Let’s shift the spotlight a bit.

Rather than have me come on and ask thought-provoking questions (ha!), ride my soapbox, or attempt to entertain—let’s showcase some of our posters.

SHINE.

Post one paragraph from your work.  UNPUBLISHED work only, please.  Any work, any genre, in progress, hidden in the sock drawer—whatever.  ONE PARAGRAPH that you love.  A title if you want, but no prologue, no explanation.  We don’t want to know why.  That you love it is enough.

What do you get?  The chance to let us love it too.

Nothing over 120 words, please, in the interest of time and space.

I’ll post my bit, then it’s all yours.

Shine for us.

Haven’t done this in quite a while, so I figured it was time.

Mainly because I have nothing going on that’d be worth talking about.

It’s Free-For-All Friday.

There’s no subject pending, and the blog is open to whatever may come.

Got a question, any question?  Bring it.  Comment on anything?  Post it.  Vent?  Go for it.  Are you a lurker who comes to peek but never participate?  Feel free to join in. 

Hell, I’ll even go first…

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there starting to feel like the “real world” of publishing is a fortress on some exclusive, remote little island in the bluest part of the bluest pacific, which can only be reached by being the sole survivor of a shipwreck, half-drowning before you reach the shore, finding a way to navigate the alligator-ridden moat that circles The Castle, fighting your way across acres of swampland, climbing the glass-sheer face of the surrounding mountain, promising the guardian sentry your first-born child—and then being told they’ll get back to you in a few months or so only if they’re interested?

Go for it. 

You know how they are.  Stubborn, single-minded, and ready to bunny-bump at the drop of a hat.  No matter what you think, how you feel about it, or what your personal plans might be.

They’re your hero and heroine.  And they want to have sex.
NOW.

If you let them go at it every 2-3 pages, you’ve probably got porn.  Plotless porn.
If you keep them too far apart indefinitely, you’ve got a frustrated reader and a dent in your wall.

So, if your lovers are right on the verge of the big sex scene, and you’re all for creating sexual tension but not quite ready to have “it” happen, here are a few suggestions for creating that metaphorical cold shower.

1) An impromptu argument or misunderstanding.  A good hot-blooded fight, written well, can be nearly as arousing as sex.  And a lot less complicated.

2) Your lovers are interrupted by someone walking in—usually an ex, authority figure, or seven year old child who still isn’t potty trained.

3)Inconvenient circumstances, place, or lack of latex party hats.

4) Interruption by some imminent threat or danger, like the C-4 explosive rigged to the headboard.

5) Fear of sex—somebody is impotent, premature, frigid, too aggressive, or too large to fit (which we’ve all experienced in everyday life…uh-huh…).

6) Inclination to maintain the status quo—don’t want to lose friendship, distrupt life or business, or deviate from the plan to save the family homestead.

7) Memories of past guilt or failure.  She’s an ex-nun dominatrix, this is his first experience since his sex-change operation, they remember they’re first cousins, etc.

8) The hero suddenly acquires a bad case of being honorable, just as he has the heroine buck-naked, hyperventilating, and ready to climax with the slightest warm breeze.

9) They both breathlessly agree that there isn’t time at that moment to do it RIGHT.  And after all, a quicky isn’t really what they want from each other.

10) Consummation might mean enraging their gods, producing a demonic offspring, or keeping the current ruling political dynasty in power.

I’ll be the first to admit…I love, love, LOVE a really good villain.  And as writers, I think we all know the importance of them in the story.

But if you really want to make him intriguing to your reader, you might consider giving him a pet.

Maybe a kitten.  Or a puppy, teddy bear, love of nature, or make him a tormented author—anything that might humanize him a bit will not only make him more appealing to your audience, but more memorable and believable (at least, as far as you wish him to be).

Hannibal Lector may have been a psychopathic killer, but he was a very soft-spoken gentleman with a taste for fine wines.

Barnabas Collins?  One of the first sympathetic vampires.  Why?  He not only despised himself for what he was, but carried a torch for the love of his life for several…er, centuries.

The Frankenstein monster.  Poor fella didn’t ask to be put together out of spare parts.  One of the most horrendous scenes in the film is when he accidentally drowns a little girl.  What makes him sympathetic is that a few minutes earler he’d been sharing flower blossoms with her.  He not only can’t help what he is, but hasn’t the wisdom, experience, or power to change.

Monsters like Ted Bundy are another story.  A complete sociopath, incapable of remorse, he felt perfectly justified in everything he did because he believed what he wanted was all that mattered.  And although fascinating in his own way, he isn’t someone I’d like to carry with me for long after the book is finished (unless it’s a particular kind of horror story, of course).

If you can give your villain as much character and extra dimension as possible (without having him take over), your readers will probably thank you for it.
And eagerly look forward to the next one.  I know I do.

