Whee! Today is a lovely day to hike up the hill to the movie theater to see Prince Caspian, and I am way too excited about that. I might even get wild and crazy and go from the theater to the A&W nearby and get a root-beer float to enjoy on the hike home.

A few little updates:
I am now a published photographer. If you get the Del Rey Internet Newsletter, a photo I took at the Nebula Awards is featured, and I even got photo credit for it. The other photo from the awards in the newsletter was taken with my camera, though I didn't take it. Unfortunately, my books weren't mentioned in the newsletter, and the photo credit doesn't mention me being an author, so I don't know that having my name in there will do much good other than to my ego.

For e-book fans, I checked into why an eReader version of the new book doesn't seem to be showing up, and apparently it's supposed to be available, but for whatever reason it didn't show up in the Random House system and therefore didn't get distributed. My editor is seeing to it that it gets out there. We decided to blame the computer, but then since we're both big Battlestar Galactica fans, we worried that the computer won't be happy about that when it becomes sentient, and it might rise up and attack us for making it the scapegoat. Though I guess we're safe as long as the computer can't hold a gun and hasn't developed a way to appear totally human.

Now, to clarify and expand upon an earlier post (inspired by some comments). When I referred to "torturing" characters or otherwise being mean to them, I don't necessarily mean that literally. We're not engaging in character S&M here. What I do mean is making things as difficult as possible for characters -- giving them serious obstacles to their goals, pitting them against a villain who may be stronger than they are, giving them goals that may be more than they can handle and making them absolutely give their all in pursuit of their goals. When things are difficult like that, it proves that the task was difficult and that the hero is truly worthy in being able to achieve it. The hero learns and grows through the torture, and realizes because of it exactly what he's made of. He overcomes and triumphs.

It seems to be easier to tolerate this kind of character torture in genre fiction -- romance, sf/f, mystery, adventure -- for a couple of reasons. For one, it is in pursuit of a goal or aim, usually one greater than the character. The character sacrifices for the greater good, with the goal of saving the world, bringing the wicked to justice, stopping evil, and so forth. For another, the character usually chooses the path that leads to this suffering. He could avoid all the problems by turning his back and walking away. He's not a victim, and he's not passive. In more so-called "literary" fiction, there's often a great deal of suffering, but just because life sucks, and often the characters are passive. Bad things happen to them not because they're putting themselves in the way of terrible danger for the greater good, but because life just sucks and is unfair. Maybe that's part of my trouble in reading those Lemony Snicket books -- those kids are going through all the woes not because they've taken on a mission or have any particular goal other than surviving. They do pull themselves together and come up with plans for overcoming and surviving, but otherwise they're passive in that things happen to them just because of who they are, not because of what they choose to do.

And now I need to head to the movies. Maybe I'll report back with a review.

I dreamed last night that I was posting on this topic today, so I might as well go with it.

Have you started to feel shunned when you go to a bookstore? I'm not talking about the staff, but rather the book covers. It seems the current trend is covers with people's backs turned to you. Cover trends are nothing new -- there were the cartoony romantic comedy covers in the late 90s, the chick lit covers with shoe-clad feet or martini glasses, etc. -- but they tend to stay within genres. Now, though, the back view covers seem to be really crossing the genre lines.

Because my books have been showing up on the urban fantasy bestseller list at Amazon (all four were there this morning!), I've found myself looking at those covers, and the back view is really popular there. A large percentage of the urban fantasy covers involve a woman with her back turned, often wearing leather, or sometimes wearing nothing but tattoos. In some cases, her face is turned slightly to the front, but it's still obscured by shadows or hair.

But then if you look at the more "literary" women's fiction covers, we have even more backs, only this time the women tend to be wearing retro sundresses, or maybe coats as they walk away from the viewer. Sometimes it's just the backs of their heads.

Oddly enough, these all seem to be women's backs we're seeing. The exception in urban fantasy is that sometimes the Harry Dresden figure on Jim Butcher's books has his back turned, but the way they put Harry on the covers is always a little shadowy. B&N.com has my latest book classified as paranormal romance, and looking at that bestseller list (I'm on the top 100!), it seems like, again, if the figure on the cover is female, we see her back, but the men we usually get a pretty good look at.

I suppose it could have something to do with the idea that readers want to picture the characters for themselves, so showing the characters with their backs turned gives a glimpse without putting a definite face on them. Or it could be designed to appeal to men and women in different ways -- women reading urban fantasy might want to picture themselves as the heroine, so they don't want to see a face, while men are drawn to the body rather than the face, anyway. I don't know why all the book club bait books use women's backs.

And I suppose it's possible I'm being overly paranoid about feeling shunned when I go to a bookstore and all those backs are turned to me. You could look at it as the characters looking inward into the content of the books and encouraging readers to follow them inside.

Now I need to decipher some cryptic notes I left for myself when I had a stroke of thought for the book I'm revising. I scribbled something random on a piece of paper, and I think it has something to do with the book, but I'm not only a little unsure what it means, I'm not entirely sure what it says. The really sad thing is that I was sitting at my desk when I wrote it. It's not something I scribbled in the middle of the night to remind myself of something I dreamed (since I dreamed about blogging about book covers with people's backs and not about the book).

