Month: March 2011

One of the things that annoys the living daylights out of me are reviewers or even elder writers who think that humor is somehow a lesser form of the fiction writing art. They act as if any fool can write humor.

To an extent they are of course right. Any fool can write humor just like any fool can write tragedy. The thing comes down ultimately not to whether you can write something. Assuming you know how to form letters, have a crayon and some smoothed-out wrapping paper and can stop from drooling on your handy work, you can write anything you very well please. The question is, can one write it a way anyone else will enjoy it? And there, I submit, humor has a lower rate of success than practically any other mode of fiction writing.

I think that – or at least the fact I believe that – is why I came to humor late. In fact, years ago when Mike Resnick invited me to one of the This Is My Funniest collections, my choice was between mildly amusing and very silly, as I had exactly two published short stories that were sort of funny. (Elvis Died For Your Sins was eventually chosen.) I still don’t do much humor in short stories, or at least I haven’t so far. Of course, the Daring Finds mysteries are funny, and almost all my novels have humor in them – dosage varying.

If you’re a beginner go for horror – particularly graphic horror. Why? Because it’s easy. When I’m very tired, that’s where I go. And look, I don’t even read the stuff. I just write it. This is because, in the exact same way a novel is more forgiving than a short story, a horror story is always more forgiving than humor. If the mood gets a little wobbly, you just throw in another awful event, lovingly and detailedly described, and voila, you’re back on track. While in humor if the mood gets off track, you might have trouble getting a smile off your next funny bit – and you might shock the reader by trying to get it.

Also, every novel calls for serious stuff. The lightest and fluffiest of novelistic vol au vents requires some suspense, some anxiety, some struggle. How do you work that in with humor. (Carefully, that’s how!) Get the wrong mix in there and you either have a formless giggle-fest or you lost the funny in the serious.

Worse,  do humor the wrong way and you come across as a smug twit making in jokes that your readers don’t get.

I didn’t realize this until I was trapped (long story) in the reading of a self published author years ago. She was reading what she clearly thought was a very funny passage, and giggling to herself all the time. I honestly don’t know which was more infuriating: the fact that we didn’t know any of these characters so their lines were at best “meh” or that she would stop and explain “you see, that’s funny because she’s his wife.” I think one thing we can all agree on is that if you have to explain a joke, you already lost.

Mind you, I’m well aware that the author was reading from something like chapter 24 and it was the second book of a series. By the time you got there, it’s entirely possibly you’d find this sequence hilarious. Maybe. But the fact that the writer didn’t seem to realize it wouldn’t be funny out of context gave me pause. And it made me realize how difficult humor truly is. Fail to “plant the seeds”, to foreshadow the humor, and what you have are two guys talking to each other about something you don’t understand, and laughing. After a while – though you know it’s silly – you start feeling the joke is on you. That the writer is DELIBERATELY keeping you out of it. And before you know it, you’re mad at the writer and at the book.

I can’t teach you to write humor. You can learn, but it will take some study. Before I could write it, I could make people crack up at parties and dinner, and when I finally started writing it, I used some of the same techniques. I will now share some of these, and hopefully you’ll be able to analyze say Pratchett (who does humor tons better than I do) and figure it out the rest of the way.

So… a few rules.

1- Make either your premiss hilarious and your narration deadpan, or your premiss absolutely straightforward, but the narration or the way the character approaches the problem, totally zany. If you try to do both of them “funny” it won’t improve the effect. On the contrary, it will dilute it. If you write both of them seriously… well…

2 – Make sure the joke is not aimed at anyone. Jokes are like weapons. Even if you know the person doesn’t mean to kill you, you feel vaguely discomfitted as it sways your way. So, try to have your character either make fun of him/herself or have the joke be on the main character. (This is totally a personal preference, but I hate the humiliation humor that Hollywood engages in so often, you know, someone is tricked or cajoled into some premiss that will eventually embarrass him mortally when the big reveal comes. As the premiss piles deception on deception and the character makes more of a fool of himself, I start cringing. So, it is not what I mean by this. More that your character doesn’t take himself/herself TOO seriously. Take Dyce’s continuous assurance that organic food can kill you because it doesn’t have enough preservatives. Of course she knows better, as does the audience. But she’s broke, can’t afford organic, and, let’s face it, much of it tastes like cardboard. So she’s making fun of her situation and the fact she is not able to convince herself to eat the stuff. The same with her pretending the phone conspires against her. She’s mildly exasperated by the fact that she can never find the phone, so she pretends it’s sentient.)

3- Don’t have your characters laugh. This is the corollary of “don’t let your characters cry.” If you build up the emotional pressure and don’t let your characters cry, then the reader does, because someone has to. In the same way, if you build up the insanity and your characters don’t laugh, the reader has to. At the same time, if your characters laugh all the time and the jokes misfire… well… do you remember old sitcoms with laugh tracks? Remember when the jokes were utterly lame, but you still heard people laugh? Remember wanting to punch the tv? (Okay, maybe that was only me. But it still annoyed most people.)

4 – Build on it. Or in other words, foreshadow, foreshadow, foreshadow. I often plant a “thread” of humor in a short story. For instance, in the beginning of A Fatal Stain, it’s like every one can read Dyce’s thoughts. That’s not true, of course, but she starts thinking it, and then every time someone guesses what she was thinking (and which is usually pretty outlandish) it builds on the joke and it gets funnier and funnier. Pratchett is the master of this. For homework, read one of his books – which one doesn’t signify – and analyze every time a funny “thread” pops up and how it was built.