Any more ideas on making your villains…well, appealing?

I’d like to try to conduct a mini-poll here today.
I hope everyone will feel free to comment honestly.  No right answers, no wrong ones.  Just opinions.
Disclaimer:  This question is in no way ABOUT any particular person or situation.  It’s just something I’ve wondered about, and I think feedback on the subject would be valuable to others too.

Here’s the scenario:
You’re a struggling writer, trying to get a nibble from the New York pubs.
You’ve sent your latest beloved manuscript to all of the publishers and agents at the top of your wish list, and so far they’ve all turned you down.

Until now.

One hot, humid day, when the air conditioner has broken down, the kids are psycho on sugar highs, and you’re trying to get the trash can out before the truck pulls away…

You get THE CALL.

It’s a phone call from a well-known editor at a big, shiny New York publisher, and he’s fallen in love with your manuscript.  He advises you, however, to recruit an agent before negotiations are conducted.

Soooooooo……………

Would you go with one of your top-of-the-list agents if they now agree to represent you, even if they’d turned this manuscript down before?

Or would you rather start a clean slate and find someone else?

A couple of years back, I was having a phone conversation with one of the nieces I’d helped  corrupt  raise.  It was shortly after Thanksgiving, and she’d recently landed a job as a nurse’s aide in a prominent hospital.
She was full of stories about the doctors, nurses, and patients (as anyone would be who’d just started an exciting new position), and I listened very politely.

Until she told me her story about a man coming into their emergency room with a wishbone stuck up his butt.

No, I am not making it up.

And unfortunately for the poor fellow, it was good and stuck.  They actually had to perform a bit of minor surgery to remove it.
No word on whether the interns on call actually made a wish at the time.

Now please, don’t get me wrong.  Whatever people want to insert into the cavities of their body is okay with me, as long as they deal with the consequences (I won’t mention some of the other things she said they’d encountered).
I’m sure that whatever precipitated this may have been silly/romantic or stimulating in some way.  No doubt, some people would find the concept exciting.  It wouldn’t work for me personally—but then, I’m not into fun and games with proctology.

So let’s toss our turkey legs up here on the table, shall we?

I want to know what behavior, speech, positions, or anything related to romance and/or sex you’ve read in books that simply does not work for you, for whatever reason.  And please feel free to be as delicate or blunt as you wish.

Reader feedback is always a valuable asset for a writer.  Think of it as sharing something with a friend.
Sort of like………………

I have a confession to make.

I don’t have much of a clue.

This won’t come as a surprise to some of you. :razz:  But I thought I might as well be honest about it.
There is a marked absence of something in my blog posts, both here and on my own blog, that I see quite a bit of elsewhere. 
I do very little in the way of writing advice.  Suggestions.  Recommendations.  How-to posts.  Ways to get published.  And there’s a very good reason for that.

I don’t have a clue.

Does that sound like a strange confession from someone who professes to be a writer?  Yeah, well, it sounds odd to me too.
When I was younger, I gave violin lessons to the children of my friends.  No problem.  In step-by-step detail it wasn’t hard to teach how to do this, how to play that, how this effect was produced, and what results they could expect.  But being technically proficient doesn’t make you a great violinist.  It’s a certain unknown quality, a feeling for the music, an affinity for the instrument that makes one exceptional.

A bit of the same with art.  I learned a few techniques, taught myself to handle some of the materials, and could probably make suggestions on applying them to a drawing or painting.  But that won’t make that painting good, possibly not even interesting.  It’s the artist’s own unique vision that makes the work extraordinary.

I’m a little in awe of authors who have it down to a fine science.  They can run down the GMAC at the drop of a hat.  Tick off the differences between romance/romantica/erotica/women’s fiction/mainstream/scifi/urban fantasy in the blink of an eye.  Know exactly where the black moment/sex should fall in the story well in advance.  What to cut, how to hook, how to dissect, and how to keep from going overboard.
(And no, the fishing metaphors hadn’t occurred to me until I wrote them, lol).

It must make the writing a lot easier.  But it doesn’t make it yours.

Learning craft is one thing.
Mastering your craft is something else.

“Did you get my e-mail?”

With my keyboard in my lap, I twisted uncomfortably in my seat, even as I typed the reply.  “Yeah, of course.  Um…which one?”

“The IMPORTANT one.”

My correspondent—we’ll call her Debbie—was a sweet-hearted person and had been a good on-line buddy.  Except for one tragic flaw.

Her penchant for sending Pollyanna e-mails tainted with death threats.

Now, I love inspirational stuff as much as the next person.  And to be fair, I don’t think the Dark Side of the messages even registered with her.  A happy little e-mail fairy, she was intent on spreading the good word to everyone she knew.
Unfortunately, the good word was actually “intimidation”.