Hmmm, is that word "feud" or "fend"? That could totally change the meaning of a scene.

I'm making progress on this round of revisions. Yesterday, I figured out how to rework a scene in a way that now makes it matter instead of just sitting there. The trick was to delete one of those "darlings" -- a bit of dialogue I really loved that the scene built to, but that really didn't need to be there, and its presence kept the scene from going in a better direction. Maybe I can fit it in elsewhere, but for now, it's out of there.

While I'm analyzing my weaknesses, I've discovered through my reading what may be my biggest challenge as a writer: I may be the world's biggest wimp. This occurred to me when I found myself struggling to read a children's book because it was too scary. Well, not so much scary as promising that bad things would happen. On a whim, I'd checked an omnibus edition of the first three Lemony Snicket books out of the library, since I'd heard a lot about them. I read the first one in one sitting, but then found that I almost couldn't bear to face the second one. When the narrator suggested that readers might want to put the book down now and tell themselves that things would work out okay because things were about to get really, really bad, I found myself actually putting the book down. It took me three days to read this children's book because I dreaded so much seeing what would happen next. I couldn't take seeing these characters suffer.

Which is weird, given that I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon, president and poster boy of the "put your characters in a tree and throw rocks at them" school of writing. I love the way he takes characters to the brink, really testing their mettle, or else comes up with perfectly understandable motivations for doing the unforgivable, so that characters we love can do horrible things and we still love them. And I love the sense that no one is safe, that you can't count on all the characters surviving unscathed, which really raises the sense of tension. Maybe in the Lemony Snicket books my issue is that it involves children, or it's possible that I get frustrated by the fact that most of their problems stem from adults not listening to them rather than really being upset about the bad things happening.

(Though I have since discovered, after forcing myself the rest of the way through that second Lemony Snicket book and then reading the third in one sitting that part of the joke is that the reality of what happens in those books isn't nearly as dire as what is promised. And the bit about the adults not listening is really what it feels like to be a kid, so that's probably a big part of what makes the books so popular.)

While I was in the midst of struggling to get through a children's book that was freaking me out too much, I was also re-reading parts of The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler, the book that takes the Joseph Campbell universal myth theories and applies them for modern storytelling. Vogler mentions that he saw the original Star Wars film at an advance screening, and the part that told him this was going to be a hit was the scene in the garbage masher, which maps to the "Inmost Cave/Ordeal" section of the universal myth plot -- the midpoint of the story. In that scene, Luke, our hero, gets dragged under water by the creature, there's some struggle, and then it goes silent. The moment is held just long enough to make the audience wonder if maybe Luke really is dead. You don't think they'll kill off the hero, but then you start to wonder if maybe there was a bit of misdirection, and one of these other characters is really the hero. And then just when you're really getting worried, he pops up again, re-born. Then almost immediately the walls start to converge, and all the characters are in jeopardy again, then there's the tease where you hear from C-3PO's point of view all the screaming, and he thinks they're dying instead of rejoicing. In a fairly short sequence, first the hero and then all the main characters are brought close enough to the brink of death that we can't help but wonder if they might actually die. That creates an incredible roller coaster of emotions and heightens the emotional involvement of the audience in the story.

And that's where my own wimpiness can hurt me because I may joke about torturing my characters (like with the end of book three), but I haven't really been willing to take them to that brink. Granted, what I write is generally classified as comedy, and you have different expectations there, but where I seem to be heading in my writing is in stuff that might be called fantasy with a lot of humor, and there I need to be a little bolder about being mean to my characters.

So I guess to toughen myself up, I need to read more children's books.

In other news, my blog touring continues. You can get a glimpse of my work environment at Jennifer Echols's blog.

Following up on yesterday's post, since I got some e-mails asking the question, and it's quicker and easier to respond all at once here, The Book That Would Not Die is a new project unrelated to my series, which is why I'm trying to get it absolutely perfect. It's the one I dashed off a first draft of in a few weeks back in August, and then have completely rewritten a couple of times. I don't really want to talk about what it is or what it's about because it hasn't sold yet, and I like to keep unsold projects under wraps (I don't want to potentially undermine my agent's efforts in talking to editors about it). Meanwhile, yesterday I dealt with the issue of getting more emotion in my work in a properly cerebral, analytical way: I checked a couple of psychology books about emotions out of the library. I may be a hopeless case.

This morning, I went out to run a couple of errands before it started raining (and I almost made it, too -- it started raining as I was walking from my garage to my house when I got home). The local fire department was doing one of their charity "fill the boot" drives at the main intersection, and I finally got my fantasy firefighter.

I have learned that there's a sad reality about firefighters in that very few of them actually look like those men in firefighter calendars or on the covers of romance novels. A lot of the guys I went to high school with are now firefighters, and let's just say they aren't exactly the calendar guy types. Then there was my one big encounter with my neighborhood fire station that completely shattered all my illusions and ideals.

