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Anne McCaffrey is dead and though it is not as such an untimely death, coming as it does at an age greater than many of our ancestors could have aspired to, I am prejudiced.  Every good writers’ death is untimely because within them die worlds never translated to stories, never let out to live in others’ minds.  Worlds that could have lived forever.

So I will mourn Anne and the worlds that died with her.  And I will paraphrase Shakespeare and give her the sort of epitaph all of us (I think) aspire too: She was a writer, take it all in all.  We shall not see her like again.

Further Update: Welcome Instapundit readers!  Thank you to Glenn Reynolds for the link, though I regret the occasion of it.

(Am busy with final revision on a book, which is one of those things I have to fully immerse in, so I decided to treat you to a few off the cuff “you might be a writer if” — some of them VERY SLIGHTLY exaggerated from my own or friends’ experiences.  Feel free to add you own in comments.)

…  You wake up in the middle of the night worried about people who’ve never existed
….. and what you’re worried about is that you haven’t hurt them enough.

…. You tell your husband about a new friend, then have to point out “And he really exists” as you get a dubious look from your better half.

…  Your husband once thought one of your new friends was a secret pen name of yours.

…  You have knock out, drag out fights with your pen names, who are pompous know it alls.

…  You think of distances in terms of flying, because you’ve been in your dragon-character’s mind.

…  You miss the characters you haven’t written about for a long time, and check in on them at the back of your head.

…  Some of your characters provide a running commentary to your life.
….   They’re not complimentary

…  You start walking out the door, then realize you’re carrying one of the large knives, in case your villain shows up while you’re walking.
…. realize people could get worried about this
….  Realize the character is a vampire, and what you really need is some garlic.

… Tell the kids to tone down some jokes because the character you’re working on is too innocent to listen to this.

…  Have an argument with your (writer) husband because you want to steal one of his ideas… and twist it.

…  Ever read some of your old stuff and thought “OMG, I’m a sick woman.  I need treatment.”
…. Then read some of your new stuff and realize you’ve gotten worse.
…  This is some of the better selling stuff you’ve written.

…  Have ever caused a waiter to look like he would faint at the description of the murder in your latest book, which you were giving your spouse over dinner.
…. Ditto with getting a call from the police wanting to have a talk with you, because someone overheard…
…. Ditto with the school calling about putting the kids in therapy for the murder that happened in your living room – they think
…  Ditto with having the school try to figure out if your family are UFO cultists because of some stuff the kid said about aliens.
…  Ditto with the school being very worried about your kids having uncles and aunts who “don’t exist.”  Try to explain that they adopt some of your favorite characters.  Have the school initiate process to take control of the kids from you.

…. You killed someone in a book.  And something awful happened to them shortly after

….  For your friend’s birthday you tuckerize him.

….  Your character knows more about wine than you do, so he helps you pick in the store.
….  He’s always right.

…. You tend to eat whatever your character eats whom you’re writing at the time.
… this is a problem when your character is a dragon.
… you get in trouble for biting the mail carrier.

…. Some of your best friends are imaginary
….  You’re not always sure which are which.

I’ve said that the POSSIBILITY of selling stuff to the public that doesn’t sell to the gatekeepers has made a huge difference.

Because today I’m trying to catch up on fifty different tasks, I can’t think of a coherent post, so I’ll just list the difference it made, in the order that occurs to me as most important – and please remember, this is JUST on the possibility.  I’ve made no significant (though nice “insignificant”) money as yet, for a month in which I only had about an average of ten stories out.  Heck, five for two weeks or so.

