The Ginsu Knife

When I was younger, I was amazed by the early versions of informercials. I was the teen who watched those commercials where they washed two identical stains--one in Oxyclean and one in your "regular" detergent, and by God, miracle of miracles, I believed you could get ANYTHING out of a white shirt--even red wine! Don't even get me started on spray-on hair.

Which brings me to Ginsu knives. It slices, it dices, it can cut through anything. Look, it can even slice through this ALUMINUM can and STILL slice tomatoes paper thin. WOW! Slicing and dicing!

I have now discovered I have a Ginsu approach to my work. I thought about it yesterday as I worked on my upcoming vampire novel, BLOOD SON. I sat here and read chapter four again and again up on my screen, slicing and dicing words. I would have singular word changes. I'd look for repetitive words and dice them the hell out of there. I might go through one entire read-through to slice ONE WORD. One word. Other times, I'd hack at an entire paragraph I deemed unnecessary.

I suppose that is what makes writers . . . well, writers. It's this craft you have to hone and sharpen. This is why I am amused when I meet someone at a cocktail party--I usually say I sell insurance or am an actuary. Honest, I do. I dread being stuck in a corner with someone telling me their Great Aunt Mildred has all the makings of a best-selling memoirist if only I would write the book and split the profits. But even MORE annoying are those people who tell me, "Oh yeah, I plan on writing a novel in my free time once I scale back at the office. Oh, and once I do that, how can I sell it? How MUCH do you think I can get?" As if this is a craft you can just sit down, do in your spare time, and perfect first shot out of the gate. As if the last twenty years of my life or longer, learning and studying and critiquing and working mean nothing. As if it's all about the Benjamins.

A real writer WILL take that Ginsu blade and cut a single word. THAT is one of many things that sets us apart. Or does it? Thoughts?

Shut UP!

I was just approached to do an online read for the launch of the Nocturne paranormal line. It's always fun and good promotion (and nice money for how short they are) to do launches, so I said sure. But . . .

NOW my brain will not shut up. I have a million ideas for this short (five chapters) online read. SHUT UP! Because I have something more pressing (finishing my new novel). But you know how it is with a nice, bright, shining, new idea. The brain races and is so excited.

SHUT UP! There it is. Firing on all synapses. New idea . . . new idea . . . new idea . . . it's like my cursor, there taunting me. Write me! Write me!

Discipline. That's what's needed. But hey, I write in my pjs and procrastinate, and discipline has never been my strong suit. So there goes my brain. Taunting me.

SHUT UP!

Anyone else have this problem?

Broken

In both my brand-new book, Invisible Girl and my older book, The Roofer, my heroines grapple with what 99.99% of us grapple with--FAMILY. In Invisible Girl, Maggie is dragged for the countless time into the midst of her father's secrets. She doesn't even know who he is--CIA, Air America, a gun runner, a thief, a hero or working for the other side. Her brother is her best friend--and he's in league with Daddy, making her brother a liability and a danger to her, but also her greatest and most loyal love--a theme that ran through The Roofer, too.

It's love-hate for many of us. Not all. I'll occasionally run into someone with stories of a Currier and Ives childhood, and bless them, they're lucky. For most people, relationships with family are full of land mines and secrets, complications and those things that are right there in front of you but you don't dare talk about because to do so would open a can of worms, a history so huge as to overwhelm and threaten the present.

I get more mail from people who wonder why I paint a brother and sister so interwoven they are inseparable, so close as to seem incestuous, yet so hateful to each other at times. Why are fathers inexplicable? In The Roofer, I had an uncle behave in a manner so vile--and received a letter from a man moved by the book but so upset by that because this man WAS an uncle, and it disturbed him to see the relationship protrayed so poisonously. But to be honest, I love getting those letters and emails because those letters tell me I hit a nerve. Not that the people in question have anything to hide or are bad or ugly or evil, but that family is that raw nerve in so many of us.

It's love and hate and laughter over shared meals. We break bread together and we break each others' hearts. And I suppose there is no richer minefield for a novel.

Sweet Torture

I have a confession to make. I cannot stand--CANNOT STAND--sitcoms in which two characters are CLEARLY meant to be together but spend five television seasons bickering only to get together in the last season, last show, whatever. Cut to the chase. Same with movies. I mean, I just don't want to spend two hours of my life watching two sexually charged people dance around each other before finally deciding to make it work. Or . . . they fall into bed, misunderstanding and bad communication abound, and now we must spend the last third of the movie watching them figure out they are meant to be together.

But I realize I am in the minority . . . and no offense is intended to any of my romance writer friends who follow this sort of plotline.

See . . . I'm a lay-my-cards-on-the-table gal. I might flirt and dance around the obvious . . . but in the end, preferably over a few shots of tequila, perhaps, I am going to say, "This is me, this is my baggage, take it or there's the door. I'm loyal to a fault, opinionated . . . but generous of spirit . . . and I am what I am. It is what it is. I live my life this way. It's a wild ride. Hop on or . . . part as my friend."

Which brings me to my present book, BLOOD SON for the new Nocturne paranormal line. Part of the book is that sweet torture of prolonging the two main characters from getting together. He is sexy and brooding as hell; every day is physical pain and mental torture for him, yet he's passionate of spirit. She is intellectually brilliant but emotionally lonely and fearful. And I am, as a writer, walking a fine line. Because I know the READER will like the dance of keeping them apart. But hell, I'd like to have them ripping each other's clothes off and passionately making love in chapter three. :-) I realize it's my personality--ME as author--clashing with what is best for the NOVEL.

Does that ever happen to any of you? It has to, I imagine. Writer . . . up against novel. Sweet torture.