This was back when I had a regular job and had to get up early in the morning to get to work, so it must have been around 6:30. I hadn't even put the kettle on to make tea, when suddenly my security system went nuts. I'd already disarmed it to bring in the newspaper, so it wasn't an intruder, and when I checked the keypad, it said it was a fire. There was no fire. There was no smoke, no flames, absolutely nothing. The system had just gone nuts, and I couldn't get it to turn off. And then I heard sirens approaching. As I said, it was 6:30 in the morning, and I'd just got out of bed, so I was still in my nightgown. A nightgown from Victoria's Secret with a lacy bodice and a slit all the way up my thigh (yeah, I live alone and sleep alone and haven't had a boyfriend in forever, but I love pretty nightgowns). The part of my brain that had managed to wake up said that maybe those sirens were coming to my house, so I grabbed a bathrobe. And then the doorbell rang, and I had the fire department, in full gear, on my front porch.

Sounds like the set-up for a romantic comedy meet-cute, right? (Or I guess a porn movie, but that's not the way my brain works.) We've got the flustered heroine in her sexy nightie and the handsome firefighter who needs to make sure it really is a false alarm, even if he is distracted by what the nightie reveals. But the firemen were so disappointing. I'm sure they were totally competent at the firefighting stuff, but they were much older and grizzled (which I guess that job might make you). Definitely not calendar material. I clutched my bathrobe tighter around me as I explained that I was pretty sure my security system had freaked out, since you could see the smoke detectors and fire sensors from the front door, and it was clear that there was neither smoke nor fire anywhere near them. They said they'd had a number of this kind of call that morning, and apparently the security company's computer had freaked out, but they still had to respond to the calls. While they were still there, the security company called to check on the alarm. It was reassuring to know that the fire department can get to my house in less than five minutes, but it was a waste of a sexy nightgown.

But today, though, I finally got my cute fireman for the fill-the-boot drive. At my lane, the guy was built kind of like a fireplug, short and stout, and clearly much older, but one lane over, the guy was tall, cute, well-built and red-haired. He reminded me of Carrot in the Discworld books. I was just about to whimper to myself that it wasn't fair that I didn't get the cute one, but then the one in my lane moved to the next lane over, and the cute one headed right to me. He even called me "sweetheart" when I put my money in his boot. Alas, he was wearing a wedding ring (so there's no point in committing arson in order to lure him to me). But still, I got the cute one! And my faith in the ideal of the hot firefighter has been restored. There is at least one out there! In my neighborhood!

I'm back into serious work mode for this week, since I got revision notes on the Book That Would Not Die. It turns out that the beginning and end work, and I just need to fix the Dreaded Sagging Middle. That should be doable.

It seems like on each book I learn something new about writing, some fault I can fix and then carry forward into the next book, not making that mistake again. And then in the next book I discover a different thing that I need to improve. It's not as though those faults spring out of thin air. I think they just become more obvious with the previous flaw fixed, or else they're something that can't be fixed until the underlying fault is fixed. I hope that means I'm a better writer in each book than I was in the last.

This time around, the thing that I'm facing is dealing with emotions. I've hit some high points at time to time in doing that well for particular scenes in the past, but in general, I tend to be more cerebral and analytical in my writing rather than emotional, and dealing better with emotions is the thing I need to learn to take my writing up a notch. The challenge is that I'm not a wildly emotional person. I am more cerebral and analytical. I live in my head rather than in my heart. And, I'm generally pretty mellow. I don't really do highs or lows. To me, an emotional high is a peaceful state of zen-like bliss, and a low is that bliss being dampened a bit. But in order to honestly write about emotions, I need to explore them a bit more, myself, which means deliberately working myself into a state. It's probably a good thing that I live alone because I wouldn't want to inflict me in a state on anyone.

I may get a head start on that because we have a homeowners association meeting tonight, and dealing with these people is a good way to work myself up. Normally I just send in a proxy and skip it because I'm allergic to meetings, especially meetings with conflict. But this time around there are apparently some issues, and there's no one I really trust my proxy with for these issues because I don't know the new board, so I have to go in person and that means dealing with these people, some of whom have already worked themselves into a state over what they think will happen (however, those people also thought the meeting was last week and that they were trying to sneak things by us by not notifying anyone about the meeting, so I'm not sure how accurate they are about the things that are going to happen).

Sadly, my inclination is to take notes on these people getting all worked up and confrontational to observe how to convey these emotions, which brings me back to the cerebral and analytical thing.

Maybe I also need to get out the opera scores and do some singing. Cursing the heavens in Italian is a good way to get emotional. Music in general does work like that for me, so perhaps I need a soundtrack for this book.

Since there seem to be a lot of new people around (what with the new book release, and all), I thought I'd do a welcome/intro post.

Hi, and greetings! In case you aren't here because you read my books, I'm Shanna, and I'm a writer. I generally post Monday through Friday, unless I'm out of town, and sometimes on Saturday if I'm bored or think of something to say. I talk about a lot of random stuff. Topics likely to be addressed include books, writing, the publishing world, movies, television, life in general, and geeky type stuff. I don't talk about reality TV (other than to mock it). Most of the TV I discuss seems to involve things like spaceships and aliens. Sometimes I do interviews with other authors. I occasionally do "book reports" of books I've read that I want to recommend. I generally don't say negative things about specific books because, for one thing, I don't have time to talk about all the books I like. I certainly don't have time to spend bashing a book. For another thing, since other authors can be seen as "competition," I feel like I have a bit of conflict of interest, so book talk should stay positive. I have no such qualms about movies or TV.