1 – I wrote A Few Good Men, the first book of the Earth revolution.  Look, I KNOW that it’s in the DST series, or a step-sister to it.  But I know also that there is one element of it (And I don’t want to give it away till the betas read it.  I want fresh reactions to it, not “expected” ones.  Speaking of which any beta reader from DSR who want to try it, please email me.  It SHOULD be done with revisions, by Thanksgiving) that might make it iffy for sale particularly in its subgrenre, in terms of “publisher” (I’m fairly sure it will sell to public.)  Note the MIGHT – but that’s been enough to stop me cold halfway through a book, or to bend a book completely out of shape and plot until it died, in the past.  This time, though with great trepidation, I could think “Screw that.  I can always put it up myself.  It’ll cost a little more because I want non-stock art, but…”

2 – I don’t find myself compulsively checking the news every two minutes.  Who knew the obsession with the news was a stress-reaction for me?  Okay, I should have known, given my past, the fact that when things are tense I can only write in front of tv news AND the fact the only time I cut back on news was on vacation.  BUT the idea I was so tense that news were a relaxation thing still makes me shudder.

3 – While I’m still paranoid (A perfectly normal reaction to working in hell) there is a feeling that maybe not EVERYONE is out to stab me in the back.  Again, this is a great improvement.

4 – I mentioned “the writer is coming back”.  Let me explain.  While I’ve written an awful lot the last seven years, I lost contact with “the dream”.  What is “the dream”?  That extra dimension that comes with the book.  “Dreaming the book” and letting it envelop you.  Most of my books were written with gritted teeth and a determination not to fail, rather than in the enjoyable dream-like state that made writing worthwhile even in the long years before I sold.  Some books broke through this state – Darkship Thieves, for instance, but also Draw One In The Dark.  Gentleman takes a Chance… well, if it’s ever reissued, I hope Toni lets me do a once-over fix, because there’s stuff wrong in that book.  It comes from my having been so out of it, I couldn’t hold the entire book in my head at all times.  Mostly concordance stuff, mind (things were different colors in first book.  Two Dragons, somehow, because Red Dragon, etc.) but a couple of stylistic points, as well.  Now, I’m not only writing at a pace I haven’t done in years, but it’s FUN.  Again.

5 – Related to 4 – my mind is working better.  I can AGAIN see a full novel in my head, and KNOW if I’ve done an oopsies somewhere.  This is very difficult when I can’t hold more than a chapter at a time in my head, which I’ve LIVED like for years.  I thought I was going senile before fifty, I swear.  Apparently it was JUST stress.

6 – I’m losing weight again.  Not just has stress-eating diminished (No, not stopped.  Do I have kids in the house?  Yeah, I do.) but I’m sleeping better, and I think this is helping.

7 – I really can’t express the level of stress I was under.  I wasn’t even aware of it.  It looks massive in retrospect, just on the possibility of my being able to do stuff on my own, I suspect if this experiment works, I’ll be discovering even stranger heights to how stressed I was.

It is one of the most regular questions asked of any professional writer: How do I break into the field?

It is also one of the most difficult questions to answer and one that at any time you ask it as a newby, you can be sure of getting an answer that’s AT LEAST ten years out of date.  Sometimes twenty.

The advice I got, which arguably allowed me to break into the field, was unarguably at least ten years out of date, and it might have been twenty.  And while it, in its simplicity – write, submit, query, attend cons, get an agent, let the agent find you an editor, write more.  Keep writing.  Keep attending cons – worked (with modifications.  I found my first editor.  At a writers’ workshop.) to break in, it did not work to break out, nor did its auxiliary advice “write a d*mn good book.”

By the time I came in that pathway to success was broken.  I’m not going to beat this dead horse.  I explained how it worked for me here.  (And here I’m not going on my own writing and I’m not saying “my books are the best thing since sliced bread” though I’ll note my bestseller friends are all baffled at my books not having broken out, yet, on quality alone.  I’m going on what I’ve seen from other writers I KNOW are writing books so d*mn good that they’re the best behaved little demons ever.  And yet they are stuck where I am.  Or they can’t break in at all.  Or they’re somewhat below me in midlist hell.  Everyone who reads them agrees they’re amazing, but… very few people ever read them.)

I don’t know when I noticed the advice was not working and that there were troubling indications that it couldn’t work.  I think it was about five years AFTER I broke in.  This was because I’m slow, and also because when things don’t work as advertised, I tend to think I’m doing something wrong.  So, when I noted that agents did not in fact fight for a better advance FOR ME and often talked my expectations down, I assumed it was because my books weren’t that good.  When my books didn’t show up on ANY bookshelves and I was blamed because they hadn’t sold, I assumed it wasn’t because they weren’t that good.  Etc.