I hurriedly delved into my “recently deleted” e-mails, praying something of hers was still there.  Something important.  “Oh!  You mean the one about how the walking stick-figure of Jesus is on an e-mail journey across the world, and if you disrupt the continuity it might bring on the Apocalypse?”

“No, no, not that one.”

I read the next one as fast as my effing dial-up would download it.  “Then you mean the one about how thrilled you are to know such a proud, intelligent, independent woman who’s so capable of making her own decisions, but I absolutely must send this e-mail on to prove it?”

“Nope.  The other one.”

Dammit.  “Oh, okay.  The one about how God loves us so very, very much, and if I don’t spread the word by sending the e-mail to at least fifteen other people within five minutes of receipt, I just might suffer a dark and horrible death, like John Jones of Clayton, Missouri?”

“Wasn’t that the saddest story?”

 “Yeah.  Tragic.  Exactly when did you send this e-mail?”

“Four days ago.”

Eureka!  I had it.  Clicking on “read”, I waited impatiently for the screen to come up.

“Um…Debbie?  What if I don’t think the pattern in the newborn calf’s coat looks like the number ‘666’?”

“Well, pass it on anyway!  It’s important that people know what’s going on in this crazy world.”

I’ve thought about it and thought about it, and I could only come up with one solution for people who indulge in this kind of thing.

Kill them.  Kill them all.

But first be sure you have the right ones.  We can’t afford to attack the innocents, but can’t let the guilty ones continue this campaign of terror.

The answer?
Send an e-mail out to the suspicious ones, an e-mail threatening dire consequences if they don’t pass it on—and, of course, send it back to you.

Yeah.
Got ‘em. 

“…The primary function of a title is to lure unsuspecting readers into having a go at your story.” ~~ Sinclair Lewis

“A good title is the title of a book that’s successful.” ~~ Somerset Maugham

While looking for something else in a stack of my books, I came across an interesting chapter in one of them about TITLES.
The book was called “Learning to Write Fiction from the Masters” by Barnaby Conrad, and I’d picked it up many years ago just for the variety of great prose between its covers.
What fascinated me about this chapter were the examples of titles chosen by famous authors for infamous books BEFORE publication:

Trimalchio in West Egg  (THE GREAT GATSBY)

Blanche’s Chair in the Moon  (A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE)

They Don’t Build Statues to Businessmen  (VALLEY OF THE DOLLS)

Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice  (MEIN KAMPF)

The Mute  (THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER)

Private Fleming, His Various Battles  (THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE)

Something That Happened  (OF MICE AND MEN)

The Man That Was a Thing  (UNCLE TOM’S CABIN)

Bar-B-Que  (THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE)

How important is the title of a book to you?
What are some of your favorites, old or new?

A mini-rant, since I haven’t used the soapbox in a while.  I try to avoid the ____ thing, but sometimes it just rears up and grabs me by the gluteus maximus.

I’ve come across this a few times while blog-hopping (when I should be writing), and it’s always plucked just the wrong nerve with me.
And no, it’s not that I’m MS. Perfect, and always say just the right thing or phrase it just the right way.
And yes, I’m sure people mean well when they offer advice.  It’s just that we may want to be a little more careful with the manner we choose to offer it.

It usually starts with the phrase, “If you can’t ___ ___ ___, then you probably shouldn’t be in this business.”

I may be contrary by nature, but my instinctive reaction to such statements is, “Well excuse the ___ out of me, but who the ___ died and named you Wizard?!”

I’ve heard it applied to everything from being patient, to the amount of time it takes you to rebound from rejections, to how many words a day you should be writing, to going to conventions, to taking harsh critiques, to meeting deadlines with time to spare, etc.  And I gotta tell ya—it chaps my ___.

Different people react to different situations in different ways.  So while a struggling author might fail to luck into the biz right away, or take rejection too much to heart, or not meet an ideal word count with their writing attempts, it also might be true that they have family issues at that time, or they’re in physical pain, or unable to use their hands/fingers, or can’t see well, or have an elderly parent to care for, or children and no one to help, or they’re working two or three jobs, or don’t have the luxury of a support system, etc., etc.  And however large your molehill may be, don’t piss on the smaller ones.  It ruins the ___ view.

It’s one thing to tell someone that ‘people who can manage this or that seem to fare better in the business’, or ‘if you have trouble with this aspect of the game, you might want to work on it as much as possible’.  But to tell someone, “if you can’t ___ ___ ___, then you should probably take your toys and go home…”

Please.  Stop.  Just ___ stop.  Your way is NOT the only way, and more than one author has made it with more than one liability.

Warning someone about a rough road is one thing.  Laying down a spike strip is something else.