I generally try to talk about writing -- the craft or the business of it -- on Wednesdays (Writing Wednesdays, get it?). Every other week I do a more general post that also goes out to a mailing list, but at other times I may do something on a writing topic that's more aimed at regular readers of this blog, who seem to have a lot of common interests. I am open to questions about writing or publishing that you want to see addressed. Just leave a comment.

I copy the same blog content to three different places, LiveJournal, Blogger and MySpace. That way you can find me in the easiest way for you (or that isn't blocked at work). Most of the discussion in comments seems to happen at LiveJournal, and that's where I'm most likely to respond, since that's more of my own personal hangout and I simply like the form factor for commenting there better. Regular commenters range from readers I've never met to readers I've since met at some event or another, to people I know from conventions, to online friends from my pre-book days to real-life friends, some of whom have known me for more than twenty years. Mom pops up from time to time, too (so keep it clean). My general policy on responding to comments is that I will respond if I have something to say to add to the discussion. Unless I'm really bored and procrastinating, with the volume of comments there sometimes is and with my work schedule (or what my work schedule should be), I can't really manage to respond to absolutely everything. If I don't respond to your comment, it just means that you said it all and I have nothing to add (or that I'm really busy and being good by not playing online). It doesn't mean I don't love you.

Because I'm not married and don't have adorable children or pets to talk about, there aren't really any regular "characters" who get mentioned here from my day-to-day life. There are the parents, sometimes referred to as the Parental Units or "the folks." I do not live in their basement. I have my own house about two hours away, which means we can keep in touch pretty easily and talk often. We've managed that fun transition toward me being a real adult so that we're now actually friends in addition to the parent/child relationship. Then there's the person known as "my anchorman" who is the weekend local news anchor I've had a huge crush on for years (my longest-lasting relationship so far). He went to the same journalism school I did, but at a different time. I have e-mailed him (but to compliment the newscast, not to tell him I want to have his babies), and that, sadly, did not manage to turn into an ongoing correspondence that led to him wanting to meet me. He also didn't seem to be intrigued by the article about me in the newspaper last year so that he felt compelled to contact me. I'm always working on schemes to meet him and then chickening out of them. It's an ongoing thing. The latest is that I may need to visit a TV newsroom for the book I've started working on, since one of the characters is a TV reporter and I haven't worked in TV news since 1990, and things have changed since then. Of course, it will have to be that station, since it's the sister station of the place where I worked. Otherwise, I generally try to respect my friends' privacy, though I do mention writer friends by name when I run into them at writing-related events, since it's good book karma to help promote your writer friends.

Finally, I found my battle cry, and it even sounds like something I might do/say:

What Is Your Battle Cry?

Yea, verily: Who is that, running amidst the cliffs! It is Shanna_s, hands clutching a sharpened screwdriver! And with a mighty howl, her voice cometh: "I'm going to contort you beyond mortal comprehension!!!"

Find out! Enter username: Are you a girl, or a guy ?

created by beatings : powered by monkeys

Wow, that was a huge response to yesterday's post. I think that's the most comments I've ever had. Because I may have been a bit negative yesterday in mentioning lots of things I don't like, I thought I'd end this week on a positive note and talk about the things that are currently making me happy. Again, feel free to share your own happy list. That might help someone else find something to make them happy.