It took an attempt on the part of an agent to talk me into a contract clause that was criminally insane, and which – if I’d taken it as was – could have prevented me from writing ANYTHING for five to ten years and possibly for life depending on the whim of the house, all for the princely sum of 30k for me to realize perhaps not all was right in the field and that things didn’t work as advertised.

I still kept trying to make them work as advertised, and I still thought I MUST be doing something wrong to get the peculiar treatment I was.  This was a peculiarly insane place to be.  One of my fans, who is hanging out in a nannowrimo mailing list with me compared the process I went through for the last ten years to taking my children to the temple before I found out if they got to live or be sacrificed to Moloch.  Wish it were just that.  It was also, after they decided the kid would live – i.e. be published – seeing them decide to cut off the kid’s legs (bad cover; no marketing plan; not even bothering to get it in bookstores) and then blame me because it couldn’t walk.
But I kept trying, because hang it all, I’d been given advice by experts and it MUST be good advice.

And then at cons I started meeting a new breed of “young, talented and making it very fast” writer.  This started about five years ago.  They had self-published and then sold to a traditional publisher.  (Now, remember, five years ago.  No ebooks yet.)  Once they came into the traditional house, they got the treatment I wanted but never got – promotion, interest, advertising money.

I was intrigued, but while I saw it as a new pathway in, I didn’t see it as one I could take.  No, not even if I were able to start again.  Part of this is because every one of these authors was a self-marketing powerhouse.  The ones I know personally would publish the book then spend EVERY waking moment marketing the living daylights out of it.

I couldn’t do that.  First of all because my books have no natural “Platform” (take, for instance my friend Larry Correia.  He’s a gun expert/instructor/weapons dealer who writes about people killing monsters with guns.  Natural platform.  No, that’s not all he writes about or what makes his books interesting.  BUT it does give him a venue/in to promote stuff.) I don’t write about things I’m an expert in, though I research (of course) for the books I’m writing.  But saying “I read everything I could find about World War I for three years obsessively” doesn’t make me a credentialed expert.  If I wrote a book about a translator (I still would like to do a space opera about translators to the stars) I could see having a “platform” but it’s not really a “sexy” or controversial one, and I don’t see it getting me into talk shows.  Not even local ones.

However, I noted it was a way in.  And when people asked me about how to break in, I pointed it out to them, usually with the caveat “I wouldn’t self publish, because there’s a stigma, but…”  If the person had a natural platform, say like my friend Amanda, who has law-enforcement experience, I could see telling her (I might have, in fact) “send it in, sell it.  Tell them you’re willing to give talks on law enforcement to mystery writers all over the country, and to hopeful mystery writers, and help promote your book.”

And then things changed, again.  In fact, they’re in the middle of a tumbling change, and right now it’s very hard to answer that question.  If I had to this would be my VERY qualified (as in “I’m putting qualifications on this”, not as in, “I’m qualified” answer.)

There are a few things you must understand about publishing right now and which are non-debatable:

1 – No one knows anything
2 – Publishers and Agents are in trouble, mostly because they’re avoiding making necessary changes.
3 – The old model of “it’s not so much what you write but what you are that will determine your success” is still very much in place.
4 – most publishers are not most writers’ friends.

Given this, this is the best advice I can give:
1- In most cases, don’t get an agent.  They don’t have the power they used to in the field, and they’re getting desperate and a little insane.

1.a. – I have a good friend who is an agent, and I MIGHT still sign with him if I were a newby.  I can’t imagine him doing anything business-insane.  OTOH I don’t believe he has that much pull.  No agent does.  Even the “powerhouses”.

1. b. – If you’re writing non fiction this might be different.  I don’t know that it is (and feel free to chime in any of you who do) but I’ve had the impression it might be.  If your agent is THE field expert on eighteenth century furniture and represents every author who writes about it, and you’re writing about it, it might be a good thing to have him represent you.  It will give publishers an assurance you are the real article and know what you’re talking about.