I'm B-A-A-A-C-K!!!!

Well, put it this way. When I die I want to be cremated. And they can spread my ashes in the backyard, because this is the last time I am moving.

Yes, I relocated. I have a creek in my backyard, and trees, and a serene and lovely office (will try to post some pictures when I can find my damn digital camera). I had to change phones, internet provider, and all the rest of it . . . oh, and move ten tons of crap (or so it seemed). But here I am. With a deadline. Two weeks of hell coming up.

But . . . as usual, I am looking for the lesson . . . and the lesson is this. Purge. We accumulate so much STUFF . . . and it's very freeing (if hellish) to go through it all and decide what's really important to you, and get rid of the rest. To charity, to the dump, to someone who would like it more that you.

As for my writing . . . I have also discovered that writing ISN'T the haven I thought it was. I always thought I escaped into my writing. And I do. But I also discovered that unless I want to babble like an idiot, I need a "space"--mental and physical--in order to write. I have been through the emotional wringer this last month with more chaos than I ever want to go through again. And I really couldn't go to that place where I create. I needed a mental peaceful space . . . which I have found once again. So I am anxious to begin.

Hope all my blog readers have been well. Stop by and say hi!

Nature or Nurture?

One of my kids is a brilliant artist. I am awed because at eight, she draws WAY better than I do--no kidding. One of my kids is a violinist with perfect pitch, who is also a beautiful soprano. And one is unbelievably math oriented (which he did not get from me). As for the baby, who knows? Right now he is adept at climbing on things, which perhaps bodes well for him climbing Everest someday. Now, I am no stage mother, but I do help them pursue that which they love. Artist Child gets art lessons. Math Child gets lots of chess practice. Musician Child gets music lessons and an expensive violin. Nature? Somewhat. Nurture? That too.

Thinking back on my childhood, my parents loaded me down with books. I didn't watch a lot of TV--some, but not tons of it. I read. And read and read and read. My clever parents set a ridiculously early bedtime when it was still light out, but would say, "But if you read a book you can stay up an hour later." No brainer that I was going to read. But WHAT did I read? Well, there, too . . . they were clever. My father gifted me with an unabridged Sherlock Holmes book so thick it was like a dictionary, when I was still in elementary school. I read Tale of Two Cities while recovering from the yanking of my tonsils. I was pushed to read difficult books and read David Copperfield well before middle school. Nature? Somewhat. They knew my IQ. Nurture? A lot of that.

So now I ponder writing. I can think of two fabulous English teachers in school who encouraged me to write, and I remember writing always came very easily to me. If there was an essay exam, I always finished in a fraction of the time my peers took. However, I had my heart set on medical school. My father, however, wasn't keen on the idea of me giving up so many years of my life in pursuit of what is admittedly a difficult course to take. AND, he felt I wasn't as science-oriented as I needed to be. I remember asking him, "Well, then what should I study at college? What should I major in?" He replied, "If you ask me, concentrate on writing. That's what you're really good at." There were plenty of twists and turns along the way, but . . . here I am.

I wonder if at various crossroads, if the wrong words were spoken to me, or I was encouraged in science, if I might have done something different. Or was it my nature to always gravitate toward the written word? What if my parents had been so caught up in their own lives that they never noticed what I was good at, what I wanted to be? What if my fabulous ninth-grade English teacher had, instead of enthralling me with To Kill a Mockingbird, been sipping vodka from her coffee cup and not inspired me at all? What if I had given up upon my first rejection letter? What if my college professors in the journalism department had accepted crappy grammar and spelling? What if I had never met other writers who inspired me? What if . . . what if . . . ?

Nature or nurture? Thoughts?

Paranormally Yours

It takes a lot of imagination to write 300 pages of a novel. You make up an entire world, characters, their problems, their lives. You figure out who your characters' parents are, what their habits are, why they are dysfunctional or happy or tortured. You find their voice and meld it into you so you can write in that voice for pages on end. It's hard work, but great fun.

It's even more fun--at least for me--to enter a paranormal world. For me, it is absolutely freeing because even less rules apply. You enter a fantastical world, and you get to make even MORE stuff up--and as long as you create a MYTHOLOGY that is believable, your readers will suspend their disbelief and join you.

My first paranomal was called Urban Legend, and I wrote it for the Silhouette Bombshell line. It sold out of its printing and was re-released as Twice Bitten in trade-size (with Crystal Green's book, The Huntress). I had a ball writing it, mostly because it was writing using a sense of playfulness and imagination even greater than in my usual books. I needed to make my vampire memorable, so I took what I liked of vampire myth (immortal nature, can't go out in daylight), discarded some that I didn't (such as shrinking back from crosses and religious hallowed ground). I made my vampire a Buddhist. Definitely tricky to pull off, but it worked with her mythology.

My second paranormal was for teens, High School Bites. In this book, the vampire hunter was a girl descended from the real-life inspiration for Lucy in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and her world was populated by descendants of Stoker and Henry Irving, a real-life actor from the Lyceum Theatre in London. I got some of the best reviews of my career, including Kirkus.

So now . . . I am returning to the world of vampires for the new Nocturne line, to write about a dhampir in a book titled Blood Son for January 2007. And once again, when I am working on it, I find myself so absolutely excited. Wolves, gargoyles, a strange abandoned convent . . . it's not just inventing a novel--hard work, indeed--but creating the mythology.

I know paranormals are "hot" right now. But for me, writing has always been about creating another world. And with paranormals, you get to take it one step further. Again, that word, mythology.

Anyone creating a mythology in their work in progress? Does adding paranormal or fantasy elements take it to some other level for you?