In no particular order:
1) Don't Hex With Texas has already gone into a second printing. That's less than two weeks after publication. Don't ask me what that means about the status of book 5. The people to ask about that would be at Ballantine Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. (Yeah, I know I've said in the past that it was book sales that counted, but since that doesn't seem to be the case, go for it -- postcards, letters, petitions, picketing, whatever. And you didn't hear this from me.)
2) My new electric teakettle. It's so much faster than heating water on the stove, and with the amount of tea I drink, I estimate it's saving me up to ten minutes a day. That will really add up over time. It also makes boiling water for pasta faster -- I boil it in the kettle, then dump it into the pasta pot.
3) The new idea I'm playing with. There's a character in there I can't wait to write. I hope she's as much fun on the page as she is in my head.
4) The Sarah Jane Adventures. I know this is supposedly a children's show, but it's totally an adult woman's fantasy: The main character is pushing 60, but she's still gorgeous, glamorous, independent and intelligent, instead of being the nagging mother-in-law, ditzy empty-nester, knitting grandma, predatory cougar or any other role that women that age usually get given. She has a fabulous house and a cool car. The teenage kids think she's great and even listen to her. The kids are polite, intelligent, respectful to adults and seem to do well in school. Meanwhile, the more "normal" teenagers seem to be prone to being eaten or kidnapped by aliens. For teachers this might even qualify as porn.
5) Donna Noble on Doctor Who. I liked her even in "The Runaway Bride," although I usually have little patience with Bridezillas (though there's a huge difference between being a Bridezilla because you expect every detail of your wedding to be perfect because it's Your Big Day and being a Bridezilla because you were abducted by aliens while you were walking down the aisle at your own wedding). But now, it's like someone took my mental checklist of what I've wanted to see in a Companion and brought her to life. She's my new TV Best Friend. I think part of it is that it's nice to see a representative of Team Over-35, which I think makes a far better sidekick for a 900-something-year-old guy than a dewy-eyed youngster does, and that leads to her not being so much in awe of him, so she's able to have her own opinions, stand up to him and stand her ground -- and all while being so well aware that he's alien that she's in little danger of getting shmoopily romantic over him, which means she can also honestly express admiration of him and affection for him without worrying about how he'll take it or what he might think about her.
6) Cranford on Masterpiece Theatre -- The first episode Sunday night was so sweet and funny and yet also made me cry. I'm a total sucker for costume drama, anyway, but the cast in this is amazing, there's English Countryside Porn, and the vignettes of small-town life are so real even while being a little outrageous. I think I will have to get the DVD because it's a guaranteed pick-me-up. And I need to read the books this is based on. My library has no Elizabeth Gaskell, but it looks like most of her books are on Project Gutenberg.
7) The BBC Robin Hood -- Yeah, if you expect anything resembling accuracy in history, costuming, technology or anything else your head will explode, but it's such cheesy good fun. How can you not love a version of Robin Hood that includes ninjas and dominatrix-type villainesses in black leather catsuits? Plus, cute boys and heroic theme music that totally gets stuck in my head.
8) The opening fanfare for Star Wars -- I turned on the CD player the other day without knowing what was in the changer, and the moment those opening notes burst out of the speakers, I went right back to being a nine-year-old sitting in a darkened theater after waiting in a long line and coming to the realization that maybe my dad wasn't crazy for dragging us to this movie, after all. I think a large part of the success of the movie stemmed from that music that was pretty much the musical version of, "Hey, what you're about to see will be awesome."
9) Prince Caspian opens next Friday. That was one of my favorite Narnia books, largely because of the big swordfight with Peter. I had a bit of a crush on Peter when I first read those books, and that fight was swoonworthy. My inner 11-year-old is quite keen on the casting of Peter and is looking forward to watching that fight on the screen.
10) Strawberries seem to really be in season, and they're starting to be good. The strawberries a few weeks ago were kind of flavorless, but the ones I bought last week were delicious. I'm looking forward to getting more today. One of my favorite guilt-free desserts is strawberries topped with vanilla yogurt (the way you'd do strawberries and whipped cream). If they have any angel food cakes on the bakery clearance rack, I may be tempted to get one to go with the strawberries (and angel food cake is also really good toasted lightly).

Finally, a couple more stops on the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit. There's an interview at Stephanie Kuehnert's blog (for those who've asked questions about possible playlists, some answers are there) and a short interview at Kelly Parra's blog.

I had another fun signing last night. People came to see me! We hooked a new victim -- er, reader! There was cake! Oddly, though, I'm utterly exhausted this morning, like I did some great physical labor. Some of that may be cake hangover, though, as I skipped dinner and instead ate two pieces of cake. I'm now pretty much done with the "author" phase of my life, until convention season kicks off in June. Normally, I find it hard to write when I'm in promo mode, but this time, I've had trouble with promo mode because my brain is frantically trying to generate a new book.

As we were discussing somewhat last night at the signing, I often feel that I'm out of step with the mainstream of society. I guess that's another thing I have in common with Katie in my books. In the first book, when she notices that she's the only one who isn't swooning over Rod, her whole mental riff on things that are popular that she doesn't get is pretty much me. So, I thought I'd share other unpopular opinions I seem to hold. Mind you, I'm not saying any of these are bad things or that other people should agree with me, just that these are things I think and sometimes feel like an oddball about.