5- Try a little tenderness. Look, this humor thing has changed over the centuries. Dumas could have Porthos be dumb and encouraged his readers to feel superior to and laugh at him. These days, when reading is a more… selective amusement, people don’t want to read about dumb characters and there’s something icky about making fun of a man’s natural limitations. But if instead you make him have issues with words, though very smart in other ways, you can have fun showing his complex thoughts getting short-circuited on the way to the mouth. My best friend as a kid was SEVERELY dyslexic, as opposed to mildly dyslexic as I am, and I watched this process many times. You feel sorry for the person, but it’s still somewhat funny, because you know what they’re thinking and what comes out and how people will react to what comes out.  I don’t often use dyslexic characters, but I do use characters who are flustered, embarrassed or in love. So… try a little tenderness. Show the human side of your funny character. Nobby is Pratchett’s funniest – and most repulsive – character, but he’s not wholly despicable. Yeah, he’s a petty thief, etc, but when the chips are down, he comes through and helps save others. Also, as we learn of his background, we see how he got to be as he is and we feel sympathy towards him. The point is, if we’re going to laugh with someone, it’s easier if we like him.

6- Above all, don’t take yourself too seriously. No matter how funny you get, Pratchett will be funnier. (Kind of like in space opera, no matter how good you get, Heinlein did it better. Also, earlier.  At least for the type of space opera I aspire to doing.) So, figure out the mechanics and enjoy the ride. And then everyone will have fun.

So, you’re out there and you’re frowning at my blog – yeah, I can see you. You didn’t know that monitor was two way and powered with narrativium? – and going “okay, Sarah, what’s with all the different series and different names? I know that notorious criminals and people with multiple personality disorder use different names, but why you? And what’s with all the series? And, by the way, when are you going to update your website, so I don’t have to stumble around in the dark looking for your series in order?”

I’ll start with the last question first: renovations are ongoing. Only I’ve come to the conclusion I need a complete redesign. So, I’m building another site, from scratch, in the “invisible pages” of the site, and keeping it there until I can bring it all on line with a bang. Also, hopefully with a forum, which hopefully will have chat but no bangs, unless it’s New Years or something.

Now the series. Well… I didn’t set out to write multiple series. Heck, I didn’t set out to write multiple genres. I started out to write science fiction. To be exact, I was going to write space opera and maybe some historical, high brow, incredibly involuted fantasy. People were going to swoon at my brilliance for the fantasy and push cash at me for the space opera. I was going to have someone to do the cleaning and laundry for me and I could spend all my free time with the kids and Dan. And we’d have time and money to travel. Oh, yeah, and for purely morale purposes, I would have a cute male secretary who made a killer cup of tea. (Yes, I DO love my husband dearly, but I’m allowed eye candy.)

As you can probably guess… things went weird. First of all, I still don’t have household help. Or a cute male secretary. It also took me decades to publish. And on the way there I wrote eight books, two of which are now published in rewritten versions, and one of which I now know how to rewrite (it’s actually a trilogy). It is patiently waiting its turn. The other five are just in a world that’s not workable.

Anyway, in those thirteen or so years I was writing mostly for myself, I had to keep myself amused. So the Space Opera morphed into odd fantasy. And the odd fantasy begat other odd fantasy. And then I wrote historical and mystery and… I actually have a YA space opera with telepathic cats outlined somewhere.

And then I sold. And then when that series didn’t do so well, I sold the Musketeers. And then there was the historical. And, oh, yeah, the shifter’s fantasy. And then a proposal for an historic fantasy series sent out years before, sold. And then another mystery. And then I got attacked by a vampire series on the way from my art class.

If this sounds chaotic to you, it is. Yeah part of it is “market driven” to the extent that I tend to finish series that sell. But the other part is internal. You see, I trained myself to have ideas, and now I can’t stop having them. (Yes, it totally is a matter of training. I’ll write about it tomorrow, probably.) I’m now at the point that I believe – as Leonardo de Quirm, Terry Pratchett’s character – that the ideas rain from the sky all the time. I have tried to fashion a tinfoil hat to keep them out, but my agent says it will overheat my brain, and besides she likes it that I have ideas. (She’s a cruel woman. Love her to pieces, but.. Really. She’s leaving me at the mercy of the ideas!)

As for why the multiple names – no, I’m not embarrassed by what I write. I do however have two types of names: open and closed. Two closed, so far, (one published, one yet unpublished.) for good and sufficient reason either on my part or that of the publishers. Mostly marketing reasons. No, I’m not embarrassed. Nor am I doing anything immoral or illegal. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier to market things that way.

In the open, I have four currently, and frankly if I had started out today, they would have a slightly different distribution. Why? Because I think on the net, it is very important to brand your name. More important than it used to be when it was all paperbooks. Why do I think that? Well… because the covers might be harder to see or read for genre signs. I have plenty of readers of mystery who would be upset if they bought an SF by accident, and readers of SF who will not read historical and… So, I’m trying to establish branding. BUT because of the timing of my realization, some series are already started/done under a name that would not be different. That’s life.

As for a list, here they are in order:

Sarah A. Hoyt

The Magical Shakespeare Biography (somewhat literary fantasy, with tons of Shakespeare quotes and allusions, it reimagines the early life of the bard and his experiences with the elves of nearby Arden woods.)

Ill Met By Moonlight; All Night Awake; Any Man So Daring

Status: out of print. No authorized e-versions. I’m working on getting those out.

Sarah A. Hoyt

Shifters Series (Urban Fantasy Sarah Style. ALMOST science fiction. Shape shifters, but no vampires, no general magic even if some stuff is a bit mystical, not too much dark stuff. Mysteries and diners, though. Set in Goldport, Colorado.)

Draw One In The Dark; Gentleman Takes A Chance; Upcoming: Noah’s Boy

Status: last I heard hard to obtain in paper, but both are available in ebooks from baen.com. Reasonably priced at that. I have heard rumors publisher plans to bring them out again at time of third which is started but not yet finished.

