PSL Season Is Here!

I didn't post last Friday or yesterday because I've been sleeping. Our household is trying to adjust to a new normal. DH was at his father's apartment quite a bit before FIL passed in May. Now, DH finds himself with plenty of time on his hands and wants to spend it with me.

Which is totally fine. But I've got to write. Which means I often have to wait until he goes to bed before I have enough peace and quiet so I can work. And then I have to be up at normal people time for doctor's appointments or to talk with the landscaper or take Princess Bella in to have her hair and nails done.

So when I have a chance to sleep, I'm not waking up until six or seven in the evening. Which means DH and Princess Bella are both so excited to see me.

And we start all over again.

Thank the gods it's PSL season! I'm going to need it for the rest of this week!

Summer Music I've Been Listening To

For the last weekend of August...

Slowing Down

2022 has been a chaotic year. I could list everything, but I'm not going to bore you. Suffice it to say, the stress has been bad enough that my blood sugars are seriously out of whack.

So I'm going to take a few months off from publishing. Not writing, mind you. I would drive myself crazy if I did that.  And I will publish the handful of volumes that are already on preorder for the next eight months, plus Invasion! Which I really need to set up the pre-order for that one, too.

But I need to focus on diet and exercise for a little while. Try to get things stable again. Slow down and smell the last roses of the season before they're gone. Maybe finish unpacking the boxes that have been sitting in the living room for the past year and a half. Pick up my OOAK Barbie hobby again.

We all need that breather. No one ever says they didn't work enough on their deathbeds.

Besides, I want a Pumpkin Spice latte when the season starts next week!

Flipping the Script on Interracial Dynamics

I stumbled across this interesting article about how the White Boyfriend trope in romance has changed.

I wrote a handful of interracial romances 10-20 years ago. Today, if I tried, I'd probably get lambasted. Yet, Summer from the Seasons of Magick series is popular because it's an interracial romance of two non-white characters.

There are some who probably think I should take the story down because I overstepped as a white woman. If I did, I'd have to take down almost all my series because I do a hell of a lot of racial mixing in them. Frankly, it's probably accepted by the readers because most of them are fantasy.

But in Summer, the real trope is the girl-next-door finally noticing the boy-next-door in combination with a twist on the horror trope of dying because the teens had sex. (Before anyone throws a fit about underage characters, both Jamal and Shan are eighteen.) The story would be classified as sweet if I took out the sex and the kiang-shi.

On the other hand, I'm kind of glad to see more contemporary stories where the white guy is struggling with his privilege. It means the worldview is changing, I hope for the better. These stories show that communication is possible even if it's difficult as hell.

I've  already been accused of being woke and anti-white in some reviews. But we need to continue the hard work of understanding each other. I know I'm going to fuck up sometimes, but I work to do better. I hope everyone else does the same.

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

From Eminem to Alexander Hamilton, we're not going to miss out shot!

And Then There Was More!

Netflix and Neil Gaiman dropped bonus episodes of Sandman. Fair warning: this is Calliope's story. I'll see y'all on the other side of the weekend.

Sales Copy Is My Trigger

I'm taking a class on writing fiction sales copy. I'm well aware it's a weakness of mine, so I'm trying to improve that skill. I've come to realize parts of my psychological problems with drafting sales copy are from personal, cultural, and social implications.

As I was growing up, I was told that I was supposed to do my best. However, I was often punished and/or derided for doing so. The mixed messages resulted in a almost pathological fear of bring attention to myself. To the point, I was often throwing up in the ladies' room prior to any court hearing. I'm not talking about major trials. It happened with minor situations, often when I was going before a new-to-me judge.

Toss in the teachers who make weird comments to my parents if--heaven forbid!--I turned my homework in early. It didn't help that these same teachers were my mother's colleagues. She'd get an earful, then come home and accuse me of embarrassing her in front of her co-workers.

Then there's the whole social structure of how women are not supposed to do better than men. Do not even get me started about that one. As a woman, you're shamed if you do better and belittled if you do worse.