In no particular order:
1) I really am not interested in the mating habits or love lives of vampires. I don't find vampires sexy or romantic, and I have no sympathy for the vampire/human relationship angst of wanting to be together, but not being able to because of the vampire thing. Actually, I don't much get into any of the doomed/forbidden love type stories (perhaps because I'm too practical. If the odds against us look insurmountable, I'll go find someone I can be with without the angst). But looking at the urban fantasy bestsellers, it would appear that I'm one of the few people who isn't into vampires. The really annoying thing is that most of the lighter urban fantasy type books, the ones with a tone similar to mine, seem to be vampire books, and I'm not any more interested in vampires when they're shopping for shoes or having difficulty dating, even without the angst. I'm mostly interested in vampires as stake fodder, and even there, Buffy may have maxed out my vampire tolerance levels. We need more funny wizard type people.
2) I'm not at all excited about the X-Files movie coming out this summer. I loved the series when it was on. I was obsessed with the series when it was on. But the final episode gave me closure, and I'm not interested in revisiting these characters. Ditto the Sex and the City movie, though I wasn't a really huge fan of the TV series. I watched it more out of a sense of duty because all the editors at the time were saying that's the tone they wanted to see in books.
3) I don't get why people would want to buy clothing "designed" by someone whose job has nothing to do with designing anything. Like, why would I want shoes bearing the name of a singer mostly known for being on a reality TV series? Why would I want to wear perfume "designed" by any of the pop tarts? But this stuff really seems to sell.
4) I don't get the designer-logo thing at all. Why would I pay a fortune to become a walking billboard for any designer by carrying or wearing something with the logo all over it? If it's true designer quality, it should speak for itself without having little "LV"s all over it. I also don't understand why anyone would pay more than a thousand dollars for a purse. There are purses that are more expensive than my car. That makes zero sense to me, and yet there are waiting lists to get these purses.
5) The degree of obsession related to all the Disney Channel-spawned musical things is frightening. Is there subliminal mind control involved? How do kids suddenly get the message that they must worship Hannah Montana? Space rays? At the target age for that stuff, I was obsessed with Star Wars, but that amounted to having a t-shirt, reading the novelization a few hundred times and cutting any related pictures out of magazines. I did expect my parents to take me to the movies when they came out (my parents wanted to see them, too), but if that had been as crazy as what it takes to see these Disney people in concert, I can't imagine I would have expected that. (Though I guess this opinion is only unpopular among tween girls.)
6) I usually don't much care if a particular couple gets together on a TV series. I'm more likely to be opposed to them getting together than eagerly awaiting it, but in general, I just go with what they show us. It's all about story for me, and if the relationship takes over, I generally get bored. Romance has ruined far too many TV series.
7) On that note, I was very annoyed that they went there with Mulder and Scully. I remember when Chris Carter said in the first season that they would never get romantically involved. But then they did go there, and didn't do it very well. I felt like the last holdout, though, because everyone else seemed to be swooning in rapture that they were in love and were calling each other by their first names in their sappy love-letter mystery e-mails. Ick. I also never thought that Rose and the Doctor had any kind of great romance going on in Doctor Who. If I was supposed to think that she was the love of his life, he was doing something wrong, or else he's pretty tepid about the love of his life. (I got more of the romantic interest vibe from the Ninth Doctor. The Tenth was too easily distracted by every other woman who came along, and his concern for Rose seemed to be more along the lines of "Her mother will kill me -- as many times as it takes -- if I let something happen to her.")
(Yes, I used to write romance novels. I was obviously in the wrong career field because I am so unromantic.)
8) I loved the epilogue to the last Harry Potter book. Yeah, it was a little sappy, but it was satisfying. Harry's kids are so going to get beat up and picked on at school, though, with the names he gave them (I don't think that part is an unpopular opinion, but liking the epilogue seems to be).
9) I don't find most of the mainstream "heartthrob" guys all that appealing -- men like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Tom Cruise (and I disliked him long before it was cool to), etc. (However, I do seem to be more in the mainstream for the geekier heartthrobs in geek circles.)

Anyone else want to get something off your chest, something that makes you feel like an oddball? This is a safe place for unburdening yourself. You may find that you're not alone!

I made significant progress in figuring out what's going on with the new idea, which might actually manage to become a book. I'm still not sure how to end it, but maybe I'll figure it out as I do more work on it. My instinct is to try to write a series, because that's the way I think, but now I'm kind of burned on series because what if I don't get to end the series yet again? In the meantime, I've got a booksigning tonight at the Borders in Plano, on Preston Road just south of Park, at 7. I have heard that there might be cake, if that sweetens the deal at all (pun intended).

Since there seem to be some new people around here, every other Wednesday I do a post on writing -- either craft or business aspects. You can also get these posts by e-mail.

Last time, I responded to a reader question about how you can tell if an agent or publisher is legitimate and addressed the agent side of the equation. Today I'll talk about publishers. As with agents, the Internet has made that easier, in that there are more ways to search for information on publishers, and more difficult, in that it's easier than ever to become a "publisher" and the business model for publishing is changing because of the Internet.

Once upon a time, back in the Dark Ages when dinosaurs roamed the earth without Internet access, it was generally pretty easy to tell if a publisher was legitimate. You could find their books in bookstores and they paid you an advance to publish your novel. Now there are electronic publishers whose books are sold strictly online, there are imprints of major New York publishers that publish primarily online and don't pay advances, and there are scam publishers that do pay "advances."

One way that determines if a publisher is legit has remained the same: money flows from the publisher to the writer, not the other way around. Even if the publisher doesn't pay an advance and only pays royalties based on sales, that money should go from the publisher to the writer without the writer having to chip in. The publisher should be responsible for editing the book, getting the ISBN and creating a cover, and you shouldn't be charged for that. A publisher may give you the option of buying copies of your book at a discount, but you should NEVER be REQUIRED to do so (one of the scam publishers' tricks -- they may not charge you for publication, but then they get you by making you buy a certain number of copies, and you can only recoup your investment by selling them yourself, and that's often the only sales that will happen). You may be expected to do some marketing activity for the book, but you should be able to choose how much of your own money you want to spend and where and how you want to spend it. You should not EVER have to pay a publisher any kind of "marketing fee." The only thing my contract stipulated that I had to provide (other than the book itself) was a photo of myself to be used in the books and for promotional activities, but again, it was my choice of what to pay for that and who to pay, and if I had a friend who could take a good photo with a digital camera so I paid nothing, that would have been my choice. I didn't pay the publisher for that. You know you've got a probable scam if there are a lot of "fees" hidden in the contract.