Sarah D’Almeida

Musketeer’s Mysteries and should the need arise, other historical mysteries. (Murder Mysteries solved by the three musketeers plus one.)

Death of A Musketeer; Musketeer’s Seamstress; Musketeer’s Apprentice; A Death In Gascony; Dying By The Sword and (possibly) upcoming Musketeer’s Confessor.

Status: Death of a Musketeer is being re-released by Naked Reader Press. For now it is available as an ebook. It will also soon be available POD. As for the others, their status is unclear. By the terms of my contract the rights should have reverted, however he house is being difficult. Proceed with care. If DOAM does well enough, I will write Musketeer’s Confessor for publication early next year.  The trailer for Death of a Musketeer is here.

Sarah A. Hoyt

Magical British Empire. (At the time of Charlemagne, in a magical parallel world, someone stole the eye of the goddess, which must be recovered. Victorian England. Dragons. Magic. Flying carpets. Trains and factories run on magic. Steam power and gas lights, too. Oh, yeah, romance. Africa. India. China.)

Heart of Light; Soul of Fire; Heart and Soul

Status: in print. No more planned – at least for now.

Elise Hyatt

Daring Finds Mysteries (A young woman struggles to survive and feed herself and her toddler, by refinishing furniture that, somehow, often has clues to crimes new and old. Sassy. Funny. Odd. Set in Goldport, Colorado.)

Dipped, Stripped and Dead; A French Polished Murder and upcoming A Fatal Stain.

Status: in print.

Sarah A. Hoyt

Space Opera (set along a future history populated with such things as artificial islands, wars between bioengineered and natural humans, biological solar collectors, feisty women and men who are not exactly slouches.)

Darkship Thieves and upcoming Darkship Renegades and POSSIBLY (not bought yet) A Few Good Men (in the same world/interacting, but not with characters from Darkships)

Status: in print and furiously underway. (Given my health giving me a break soon, should be done in a matter of days. At least DSR)

Sarah Marques

Blood Worlds (this is the first trilogy, but actually there is a contemporary series set in the same world. A world almost entirely taken over by vampires, in which humans must fight, gallantly, against overwhelming odds. And which vampire domination is often legalistic and undermines human societies from within. The first trilogy, just sold to Prime books, revisits the world of the three musketeers, where Richelieu is a vampire and with his guards rules the night, while the king rules the day. A noir feel and the sort of black humor where one laughs in the teeth of hell.)

Sword And Blood; Blood Royale; Rising Blood

Status: All are upcoming. The first one is delivered.

Any questions about the books or their content, or why some have a certain name? I’ll be glad to oblige with answers, if I can.

*Crossposted at Mad Genius Club*

Again, when I go to a place where I meet a lot of young writers I’m reminded of some of my past challenges and, heck, some of my present challenges.

I spent the weekend at Anomaly Con in Denver. Yes, that’s why you didn’t have posts over the weekend, though truly I left them keyed and ready to go. But they didn’t go and at this point it’s useless to put them up, because they were about how I was going to Anomaly, a steampunk con in Denver, and how it was my first steampunk con, etc. For the record it was lots of fun and possibly the first time in recorded history that the Hoyt Four were all in costume. Might not be the last. The boys seem to have a acquired a taste for cosplay, at least the younger one.

So I spoke on a panel on overcoming the block. First I want to apologize to all my co-panelists. I normally TRY not to walk all over other people. It’s just that sometimes a combination of topic and my mood make it impossible. In this case, it was the topic. I was on that panel with some wonderful writers, but I think I’ve been writing for twice as long as even the “oldest” of them. (Yes, of course, this means I started trying to write for publication in the cradle.) And I’m made of utter dumb. Or at least utter stubborn. Which means I made EVERY possible mistake before I got hit hard enough by the clue by four – the one with nails in it – to stop. So I know every possible pitfall, including some impossible ones I bent reality in order to fall into.

Anyway, on this panel on the block, I realized suddenly when people say “I’ve been blocked” it can mean several things. First, there is the classical block. You sit for hours and hours in front of the computer and can’t do more than type one sentence or so. Maybe edit that sentence a few hundred times.

This, if you’re anywhere but at the very beginning of a novel (sometimes the search for the voice resembles this) means something has gone seriously wrong with the novel and your choices are to a) put it down, work on something else for a while and come back to it afterwards or b) go back to the beginning and analyze it and/or ask someone you trust to do so for you, then fix what’s wrong and power forward past the block.

But there’s something else people call block… or sometimes call “being too busy to write” which I’d define as “being insufficiently attached to the work.” The symptoms of this are that you find yourself cleaning the house, “rotating the cat” or starting other stories.

Depending on what you’re doing to avoid working on the book, the level of “insufficiently attached” needs to be qualified. It also must be qualified for how BUSY you really are. For instance, for me every minute I’m sitting down at the keyboard I should be doing something else, ranging from house cleaning/repairs, to shopping, to checking on appointments for the kids, to a hundred other things. I do manage to write most of the time, and projects get postponed seemingly ad-infinitum, like… my bathroom painting (which was really needed. I mean the people who lived here before appear to have attached the wall paper to the wall with paper glue. it was peeling off in strips) got postponed three years, until I couldn’t CLEAN the bathroom without dealing with the wallpaper mess.

There are pants that need one button that my sons have probably outgrown (or in case of Robert got too small for) years ago.

You see what I mean, if every minute in front of the computer is stolen from elsewhere, you start feeling guilty and when the going gets tough – it does in every novel in the middle. Just like the last quarter of a novel is always wonderful and almost addiction-inducing – it’s easy for guilt to overwhelm you.

The cure for this, of course, is to think of it as a job or (if not published yet) apprenticeship for a job. Set hours and for those hours work on the book and nothing else. After those hours, try to catch up with your other duties. Think of it this way, if you were going to school and/or had a full time job, you’d have to make time for it. This is no different, and you’re not being irresponsible. This needs doing too. And like most jobs, it can pay a living wage. But unlike most jobs it also can make you suddenly very rich. It’s worth investing in.