2 – If you think you have a property and/or you’re the type of person who thinks he/she can do well in traditional publishing, send queries out to publishing houses.  Yes, the old “no unsolicited submissions” is still in place, but I understand it’s honored more in the breach.  At any rate, if you go to a writers conference or a small sf con in, say, NYC, and pitch to the editor who then says to send it in, your submission is no longer unsolicited.

2.a. If you sell read that contract like a hawk.  You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff being done.

2.b. Make them cross your palm with silver.  When I broke in I heard the lowest advance for which they promote was 25k.  G-d knows what it is now.  (This is not always true, though, if you’ve become friends with an editor, even a minor one, you might get promotion for your 4k book.)

2.c. Be prepared to promote, and be aware this only REALLY works if you have a “platform” that’s at least tangentially related to your book.  Also, if you don’t have kids or a real life.  Even my “blog tour” for DST ate most of a year and was responsible for how late the second book in that is in coming out.  Not complaining.  Without it, there might NOT be a second book.  OTOH it still ate a whole year.

2. d.  Did I SAY read that contract like a hawk?  Yeah, hire an IP attorney, too.  Because one of the things that could well happen is your house going under – see where everything is in flux – and you don’t want your book caught in that.

3 – You don’t meet or aren’t willing to follow the rules in 2 – to be honest, I was never really able to, both by personality and because when I broke in I had very small children, so a lot of cons, and a lot of publicity were out of the question – consider self publishing.  I say this with all the trepidation of a traditionally published author who still is afraid people will rush into publication with books they’ll be sorry they put out.

3.a – Don’t promote unless you want to.  Unknowns are making more in ebooks than I ever made in my career.

3.b. – Write.  More.  Furiously.  (This does seem to be something that DOES work in ebooks.)

3.c. – when you have ten books written, take the first one free for a month or so.

3.d. – There are no guarantees, but it’s at least as good a chance as in trad publishing and maybe better for the type of writer who “just wants to write.”

3. e – Before you go out half-cocked, research how to do this, so both your formatting and your covers look as good as possible.  This might involve just looking at what’s out there, or taking a workshop, or whatever.

4 – Go with a reputable, small, Indie publisher.

4.a. – This is only apposite if you are either too nervous to go it on your own and/or you are writing in a niche – like erotica say – that some small publisher has made their own.  If they have fans, it will rub off on you.
4.b. – Before you do it, research the market and what are reasonable terms.
4. c – Before you do it, research the house.
4. d – get an IP attorney to look over the contract.  Even if the house is reputable, they might have some snags in there that even they aren’t aware of.  And if they go under, you want to be protected.

Now, where I stand, I’m doing both.  I am still writing for the traditional market and will do so for one house as long as they want me (debts you can’t pay are debts you can’t pay) and for the others if I think it suits my marketing plan, though some of these might be loss leaders.  However, I’m also indie-publishing.  This has removed some of the venom of publishing.  It gives me a portion of it over which I have control.  There’s even a chance I can live from that portion (don’t know yet.  Early days.)  More importantly, if I don’t sell something I wrote, I don’t have to bury it in a drawer, I can still put it directly to the public and hope it finds readers.

For me, this is the best place I’ve been in ten years as a published author.  I can feel myself “decompressing” and look back at the last ten years in a sort of wonder, as though it had been a fever dream, or I’d been crazy.  Stress eating is waaaaaaaaaay down, as is stress-obsession-with news.  (And I didn’t even know that was a symptom of stress.)

Once I get some of my backlog – about 200 short stories/novellas, etc – out, I expect to be able to take weekends off.  Which is predicated on my finding out WHAT one does on such weekends. (Well, it’s been years.  And years.)  I’m looking rather forward to it.

However, my path might not be your path.  If you take nothing else away from this post, DO take that there isn’t only one path.  And that if you’re not breaking in or breaking out the way everyone tells you you should, perhaps the field has changed.  And perhaps you need to, also.