I've stopped telling people what I like or don't like because that has now become a personal insult plus a huge argument if you don't adore the same things as everyone else. I've learned to say I haven't read/watched/played yet whatever thing is under discussion.

I don't tell people I've just met I'm a writer anymore for a lot of the same reasons. I tell them I work at a publishing company. Which is true. But it isn't the whole truth.

But now, I really need to up my game on sales copy, and I find myself struggling with this class. It means boasting about my writing in a way that triggers the little kid who got slammed for getting A's and for embarrassing her parents.

Last month, Genius Kid asked me point blank if we'd ever had him tested for ADHD or autism. We hadn't, and I asked him why he had that question. GK said he'd read an article about both conditions and how there were some psychological similarities. Then he added, "It would explain a lot about our personalities, Mom."

Now, part of me is wondering if I've failed my son. And once again, I wonder if there's something wrong with me.

Or is our society so broken we can't deal with a person who isn't in lockstep with those of a certain neurotype?

Which brings my back to sales copy. Because the whole purpose of it is to attract those with like minds who would enjoy consuming whatever it is that I am producing. Are there truly any people out there like me? And if there are, is the very skill I'm trying to master driving them away like the same language would drive me away?

These are the thoughts and questions that swirl through my mind.

Monday with Mom

I'm sitting in the family room paying on bills with Mom running on Hulu. It may seem like I'm not really working, I am studying writing, especially dialogue.

I've been following Chuck Lorre's career for over thirty years now. His favorite theme is opposites attract, but his second favorite is found family, which is a theme in a lot of my series. And he surrounds himself with people who are equally talented if not more so.

The snappy dialogue meshes nicely with the emotions of the characters. There are not exactly love-hate relationships in the shows he's created or written for, but the writing acknowledges the little things that get on the characters' nerves never trumps the affection they feel for each other.

Watching Mom, Dharma & Greg, The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly, etc., offers excellent lessons on creating characters and dialogue writing. I strongly suggest watching these shows no matter what your chosen genre is.

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

Say what you will about Mr. Mathers, but this song deserved its Oscar!

Advertising in the Air

Because it's August, the subject of advertising and drops in sales have been taking up a lot of writing-related social media I follow.

In August.

Every frickin' year.

Here's the deal, folks. A ton of your readers have kids. The beginning of August is when they cram in that last vacation while the weather's nice. Then comes shopping for school clothes and supplies.

Side Note: I don't know about the other 48 states, but both Ohio and Texas have state sales tax-free weekends for parents to save a bit. And frankly, the skyrocketing prices this year is stretching a lot of households very thin.

Finally comes the start of school itself where the parents and kids have to relearn the patterns they've conveniently forgotten over the summer.

Like they have every single year since I started publishing, book sales have taken a slight dip. I'd lay good money that like every single year, sales will rise again in the middle of fall once our customers have a chance to take a breath from running around like crazy people from school to work to band/soccer/football/etc. practice.

My advice is quit whining and obsessing and keep writing. Your readers are going to need something to entertain them during their Thanksgiving travel.

Especially if the airlines keep stranding people all over the world.

Perfection

If you haven't seen Netflix's Sandman series, I strongly recommend it. It's been a while since something I anticipated delivered on every level.

The series stayed true to the feeling and themes of the comic book series. Some alterations were necessary because of the new media. Some alterations were because Neil Gaiman's grown as a storyteller. Others were because--let's face it, the show would have looked ridiculous with thought balloons.

Some things simply needed to be updated. People forget the first issue of Vertigo's Sandman was published thirty-five years ago.

Other were changed because they fit the narrative.

The performances were sublime all around. I literally cannot pick a single standout because they were all done so excellently.

This promotional postcard of Death is framed and hung in my old office in Houston. I'm looking forward to the day I  unbox it, and It hangs in my office once again.

Until that day, may you all have sweet dreams...

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

Slipping back to the '80's tonight!

