did you get your inspiration? Where do your ideas come from? And various other questions in that vein.

The thing is … for most writers, this is as strange a question as: so what made you write this?

By and large in all of those cases, the answer boils down to “The voices said so.”

Sometimes, yes, we do have some stimulus that gets us to thinking in a particular direction. Now & Forever was born because I read a sweet, happy romance at around the same time I noticed that there was an acute lack of such stories featuring a same sex romantic pair as the main protagonists. Oh, they exist, and in more abundance since that point, but it’s irrelevant. That made me think of writing such a romance. The rest came down to, Lauren and Sally asked me to write their story.

Writers’ inspiration, by and large, is the same as any artist, I should think. Life. We look around at life and ask What If, or Why Not – thus we write various fictions, especially speculative. We look around and we see things we wish to point out – thus is born things like satire. We have a feeling, and we wish to share it – thus is born Romantic fiction (not to be confused with romance fiction, which is a sub-category of this). But in all it’s life, and voices.

The voices are the characters. They’re visions of people, and of places. Sometimes we try to guide the voices, but mostly they guide us. We just have to be quick at taking dictation.

Yes, some authors do construct stories. They build dialogue. They think long and hard about the nature of plot and such. Those people seem, most of the time (in my experience at any rate) to favour literary fiction, a genre whose purpose I’ve yet to fathom. Some do write romances, mysteries, SF, westerns, or horror. Seemingly, though, of a literary nature, or of a completely ephemeral and throw away nature.

All the authors people really seem to dig, the stories that seem to resonate with the most readers, though, those are the ones where things are described as a period of discovery. We learn about our characters, we become friends or enemies with them. We witness the births of cultures, the deaths of races. We see the whole tapestry of events unfold with each stroke of the pen or press of a key. The inspiration particles sleet through our brains, and when we’re feeling particularly receptive to them the words flow like water that has just burst its dam and threatens to flood us to forgetting all but the story – sometimes it happens. These are the authors who might say things like “I want to know what happens next” (Louis L’Amour).

Good or bad. I’m not saying that believing your characters are living, breathing beings somewhere, or anything of that sort, will make you the next Jo Rowling or Neil Gaiman. Talent, the ability to take that inspiration and shape it and forge it into a solid tale, engrossing and engaging, that matters at the end of the day as much or more.

My other point is, for every one person for whom their character is nought but a cog in some literary device – no more real and alive than a transistor (and all too often, in my reading, with as much personality and ability to garner the sympathies of the reader) – there are a dozen or so who talk of their story or their characters as a thing alive that has an either parasitic or symbiotic relationship with the author’s psyche and mind.

I, personally, think this always shows in writing. Even a talented, skilled, brilliant author whose story isn’t a living thing won’t shine as well as the person with only mediocre skill and so-so talent whose story is like unto a living thing. It’s in the language of critics and fans alike. The tales of Oz or the adventures of the young Miss Alice, sailing the high seas with Long John Silver or Captain Nemo, slaying vampires with Van Helsing or slaying orcs with Arylin and Danilo all can be said to come alive. Maybe it’s because the story, in some way IS alive and was so for the author and now is so for the reader. Just as the purely mechanical – all technique and no heart – writing of the literary purist might be no more alive than a machine, no more soul than a desk fan, and thus as it had no life for the writer it has no life for the reader.

I could be wrong. I know how I write, and I know what it looks like when my favourite writers talk about writing. I know what I see on the rare occasions where I venture into internet discussion forums (which, on those rare occasions I do so, do tend to be writer’s forums). I wonder … can corollaries be true? Can a story that was alive and vibrant in the author’s mind find death and mechanical lifelessness once written? Can something born of technique and lifeless prose tell a story alive and vivid to the reader? I wonder if you could tell; would the formerly alive have the feeling of a corpse? Would the lifeless machine that has come to life still show signs of having once been the prose equivocal of a little wooden boy? Ah well, I suppose in the fullness of time anything is possible.

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Agents

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

Suddenly Google is being more helpful.  I’ve gone from two solid sounding agents and a few flaky looking ones none of whom looked like they were remotely relevant to my search except to be literary agents to several agencies.

I’m not querying them all, I’m still being selective by criterion I’m sure I couldn’t explain since I’m not fully aware — call it Vibes and move on — but I am querying several.  I shan’t bother naming them all, but I would like to list some of the more interesting and promising ones whether I’ve queried them or not just to (hopefully) help others.

By all means, if you’d like to suggest an agent or agency for me to query leave a comment or shoot me a message.

A small list, but there you are.  There actually was another agency I was trying to find, I stumbled on them once upon a time looking for a SF agent for something and now I can’t find them.  Pity.

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