The other level of insufficiently attached manifests as your “discovering” things that need to be done or simply deciding you don’t like the book and starting another.

Though these two come from different points – the discovering things to do might just mean you are busy, you just don’t feel overwhelming guilt about ignoring them, but still, they’re there, and they need doing and maybe this book isn’t interesting enough to hold you; starting new books is just usually “the book has got difficult” – the cure is the same.

You must stick to it.

Every book dies halfway through. EVERY book. This is because all of a sudden your subconscious realizes it can’t do what it set out to do. The idea for a novel is always multi-dimensional and much bigger than what even the most gifted writer can pin on the paper. When your subconscious figures it out, it gets upset (okay, yes, I do personify my subconscious. I call him Bob. He wears glasses and looks peevish.) And then you feel you need to start something else, which also dies halfway through.

Stick with it. Push on for another quarter of your projected word count, and my guess is you’ll find the writing is easy again and that in the end the book will not show a mark of where you bogged down.

Another problem could be that you’ve hit a point that scares you. You’re coming to close to something that’s intensely personal or that you never meant to put in a novel. In that case, in addition to gluing your butt on the chair with writing superglue (TM) you must ALSO make sure you don’t run away from the topic/plot/intensity while you do so. Because I know in similar situations I’m perfectly capable of going, “No, strangely they’re not going to rape her. They’re going to give her a lollipop and send her on her way.” Usually you know you’re “running away” because the “deviated plot” is just that silly and often funny or you think it’s funny. (More on writing humor in another post.)

So, that’s basically it. Actually now I think about it, the cure is pretty much the same, though in some cases you might need to do some analysis first: acquire some superglue, glue butt to chair, and work through the block.

I was reminded yesterday, while talking to a lot of young would-be writers, on the verge of starting their careers, of the whole concept of mixed blessings.

Inevitably, in the twenty-to-thirty crowd (but even among older folks, who didn’t start writing until they were much older and are just starting out) there is the “How do you break in?” question, which these days is followed closely by the “Should I self publish on Amazon?” question.

It’s fine how life changes. Five years ago I’d have slammed my foot down and said “Do not – absolutely DO NOT – self publish. It will only lead to your being considered damaged goods with the big publishers.

In the age of Amanda Hocking, this is not a given. And for a moment, I felt just a little jealous of these “kids” (Yes, even the ones older than I.)

I’d just given them a list of resources on line for figuring out how to research, someone else gave them market place resources, and you know… It beat the heck out of pre-history, 20 years ago, when I was sending stuff out to the publishing address, wrongly formatted because I’d got hold of an out of date advice book, and in two cases completely wrong for the publication. And to top it all off, they wouldn’t be held in the outer darkness even after they’d become competent. They wouldn’t have to wait for a publishing slot to open up on the diminishing big house schedule. They could take it to the public and while most of them would flounder or at best make a small income (but then that’s what we midlisters do!) a significant minority would find gold in them there hills.

And then I went to my hotel room and slept on it. And in the morning I woke up grateful that I wasn’t able to self publish when I started out.

Why? Oh, I like to think I started out at “competent.” Maybe I did. Rationally I doubt it. Look, my first novel is completely lost. The one printed copy was handed out to a friend twenty three years ago and when last heard of – sixteen years ago – he’d lent it to a friend who lent it to a friend. But it’s under another name and I was never there, and besides I was led astray by evil companions. The original electronic version died with my first computer, Joaquim, the one that took real floppies, and whose carcass is still in the attic, for sentimental reasons. But the information in there won’t come out.

And all this is a good thing.

Yes, I wrote that novel and five sequels to it. No, I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t selling. But now I do, even at the “commercial” level, for concept and idea and plot – much less for the level of writing which I, fortunately, haven’t been able to evaluate in twenty some years. I suspect if I could I’d cringe and realize what a raw beginner I’d been, and how awful the stuff is.

Look, I’m not saying there isn’t the rare genius whose first novel leaves his/her fingers perfectly polished and brilliant. Of course there are. Or at least so I’m told. Fact is, I never met one of these, or even heard of one from verifiable sources.

Yeah, you know, my parents told me, when I was little, that Mozart sat down the first time he saw a piano and started playing. It took me a few decades to realize it was a load of hooey and that the poor kid had been the victim of a stage father who made d*mn sure he knew how to play. It’s sort of the same thing. A lot of writers will tell you “oh, golly gee, I just sat down one day and wrote this novel, which a house was excited to buy, and which rocketed to the bestseller list.” Um… right. What they’re not telling you about is their years of novel beginnings that are stashed somewhere under the bed, the short stories they were penning since the age of three or even the essays they’ve been publishing weekly in their local newspaper. It’s possible this is the first novel they finished – the first they attempted… I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I just never heard of a case I could verify.

Most first novels are bad enough to make Jane Austen turn in her grave (yes, even her juvenalia.)

I had confirmation of this when I read For Us The Living. But I was surprised when I found out far from realizing how bad it was in a timely manner, Heinlein continued trying to publish the thing for ten? Fifteen years? Long after he WAS writing publishable material at any rate.

This emphasizes how hard it is to evaluate your work – your first novel in particular. (It also emphasizes that if either of my kids, grandkids or great grandkids should get hold of a copy of Glass Pedestal and sell it, I will come back and give a whole new meaning to the term “haunting.”)

There are reasons for this. It’s kind of like what I do every other morning, when I take my glasses off en route to the shower and don’t pay attention where I put them. I come out of the shower and take half an hour to find them because… I don’t have my glasses on.