No News Today

I'm watching Sandman on Netflix today. I suggest you all do the same. Or go read the collected Sandman trade paperbacks.

All hail the Dream King!

The End of the Novel?

Last winter, I did a Zoom session on writing a novel. One of the questions an attendee asked me left me a little puzzled.

How do you know when you've reached the end of your novel?

I fumbled for an answer. Something along the lines of "when the problem of the story is solved". But what I was really thinking was "how can you NOT know". I had so absorbed the lesson over the last fifty-plus years that it took me a while to break things down in my head.

Over the months, I've realized some new writers get caught up in their characters try/fail cycle. The new writers aren't sufficiently upping the stakes each time to hit the climax and the denouement.

So what is the try/fail cycle? There's the three-act structure. The seven-step cycle. The hero's journey, which is broken down into 10 or 12 distinct levels, depending on who you talk to. But the important things of the ending are the climax and the denouement.

What's the denouement you ask? If you think of the novel like sex, the climax is the orgasm, and the denouement is the cuddle time. The denouement is where the author wraps up all the plot threads. Here's the weird thing--even guy readers want that cuddle time in the story. And sometimes, even the most experienced story tellers screw this up.

For example, George Lucas originally ended Star Wars with Luke and Han's return to Yavin IV after Luke blew up the Death Star. Test audiences hated it! Why? Because George left R2-D2's injuries unresolved, and the hugs between the heroes was too short. So he added the medal ceremony. R2 is fine, and the guys get public acknowledgement by Princess Leia for their heroism.

A sci-fi novel I read a few years ago had an even worse ending that George's original finale for Star Wars. The heroes were bebopping along,trying to save a planetary official from assassination. At what should have been the climax, they called a buddy on the planet where the assassination was supposed to occur, and the buddy stopped the bad guys. I almost performed the proverbial "throw the book across the room" at that ending. I didn't, only because I was reading it on my antique Kindle. Ironically, the denouement would have worked perfectly if the writer in question hadn't effed up the climax.

So if you're writing a novel, you need both a decent climax involving the actual protagonist(s) of your story and a decent wrap-up. Neither has to be all roses and sunshine. If you've ever watched the movie Se7en, it has a perfect ending despite the sad and hopeless feeling.

However, I suggest watching that one during the daylight hours.

Good-bye for Now, Nichelle

I remember when I first saw Star Trek. It was only a couple of months after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The thing I loved about the show was Lt. Uhura. Not only was she a lady astronaut, but she held her own with the guys, compared to the other shows of the time period. The only one who came remotely close to the lieutenant was Batgirl.

But Uhura? Oh, yeah, she was my hero. So much so. I insisted on a Malibu Christie for my birthday in 1972, much to my mother's chagrin. I didn't care though. With my rudimentary sewing skills, I created a red Starfleet minidress for the doll, and she became my Lt. Uhura.

That same year, Star Trek returned to the small screen in the Animated Series. Uhura even had to take over the Enterprise when the men were acting stupid.

But none of Nichelle Nichols' effects on me as child compared to her influence on the entire world. I'm not the only girl who looked up to her.

She influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. She changed the face of NASA. She acted. She sang. She danced. She inspired Whoopi Goldberg. She was the grandmother of Heroes. She gave millions of kids a chance to see themselves doing more than society expected.

I gave an Uhura Barbie as a Christmas present to a friend's newborn daughter Mya in 2009. By then, Zoe Saldana portrayed Uhura in the Star Trek films. Even Zoe acknowledged Nichelle's influence on her own career. But I wanted Mya to have the same positive experience Uhura and Nichelle provided to me.

A few years later, Mya's mom sent me the 50th anniversary edition of Uhura. Fifty years before a Star Trek Barbie doll with Nichelle's face as a model. Part of me is sad it took so damn long. Another part is happy she finally got the long overdue acknowledgement.

Ms. Nichols left this plane of existence on Saturday evening. I hope wherever she is, she's happy and still having awesome adventures.