There is a difference between "self publishing," "vanity publishing," "subsidy publishing" and scams, although the lines blur. In self-publishing, you take on the role of publisher -- you get the book edited and typeset, you create the cover, and you get the book printed and distributed. Subsidy publishing is similar, but they do the work of getting the book published with you paying for the service and the printing. This can be a totally legitimate enterprise if you know that's what you're doing and have your expectations set accordingly. It's less likely to work for fiction, but if you're an expert in a niche non-fiction field and you're often invited to speak to groups, having a book you can sell at talks may be profitable. A vanity publisher is one that will print and bind your book so you can enjoy having a book with your name on the cover. You pay for this service. Again, it's not a scam if you know exactly what you're getting, if you know that your book is being printed because you paid for it to be printed and not because it's brilliant. You're dealing with a scam if they convince you that they've carefully selected your book out of all the thousands submitted because it's just so brilliant, and you'll now be published (once you pay for the privilege, either up front or in a bunch of fees they hit you with after the fact). A scam will convince you that you're being legitimately published, with your book being distributed, when all they're really doing is printing your book and selling the copies to you.

One other way to tell you might be dealing with a scam is if they're overly enthusiastic about a book no one else seems to want. Now, this isn't foolproof because there are countless stories of books that went on to become huge bestsellers after being rejected by absolutely everyone but the one publisher that took a chance on it. But in most of those cases, at least an agent had believed in the book, and the rejections had more to do with market issues than with the quality of the book. It wasn't that the book stunk, but that they didn't know how to sell it. If you get a lot of form rejections or very negative rejections and then suddenly a publisher swoons in rapture over your book, you might want to do a little research (though, really, you should do that research before submitting). In a now-infamous sting, some SFWA members set out to deliberately create the Worst Novel Ever, with each author writing a chapter as badly as possible without reading the previous chapter -- which meant that the characters changed names without reason, the settings shifted, and the story made no sense -- and Publish America accepted it for publication, supposedly out of a highly selective process. Which should tell you something about the legitimacy of that publisher.

Then there are plenty of publishers that are perfectly legitimate and honest, that are not scams, but that just aren't very good, and that's a harder line to draw. The advent of e-publishing means that anyone with a computer, an Internet connection and a web host can become a publisher. Not everyone who tries this really has the skill or the business sense to be a success. Some have become HUGE successes and even start getting print books in major bookstores, some fall by the wayside, and some have gone bankrupt, with their authors' books tied up as assets in bankruptcy court. Some of the e-publishers that have gone bankrupt were even on the Romance Writers of America "recognized" list, meaning that they'd been in business a while and had sold a reasonable number of books. This is where Google is your friend. Before you deal with a publisher, check out what's being said on message boards and blogs. Are their authors happy, are their books being mocked for poor quality, do they actually pay money? You can make decent money on some e-published books (mostly erotica, it seems), and you can make very little money. There have been authors "discovered" by major publishers because of their e-published or small press books. Whether you want to go that route is a decision you have to make based on your expectations and what you want to do with your career.

The best resource for researching publishers, agents and potential scams is Writer Beware, which is run by SFWA. That's a good starting point for research. Just reading some of their case studies can help you tune your own scam radar. Sadly, there are far too many people preying on other people's dreams.

If you have any other questions you want me to tackle, let me know!

The looniness with my car dealership continues. After all the confusion in trying to get the car in the first place, when they were a day late after no one in the dealership seemed to know what was going on, and then after I had to go in and re-do all the paperwork because the VIN on the paperwork didn't match the VIN on my car, my temporary tags have almost expired, so I called yesterday to see if maybe the real plates were in and they forgot to tell me. It turns out that they'd put the paperwork on hold until my check cleared and then forgot about it, and if I hadn't called, nothing ever would have happened. Meanwhile, I keep getting the "customer service" calls which are really about guilt-tripping me into giving them perfect marks on the customer service survey. Apparently, they get tortured and executed if they don't get perfect marks, and it will be all my fault if I complain about anything (even if I do have something to complain about).

On the other hand, I mentioned the lack of sleep last weekend when they started the renovation work at eight on a Sunday morning at the hotel. Well, I filled out the customer service survey they sent me and mentioned this. Yesterday, I got a phone call from the hotel manager, apologizing, and they're sending me a voucher for a free room upgrade next time I stay there. That's the hotel where the Browncoat Ball will be, so looks like I may have to have a room party (or pick up the tea house tradition) if I get a suite. So, the Omni Hotel really does know how to deal with follow-ups on customer service. They'd already done great things with stuff like the confirmation e-mail that contained all the necessary travel info.