Your first novel looks wonderful and perfect to you or at least much better than it looks to others because: you don’t have the skills needed to make it better, which means you also don’t have the skills needed to evaluate it better.

Yeah, I know you’re saying “But I evaluated other people’s novels just fine, as a reader, for decades before I started writing.” So you did. It’s not the same. When you’re reading with an eye to being entertained, your demands are different. It’s physically impossible for you to read these other novels like you read yours. Why? Oh, you’re perfectly objective, are you? Yeah, you might be, but unless you got a massive blow to the head and forgot the last few years, you can’t read your novel with an eye to being entertained. A year or two distance from it might help. But even so, short of a blow to the head, you’ll remember a lot about the characters, the world and the situation that is not actually on the page, but which you’ll subconsciously add. Or, if you’re of a nervous disposition, you’ll be driven to add EVERYTHING in your head and swamp the poor reader in uneeded detail. (That was my failing.)

So most first – and second, and occasionally third – novels are wretched things. Mine was.

The problem is nothing is wretched enough not to sell a FEW copies. If I had had it published – given a time machine to where I was writing it and publishing it today – it might have sold a couple hundred copies.

I’d probably have continued trying, in the same way I did, and improving and struggling to get more commercial and better and acquire my readers, and I might have ended up roughly where I am today.

So… what is the problem? Well… Heinlein didn’t have to live down For Us The Living throughout his long and prolific career and I’m forever grateful that no one can come up to me at a signing with a dog-eared (or scribbled) copy of Glass Pedestal and point out that the world is impossible and internally inconsistent and I have infodumps that could sink a medium-sized ocean liner. I rather like it that way.

I suppose the people breaking in today will get used to this, and that eventually it will seem weird not to have an author’s wretched beginnings to marvel at when you discover him/her in his/her polished and professional phase. But I am glad I didn’t publish THAT.

My advice to any first-time-novelist contemplating it would be tripartite:

First – make sure someone who knows about writing and publishing reads it. No, not your dear mama. And if it’s a friend, make sure this friend can both be merciless and has read a lot of fiction in that genre. (A caveat is NOT to pay book doctor’s fees unless you’re swimming in dough. I’m going to guess it’s not difficult to find laid-off editors at various levels who will probably read/do a good job with your book in the low four figures. Okay, not executive editors, unless they’re your friends. But stay away from book doctors unless they’re multi-professionally-published themselves or unless they were editors for a professional house once.)

Second – find a copy editor. For this your dear old mama is doable, if dear old mama used to free-lance hunting typos for the local paper or is an Advanced Grammar Teacher AND understands that dialogue is not always excruciatingly grammatically correct.

Third – Make sure in your heart of hearts this is something you want out there. Contemplate the fact that while you might be in your late twenties and unmarried and never going to marry and live the life of an independent and Bohemian artist, life throws you curve balls, and that the entire point of the unforeseen is that it CAN’T be foreseen. And then ask yourself if, say, your urban fantasy which is a thinly disguised episode of your sexual experimentation in college is suitable reading for the teenage children you might eventually have. Or for your dear old mama. You might not care, though I personally have a file called “only if my parents and all descendants are dead or illiterate”. If you don’t care, go right ahead and publish. If you think there is a slight chance you’ll be mortally embarrassed, hold back.

Other than that, go for it. Make your own day…

* Your mommy, perhaps. Mine doesn’t read much fiction (like my younger son, she prefers to read “real” stuff.) And if she did, and even if she thought it was good, she’d tell me I could do better. This is the woman who upon my graduating with honors from elementary school informed me I could do better. “You could have graduated with honors and distinction.” “But mom, that doesn’t exist.” “If you were good enough, they’d create it for you.” (And no, I’m not complaining. Heck, I’ve grown up to be just like her, though it’s me I hold to that standard, and not my kids. Yeah, okay, it’s neurotic-making. But what the heck, it’s high-achieving neurotic.)

I’m one of those writers everyone used to say were rare: I started writing long form. My very first attempt at writing something came out at forty thousand words and only because I hadn’t figured out yet that novels set in alien worlds need description even more than other novels do. The rewrite took it to 120 thousand words. The next book was two hundred thousand words. And I have written a six hundred thousand word opus – aka the doorstop – which has been fermenting in my subconscious since it was written and which can, probably, at this point be written as three novels. I think. I’ll do it as soon as I get a break in the schedule. Or at least I’ll do the outline.

Anyway, I wrote eight novels before I even thought of writing short stories. And then I wrenched myself away from novels (just when I started getting personal rejections, of course. And no, I hadn’t sent them out that many times – mostly because we were young and broke and postage was expensive) because I’d been reading advice books and all of a sudden I “knew” how one was “supposed” to get published.

I still think I’m excused on this one. Even if I wanted to go to workshops and cons and meet editors to break through the slush barrier, which at that time was the actual process to break in, I couldn’t have done it. My local cons didn’t get real editors/agents, and we simply couldn’t afford to travel. How poor were we? Well… let’s just say that sometimes the novel being sent out waited for three months before I could get the $8 to mail it in. We had to schedule buying saline solution for my husband’s contact lenses in as a recurring expense.