(crossposted at Classical Values)

by Sarah Hoyt

with apologies to Miss Austen, whose remains are probably spinning fast enough to power a small city.

The announcement that a single man of good fortune had rented Netherfield brought less excitement to Longbourn than it had in former days. Part of this, of course, was because there were fewer people in Longbourn to get excited about it. The renter took Netherfield after Mr. and Mrs. Bingley, who had bought an estate in Derbyshire, left it.

Still, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of good fortune must be in want of a wife and Mrs. Bennet had – after all – two single daughters. Which is why she came from her round of visitations with a wishful smile on her lips and her gaze looking far off and dreamy as it hadn’t looked for two years, since the day she’d got rid of her two most deserving daughters.

“Oh, Mr. Bennet,” she said, bursting upon her husband as he was reading in his study. “We must send for Kitty at once.”

Mr. Bennet looked up from his letter. “And why is this?” he asked. “Why should we summon Kitty back from Pemberley?”

“If you must know, it’s because Netherfield has been let at last,” Mrs. Bennet said, her fingers fretting at the hat ties beneath her chin. She pulled the bonnet free, and tossed it down carelessly upon a chair, before flinging herself on another one and looking smugly at her husband of twenty-five years, as if she had just explained everything he might ever need to know.

“At last?” Mr.Bennet quirked an eyebrow upward. “It’s only been vacant for a month or so.”

“Well…” Mrs. Bennet said. “But it seems like longer. More importantly, it has been let to a single man of good fortune. Five thousand at least and a good estate in Norfolk.”

“I see,” Mr. Bennet said, desisting from his reading, setting the letter on the desk and giving his wife his undivided attention. Only something about the twitch of his lips and the glint in his eyes betrayed that he was about to play some joke. Of course, Mrs. Bennet should have been forewarned by these signs, but then she never was. “I see,” he said again. And I suppose you mean for him to marry one of our girls?”

“Well, of course,” Mrs. Bennet said. “What else would you have him do? Marry Maria Lucas? No indeed. My brother Phillips’ law clerk will do very well for the silly chit. We wouldn’t want her to think herself much above Charlotte who, after all, only married a parson, would we?” She grabbed her hat and fanned herself. “No, you must send for Kitty right away. He shall see her at the assembly and be smitten, just like Mr. Darcy was with Lizzy. For Mr. Darcy goes on about Lizzy’s fine eyes, and I’m sure our Kitty’s are at least as fine.”

“There is only one small problem, Mrs. Bennet,” Mr. Bennet said, and now the smile burst forth fully. “You see, this letter,” he tapped on the letter on the desk. “Is from Mr. Darcy. In it he tells me that the Baron of Mumford – young and in possession of seven thousand a year, plus a title – has just requested our Kitty’s hand in marriage. In my absence, Mr. Darcy has made some warranties, but of course, they request my confirmation of the whole so they may set a wedding for three months hence. The delay is necessitated by the dowager baroness having taken a great liking to our Kitty and wanting to take her to London and buy her clothes and anything else she wishes, herself.” He looked up at his wife, whose mouth had dropped open in astonishment. “I must confess it seemed like a good offer to me. But, of course, if you think Kitty must come back to catch the new inhabitant of Netherfield, there is nothing for it. I shall tell the Baron of Mumford to forget his offer, and I shall summon Kitty home immediately.”

“No,” Mrs. Bennet shrieked. “No. A baron. My daughter shall be a Lady. No, of course, Kitty must marry the Baron.”

“Ah, good. Then I shall write within the week and close with the offer.” Mr. Bennet smiled, glad he could still get his wife to rise to the bait. “And don’t worry my dear, the renter of Netherfield shall do very well for Mary.”

“Mary?” Mrs. Bennet said. “Mary.” She sighed. “If only Lydia were still single.”

“Indeed, my dear, but she is not.”

“And so, it must be Mary.”

“Indeed.” Mr. Bennet said, and his eyes sparked at the silliness he knew would soon ensue. Longbourn had been much too quiet lately.

Nothing could be further from the mind of Henry Crawford – the single gentleman of good fortune who had just rented Netherfield – than finding a wife.