I recently re-read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, and that seems to be one of the books that I get more out of each time I read it. It's about a young man who stops to help an injured young woman who looks like a street person, and because of his involvement in her life, he loses his existence in the "real" world. To get his life back, he has to enter the mysterious underground world of London Below and complete a dangerous quest. That was one of the first urban fantasy books I found, one that made me start to believe that this weird little idea I had about magical stuff in a modern setting might possibly work. Since the first time I read it, I've done a lot more reading of folklore, and it really does seem like London Below is a sort of modern fairy society, with a lot of parallels to fairy lore, and what I like about it is that he doesn't beat you over the head with that idea. If you know the lore, you'll recognize it, but it's not all self-consciously, "Hey, look! This is what the fairy world might be like in modern times!"

But another reason I like this book is that I've had a bit of a London Below experience, or at least, one that reminds me of the book. It was on my second trip to England, in the fall of 2001. I was visiting a friend who lived in a suburb east of London and needed to get from Gatwick to the train station a few blocks from her house. At the airport, they gave me a train ticket and a list of which trains to take from which stations at which times, and I was off. I got the train from the airport into London, then was on the Tube to another station when the train came to a stop. After a few polite "we apologize for the inconvenience" announcements, they finally said that the line was closed from that point on, and they backed the train up to the Canary Wharf station and made everyone get off. I wasn't sure what to do next. I was studying the system map at the station when a guy came up to me and asked if I needed help.

I'm glad I hadn't yet read Neverwhere or I might have been a bit freaked out, because he was very much like what I imagine the Marquis de Carabas to be like, though without the shifty underside and the elaborate wardrobe. He had a very formal, courtly, old-fashioned manner while still being incredibly outgoing and friendly, and a bit of a Caribbean/West Indies accent. Of course, my initial instinct was "I can do it MYSELF," but I really wasn't sure how to get to the station I needed, and I didn't know the route of the train to know any other stations where it might stop. So, I showed the guy the print-out from the airport train station and explained where I needed to go. He said he'd take me where I needed to go. I hesitated, since he was a total stranger, and I was in an unfamiliar area of a major city in a foreign country, but then I was in an unfamiliar area of a major city in a foreign country, so that was when I needed help. He insisted that he was totally safe and turned to the other people he'd been talking with earlier and got them to vouch for him. They all really had seemed to know him, even though they were a pretty random cross-section of the population, and they did vouch for him.

And, for some odd reason, I did trust him. It was one of those times when that little voice in the back of my head told me that it was okay, so I agreed to let him lead me. However, I wouldn't let him carry my bags, as I'm not quite that trusting. Then I was off on a journey that involved the Docklands Light Rail, a walk through a neighborhood, a ride on what seemed to be an older Tube line (or maybe two -- it gets blurry), and then finally arrival at the train station after another walk through another neighborhood. It turned out to be very good that I'd agreed to let him guide me because I would never have found my way. The stations that appeared on the map to be contiguous were actually several blocks apart and barely marked. The walks between stations were through neighborhoods the likes of which I'd never seen. They weren't bad neighborhoods, but they were just neighborhoods, a part of London tourists would never see. To me, it was simultaneously Victorian-looking, like a place Dickens characters might have lived, and also that sort of timeless mid-century look, like the street they always show to represent 40s or 50s London on Doctor Who (though I know that's actually in Cardiff). "Normal" neighborhoods in my part of the world aren't that old, so that almost made it as good as a tourist destination for me. Meanwhile, this guy knew EVERYBODY we passed. He greeted them all by name and introduced me. It was like he was the unofficial mayor of that part of town.

Then we finally got to the Tube station, where again it was good that I had my guide because my ticket must have been out of the proper zone, as the gates wouldn't accept it. But my guide knew the station manager, and once he explained the situation, the manager opened the employee gate to let us through into the station. On the train, my guide again knew everyone. It wasn't just that he was being friendly to everyone and they were humoring him by smiling and nodding. He really knew them and knew things about them. He asked after their families and updated them on other people he knew. And then this really weird thing happened. Suddenly it wasn't like I was in the middle of an unfamiliar part of one of the world's major cities. It was more like I was in a small town where everyone knew everyone. I'd gone from London Above, where I was an anonymous tourist and all the city dwellers just moved past each other without seeing each other, to London Below, where everyone knew and cared about everyone else, where we were all part of a community that almost might have been invisible to the rest of the world.

When we got to my train station, he helped me find the right platform, then walked me right to it. Before he left, he told me he knew he needed to help me because he could tell I was a real lady since I didn't have pierced ears.

Um, okay. While I do like to think that I am a lady, if you've read my essay in the Judy Blume tribute book, you'll know that I don't have my ears pierced because I get eczema behind my ears sometimes (and I really don't like jewelry all that much). It's an odd reason to help someone, but hey, it worked out for me.

Anyway, when I read Neverwhere, I remembered that incident, and I could really relate to the way the main character felt when he got caught up in London Below. I also got a giggle during the Doctor Who episode where we learned that Torchwood was based in Canary Wharf because I figured that had to be why they stopped the train. Torchwood must have been up to something. And now I'm a little nervous about ever going back to London because it's possible that I owe the Marquis de Carabas a huge favor.

Now, I've got more virtual book tour stops with interviews that may (or may not) contain new info. Today I'm at Southern Comfort, I do a little Shop Talk with Laura Bowers, I pay a visit to Amanda Ashby, and I share some disreputable history with E. Lockhart.