(In fact, about a year after I forced myself to learn to write short stories, one of the editors I submitted to, who was at the time teaching Clarion, told me to apply and – bless him – offered to pay half my fee. I have no idea why he did that. He never did buy me, even after I started selling everywhere else. Possibly because I turned his offer down – editors are human too – but I had no other choice. Even half the fee was so ridiculously beyond our budget as buying a beach house would be right now. No, possibly more. Though we have no intention of buying a beach house while strapped for cash, we probably could come up with a plan if absolutely vital. Back then we couldn’t. You see, we ARE a dying breed in that we paid for our own college, we got married, we didn’t go back to live with mom and dad, we got no contacts, no money for training, we just did it, step by step, hand over hand. And if we haven’t got particularly far, well… At least as far as we got it’s ours.) One of the things that has disturbed me for some time is that I wonder whether publishers are even aware that the “new new method” of becoming a pro weeds out not just those who don’t present well or are nuts, but also those who don’t have someone supporting them – their parents, or spouse – and don’t have anyone to support. (Later on I took the Oregon Coast Professional Writers’ Workshop in preference to Clarion because I couldn’t afford the time for Clarion. By then I had a five year old and a two year old, and my husband had to take time off work so I could attend. He only had two weeks vacation. Clarion was never a consideration.) The reason this worries me is not “justice” which would be nice but never happens in the real world. It worries me because it narrows the perspective of the “voices” getting in to people who are relatively well off, relatively young and/or living like they are. Since that’s not how most people live, this reduces the “connecting to audience” ability as well.

Anyway, after that lengthy digression – ahem – I was very naive and the book I bought told me the way to get in was to start at pays in copies and claw your way up step by step. For that, you needed to write short stories. So I learned to.

In retrospect, this was a four year digression that earned me nothing. It made perfect sense in the thirties or forties because short story publications also built your audience. They had such a widespread audience – more so than novels – that by the time someone published in novels it helped to be well known in short stories.

I never really managed to sell to pays in copies, either. My lowest sale was $15 for a story I wrote while I was tipsy (those who were at Denvention heard me read it under “juvenalia”). I tried, but pays in copies rejected me, over and over again. After that, my lowest sale was $50 for Thirst to Dreams of Decadence. And after that I started getting pro rates.

And now you’ll be going “But that’s how you got in.” Not really. I got in by attending the workshop with Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith and meeting the editor who published my Shakespeare books. That was pretty much it. Could I have got in if I hadn’t done that? I’d like to think so, but I probably would NOT have got in in with short stories.

About five years ago, at World Fantasy, myself and a bunch of other writers my “class” (i.e. came in the same year) – I’m thinking Ken Wheaton (?) and Leah Cutter, but I’m at a loss for who the others were just now) did a back of the envelope calculation based on how many stories vs. novels were being published then and how many submissions they got from their published accounts and we came to the conclusion a newby had three times better chances of selling a novel over a short story.

Now, of all the stupid things I thought, I regret this one the least. Why? Because learning to write short stories was useful.

It helped me sharpen my skills and my ability to grab a reader fast. It also helped me figure out what appeals to others and what doesn’t, without writing MASSIVE works to do it.

Short stories were also – until recently – the way to get money fast if you were in a hole (And might be again, if the subscription thing works.) I.e. you could write seven or ten, send them out, and get a couple thousand dollars for the mortgage within the month.

More important short stories were – and again, might be – a great loss leader. You would sell to an anthology that reached seven thousand people, and if even a tenth of those checked out your name and your latest novel, it helped you increase your readers, little by little.

So, it was a stupid thing, and I regret the time lost. On the other hand, I acquired a skill that has proven useful. No regrets.

Of course, it immediately occurred to me last night, after I went to bed, that I shouldn’t have said anything yesterday. This comes from three sources: the first is that I hate admitting being in a tough spot. I know that, you guys probably know that if you’ve been reading my blog. I drag on to the last possible point before going to the doctor, when I’m sick, for instance. It’s all part of the same thing.

That one is easy to dismiss. Jerry Pournelle would tell me that pride is a sin, and Jerry is right. That particular failing has got me into more trouble than all my other personality defects combined. So I can tell pride to shut up and take a hike.

But there is a more material problem with what I said yesterday. Half of you will be going “ooh. Publishers are late. They’re dishonest.” Or something like that. Well, no. Actually at the moment, other than short stories, only one publisher could vaguely be considered late, and it would be a stretch. (Short stories have been getting later and later when it comes to payment. Yes, that is a problem, because short stories are how I make up short falls. Which I explain below.) It’s more that publishers don’t pay instantaneously. Few ever did, other than magazines and anthologies. And those, yeah, have got markedly slower. Publishers are at the mercy of chains paying and distributors paying. And if you’re going “Chains! Wasn’t there a chain in the process of implosion?” Yeah, there is. Plus none of that supply-system is particularly solid.

So, there was always a delay built into publishing payments, and now it is (from a payment that arrived eight months late, and not from where you’d expect it) worse.

What this means is that though I have three books due for delivery, writing them quickly and sending them out asap will help, but it won’t make up a cash flow issue. And unlike in years past I can’t make it up in short stories (in 2003 when otherwise unemployed, I made up over 3k from short stories) because there are fewer markets, and the ones still alive pay slower.

As to why there’s a cash flow issue – this is the part I think people might find interesting (maybe) because it’s one of the things so few people not in the field know.

You might – or might not – know this, but writers don’t get paid in one big chunk. When you hear that someone signed a million dollar contract, you shouldn’t imagine them getting a check for that much. From what I understand, (never having had such good fortune) a seven figure payment (or anything six figures, really) gets broken up into ten payments – so you might be getting a hundred thousand for ten years. Yes, we should all be so lucky, but it’s not a million in hand.

It used to be that under five figures you got your payment broken into two chunks. Nowadays, it’s three. And five figures is three as well.

Now, unless you’re fortunes fair child – and a few people are – and got a big advance for your first book, or unless you’re doing this as a dilettante, or are living in mommy’s and daddy’s basement or have a rich husband (I keep telling him to win the lottery. So far nothing) or wife, these days you’re going to need more than one book a year to stay alive.