In fact, he had just got rid of a notorious married woman whom he had seduced away from her husband – thereby rendering her notorious – and had narrowly avoided marriage with a another woman who – if all reports from Mansfield Park held true – was soon to become the most insipid clergyman in all of England’s wife.

No, Henry Crawford was very pleased with his life, just now. He would hunt. He would fish. He would ride his horse recklessly along the unbound fields. He would go to London and his club and get sodden drunk now and then. And perhaps gamble to excess. But he had no intent of falling prey to the traps of society or the confines of marriage anytime soon. Women! They were either pious or fools and all of them much too likely to fall in love with Henry’s curly hair, his classical features. He was well off single. And he would stay that way.

However, in the way of such things, he couldn’t totally avoid the invitation to the local assembly. These small locales ran on gossip and spite. No. He must go.

The tone of various comments about the assembly surprised him though. According to his butler, who had listened to local gossip, there was something about some girl or other – reputed as much a local beauty as her mother was a matchmaking genius – who had just become engaged to a baron. And something else about her younger sister and how their mother carried all before her. And something else about Miss Maria Lucas who was universally believed to be the prettiest single girl in Meryton.

He assumed that Miss Lucas would throw herself headlong at him, tilting her cap at marriage. Well – it wasn’t as if he hadn’t withstood all that and more since his live-in-lover had been reclaimed by her family. There was nothing the beauties of Meryton could attempt that hadn’t been tried by the belles of London. Mr. Crawford looked at himself as he stood before his mirror – his green coat, his well-tied cravat. He was very pleased with himself. Let the belles break their teeth on his impervious disinterest.

Mary Bennet was in no mood to endure her mother’s fussing. Truth be told, she was in no mood to endure anyone’s fussing. She was single, this was true. And she was almost two and twenty, this was also true. But the thing was that Miss Mary Bennet – alone perhaps amid regency women – didn’t see any compelling reason why she should marry. After all, since two of her sisters – soon to be three – had married very well indeed, she had connections enough who would take her in when the unfortunate day came that her father left this vale of tears.

As for her, having seen her sister Lydia’s disastrous headlong rush into marriage, and the responsibilities that Jane and Elizabeth had to shoulder as married women, she thought she liked her books, her strolls in the country and her solitary practicing at the pianoforte quite well indeed

However, Mrs. Bennet on a rampage would not be withstood. So Mary was wrapped in ribbons and festooned with lace, a gown with a plunging neckline pushed up her inconsequential bosom, and she was dragged to the assembly.

When she arrived and was comfortably settled into a chair at the side of the dance floor, she promptly pulled a book from her reticule, and proceeded to ignore the festivities.

“Mary, put your shoulders back. Show off your figure,” Mrs. Bennet hissed.

Mary turned her page.

“Mary, he’s dancing with every other girl in the assembly.”

Mary read on. Frankly, she had identified Mr. Crawford immediately upon entering the assembly, and she knew his kind quite well. A prancing peacock, much in the frame of her brother, Wickham. Far too pleased with himself to even notice anyone else, and amoral into the bargain. She wasn’t interested. Besides, in the week since he’d arrived in town, she’d done her own enquiries as to his past and from some ladies in her missionary society, she had determined that he’d recently been involved in a scandal with Mrs. Maria Rushworth, whose good name and standing in society were forever ruined because of him. Let other girls sigh at how handsome he was. Mary would read.

“Mary, Mary, he’s coming here, he’s coming here.”

Mary looked up to find the prancing peacock standing in front of her, smiling a smile as sweet and false as teeth-rotting candy. She glared up at him through her reading spectacles. “Yes?” she asked, hoping rudeness would dissuade him. Her mama gasped, beside her.

“I was hoping you’d give me the pleasure of the next dance.”

“No,” Mary said. “I do not believe I will.”

Crawford stood in front of her for a while, staring, while his confident smile froze upon his face. “No?” he asked.

“No. I prefer the pleasures of a good book.” She heard her mama faint, beside her.