If you were born under the sign of Dagon, the fish god, and your fortunes have always shown a marked tendency to dive, and therefore you were so fortunate as to have your first book come out a month after nine eleven and not even get unpacked in most chain stores, leaving you with computer numbers it took you a decade to bring to “beginner” levels, you write more than two books a year, even if your contribution to the household is minor compared to the husband who won’t buy the lottery. (No such thing as luck? Ah! Yeah, Heinlein was right, to an extent. I mean, I AM still employed, and given the numbers on my first books – trust me – most people wouldn’t be. I just worked harder and I think better, until the barrier broke. Though Baen picking me up at that point has to be counted as luck, even then. But, look, the first story I sold was sold FOUR times before I got a contributor copy – on the fifth. The others either the magazine or the publisher died. And I have other stories. Sign of Dagon, I tell you. Deep dive.)

The problem is that after five years of writing four to six books a year, last year I couldn’t force myself to. I tried. But my subconscious can be remarkably stubborn. Honestly, I’d have done better to take a scheduled vacation. Instead, I wrote one book. That book – given the present shambles in the industry and possibly other factors – sold for less than I expected. I’m not complaining, I’m glad it sold at all and the publisher’s contract is wonderful compared to others I’ve signed. BUT it sold for less than I expected. Mind you, even if it had sold for what my other books have sold, it would cause a break in the cash flow. Worse, the year before that, I’d done no proposals and no books on spec. I just did the books that were due (3, I think) and delivered them. And last year, though I did proposals, I did only three, and they only sold in the middle of the year.

It’s like this. On any given year, I’m receiving the second and third payment of the books delivered/books published. Because these are usually smaller amounts than what I get for a first payment, at the same time, to maintain my level of income, I need to sell about 20k of books in the first quarter of the year. Not only didn’t this happen this year – it didn’t happen last year.

What this means is that I took a break on the treadmill and all the counts flat lined, and so it needs to ramp up again – which I’m doing, or trying to – and until it gets up to speed, income will be subpar.

You’ll note I didn’t count royalties. There is a good reason for that. Except for two books, my royalties have been negligible. I understand it is so for most other authors at least outside Baen. And those royalties are even more erratically paid than advances, so you simply can’t count on them.

As far as I know – as far as I can tell, from the distribution end of the thing – Darkship Thieves and the Daring Finds Mysteries did/are doing really well. I just gave in the third Daring Finds, and I’m finishing the sequel to Darkship Thieves. Those might eventually pay me royalties, and if they continue doing well, the series might – eventually – be all I need. And I have great hopes for the vampire musketeer thing. (Poke around my blog. I posted about it … either last Saturday or Saturday before last.) If that one does well in ebooks, I will be quite well.

But meanwhile, while I’m ramping up to my former income, I’m making a lot less than I used to. Now, I know I said I’m not the primary money-earner in this family. Ah! I’m nowhere near primary. And, curiously, we not only qualified on this house without my income, but we bought less house – way less house – than they’d qualify us for. And, yes, we have a fixed rate.

The problem is that these days – I don’t care what the inflation index says. The inflation index can suck my toes – everything is costing a lot more. At least for us, it is. From food to energy to appliances. And we were hit with a series of emergencies that meant one major expense after another, for three months in a row (four, if you count vet emergencies.) And the month before that we had to take a costly trip for family reasons.

That has brought the shortfall to critical levels. And that’s why, even though my career seems to be on the way up, the finances are in a serious dive.

I’ve decided to go with the subscription. The storyteller’s bowl is a more … short term measure, and I can always try it in a month, if the subscription system is picking up too slowly to cover the short fall.

Yes, it is pride again. The short story subscription (I need to come up with a catchy name) is something where I feel you’ll get a really good value and, if it works out, might become something I do permanently and all parts benefit. I.e. say I get 2k subscribers – it should be possible, if I can reach them, because my lowest-selling book (small press, under a closed pen name) sold that and I know I have at least double that number and a bit more of “steady” readers. If I get that, I could afford to run slower on the treadmill and since I use short stories to build background and future history, would enjoy it more.

Also, if I can get anything like 2k or more subscribers (yes, I realize it will be a slow ramp up and I’ll have to advertise) I can end up paying friends for one or two stories a year and introducing them to the fans.

Writing two short stories a month shouldn’t be a problem. I was trained to do shorts and novels at the same time, and to do a short story a week. I think the reason I let it lapse is the lack of markets, which made me neglect the short stories. This was probably bad, as short stories are a great exercise to keep the skill limber.

Of course, if we get hit with one more emergency, or if anything else goes seriously wrong, I reserve the right to do storyteller’s bowl. And that is the non-prideful reason to hold it off. Because I might need it, if my back is against the wall. As a short-term cash bringer, it’s what writers do when they’re desperate. I’m worried and anxious, but not desperate yet. I think the “subscribe to Sarah” – someone for the love of heaven come up with a catchy name! – program might do what I need for now.

So, I’ll give it a whirl starting in… April. This weekend I’m going to Anomaly Con in Denver, so I can’t set it up, but we’ll set it up in the beginning of April. I’ll let you know.

*Crossposted at Classical Values.*

I hate it when it’s time to get resourceful. For all my innovation in writing, my interest in the new and the different, I crave security at a very deep level. Frankly, it’s a joke that someone with my need for security should be in a profession where the money comes slow and irregularly when it comes at all.

Lately a series of very bad expenses – all new appliances except for the stove which is limping (and I do mean limping, unfortunately) along and might hold another year if we’re lucky, a series of car repairs, tuition for both kids an idiot cat who swallowed a bunch of thread and other sundry emergencies – have driven a knife deep into my bank account. This combines with the fact that payments that used to be almost instant in publishing are often now eight months late to bring us to a no good, very bad, rotten type of financial situation.

Of course the problem with this is that anxiety brings my writing to a grinding halt, and that in turn grinds the payments to an even slower schedule because I deliver late.

To put things bluntly, we need to make up the about 12k in unexpected expenses (yeah, the tuition was expected, but the rest wasn’t) that have buffeted us since around December or things are going to go south very fast and get extremely unpleasant to the point that writing time will become iffy (as in, if we need to move).

In this type of situation, normally, I get a day job. Except… I haven’t needed to do that in more than ten years, so my marketable skills are limited. Also I’m signed for six books due this year. This combination means in this market getting a job at all will be… uh… interesting and that if I get a job I won’t be able to write.

This leaves me two options, which – while both cut into my writing by making more writing – are actually doable and in several ways preferable.

One is a storyteller’s bowl. I set up a site and start putting up a novel, then set a value per chapter – since my chapters are short, probably a relatively low value – and once that value is reached in donations, I put up the next chapter. The only problem with this is finishing the novel before I put it up. I don’t think that would happen, which means people would essentially be donating for an e-arc – an unedited/unpolished novel. I was thinking – for those of you in the diner – of putting up my regency Witchfinder novel with the Scarlet Pimpernel character. It is outlined, and I know I can finish it, and well… I will write for money. (I could also do a science fiction, mind you…)

The other is a subscription. For – say – $10 a year, I commit to two short stories a month, 60% of those to be set in either the world (and probably past history) of DST and shifters. (Probably more than 60%, but I can promise 60%. ) There would be the occasional three short story month/novellete/story by a “guest author” as a bonus.

I am tempted to try both of them. They would take less time away from contracts than an honest job and if they bring in what I need, it would reduce anxiety enough to allow me to work.

What do you guys think the chances of either/both/neither of these succeeding are? I confess that they’re all too “risky” to my mind and that I hate having to get creative in this way. However, it seems that I DO have to try. Ideas? Suggestions? Rotten tomatoes?

(crossposted at Mad Genius Club and Classical Values.)

I think we might as well give up on the idea there will be regular posts this week.  It’s not so much having the kids home for spring break — they’re being good — but the fact that everyone else is home for spring break, and the fact I — myself — am longing for some R &R even if only in the shape of long walks and bubble-gum books (you know, the ones you read and forget.)

This morning had long talk with friend on phone.  Okay, yes, mostly I talked.  I talk too much.  Will now sit down to write.  Athena Hera Sinistra — tri-plated b… bunny that she is, is very loud in my head.

Sorry to be so late with this.  With Spring Break upon us, we’re taking the opportunity to do things like drag the boys shopping for stuff early in the morning.  (Yeah, they DO love us for it — I feel like the old lady in Pratchett’s Truth who wanted young people to be whipped twice a day because that teaches them to go around being young.)  So, we did that, and are just now back home.

I decided to grace you with Stupid Things I Believed when I began writing — the third installment.  I believed that in a novel EVERY event, scene and word had to advance the plot.

This is largely true for a short story.  Whether what you’re trying for is a mood or a rational idea, you have a very limited amount of words to use, and you must get it as strong as possible by making it as sparse as possible.

This might also be true for “high literature” stuff.  I don’t know.  Don’t write it.  Gave it up for lent thirty eight years ago, and it’s been a really long lent.

For genre novels, though, a lot of the charm rests on getting to know the characters as real, live human beings and to get a sense of a much larger world than you have the time/space to show.  This implies — in the end — having bits and pieces that don’t advance plot — only feeling or sense or character development — here and there.  This is fine, so long as they don’t overwhelm the book.

This fact was brought home to me about nine years ago, at a con while watching fans react to a colleague’s reading of “the sausage scene” — let’s just say there was no possible way that “bit with the dog” (to allude to Shakespeare) could have been relevant to ANY plot.  But the fans loved it.

I used to cut ALL that stuff out of my books, but in Draw One In The Dark, I decided to leave in the scene with the three guys in the car, after escaping from the warehouse.  It doesn’t advance the plot, but I’ve come to believe it is essential to show the characters bonding and without it the book would suffer.  At least one fan has greed about this.

And I think Daring Finds Mysteries are composed MOSTLY of such moments — fans seem to love them anyway, and to be honest, I love writing them, even if I drive myself insane by feeling “too indulgent.”

At this point it’s become second nature to include at least a few of those moments in each book, sometimes just to lighten the mood.

Why is it that getting up after eight feels like the height of luxurious laziness. I come from a culture where most things aren’t scheduled before 9 am. For years, my time of getting up was seven thirty, and that was because I MUST catch a train to the city before starting school at nine.

And when we were young and childless, we were both prone to going to bed well after midnight. We didn’t know what the sky looked like before nine am. Dan worked late, but he also started work late. Heck, before Robert went to school, it wasn’t unusual for the whole house to be up and functioning in the wee hours of the morning. Dinner was rarely before eight. One of the reasons I loved diners so much is that when we woke on weekends and vacation and we wanted breakfast out, diners were the only places still serving it.

But then life changed. Robert entered kindergarten, then Marshall did, and often the only way I could write at all day was to get up an hour earlier. Even if I weren’t writing, during the noisiest years of childhood, particularly when Marsh was in pre-school and only had one or two hours of “school” a day, I had to get up an hour earlier to have my caffeine in peace and “center” myself for the day.

I confess for the last seven or eight years, I’ve got up at around six thirty, not before the kids, but when they start moving around the house. This way I can have some time with both of them before they go to school and be caffeinated and ready to work by the time they leave.

But then some weekends – not all – I wake up at around eight fifteen and I swear I feel like the day is half gone and I was indecently lazy.

Go figure. The rhythms of life do change. I guess someday my kids will be gone from the house and perhaps our timing will shift to the wee hours of the morning, like our empty nester neighbors who do construction projects and gardening at three am. Or perhaps the habit of years will prevail and I’ll be getting up early and having enough tea to get in gear, then writing at around eight thirty.

All I can say is if you’d told me fifteen years ago that I’d one day think getting up after eight was “late” and “luxurious” I’d have thought you were insane….