“But… I have a good estate in Norfolk.”

“And I’m very pleased for you. Now if you excuse me, Reverend Fordyce’s point on the vanity of the world has me enthralled.” And she returned to her reading, leaving her mama to rouse herself from her swoon and Mr. Crawford to drown his disappointment in several dances with Maria Lucas.

Henry Crawford didn’t mind at all being refused. Why the Bennet girl was not even pretty. She wore spectacles. She had spots. Everyone said her sisters were all far prettier. Oh, he didn’t mind at all being refused. In fact, he woke up in the middle of the night to tell himself that he didn’t mind her refusal at all. And he stared at the sky and told himself that he didn’t like her at all. She wasn’t like Fanny, all sweetness, telling him to reform and seemingly holding out the reward of her hand. No. Mary simply ignored him.

He gave a ball, and she read throughout it. He went to dinner at Longbourn, and she read through the dinner, once passing him the salt without so much as raising her eyes from Fordyce.

And when he invited the Bennets for dinner at Netherfield, Mary played the piano and refused to converse with him.

Her father smiled unnervingly, too.

Henry Crawford promised himself that he would make Mary Bennet fall in love with him if it was the last thing he did. The sums he spent on his tailor could, easily, have financed an estate. Or a large library for his estate. And then he realized that if she didn’t look at him, he could not capture her heart with clothes. So he commenced reading. He read all the ancient philosophers, most of the modern. He even read – painful though it was – Fordyce. And still, Miss Mary Bennet ignored him. She who wasn’t even pretty.

His scheme was not working well at all. As he strived to improve himself for her, he found more and more blemishes in his own image in the mirror. Had he always looked this vacant? This false? Had he always lacked all substance?

Something else very strange was happening too. He was becoming to realize that Miss Mary was beautiful. Or at least her eyes were: velvety dark, and filled with wisdom. And her mouth, in the right light, was like a rosebud.

By declensions of madness, he found himself writing poetry for her. And then, one beautiful day, a month after his arrival to Netherfield – so fast had the madness come on – he found himself proposing.

She refused him, without looking up from her book.

This was when Henry Crawford lost his mind. He went to London and spent a week drinking. But all the drink in the world couldn’t erase from his mind the velvety-dark eyes of Mary Bennet.

So he set about finding out more about Mary Bennet. He found out her interests. He discovered she was the main contributor to a missionary society and other charities, many of them helping the poor. He befriended the other members of the charities. He gave generously. And because he knew Mary would be able to tell, he got genuinely interested. Really interested. He had no hope, really, of her ever accepting him. In fact, he wasn’t sure he could muster the courage for a second proposal. He realized how many people lived in poverty around him, and he devoted himself to alleviating it. And thanked Mary, his angel, for changing him so completely. Even without hope of ever deserving her, he felt that she had made him a better man.

Which was how, two months later, he found himself at Netherfield, asking for an audience with her and saying, “Be not alarmed, Madam, that I am about to repeat those sentiments or renew those offers which were so disgusting to you. However, I want you to know that you have improved me. Though you might not have noticed it, loving you has changed me. I am now a better man for having known you, sweetest, kindest Mary. And for that alone, I shall never stop loving you. Because you made me look beyond my mirror and at the needs of the suffering.”

He finished his speech and was about to walk back out, when he realized Miss Mary Bennet had set her book down. And was smiling.

Happy for all the mothers of daughters in Meryton was the day Mrs. Bennet got rid of her remaining single daughter to the moneyed and capable arms of Mr. Henry Crawford. With the Bennet girls all married and no granddaughters as yet born, much less of a marrying age, perhaps other girls like Mary King and Maria Lucas could at last find a match.

Truth be told, no one understood how Mary had contrived to catch Henry Crawford. She wasn’t pretty and she wasn’t pleasant, and she’d never even danced with him. They had to attribute it to the fact that Mrs. Bennet was a genius of matchmaking and leave it at that, never understanding how she had tamed the vain tiger with the whip of her indifference.

Second chapter here

First chapter here

This was originally written for the Derbyshire Writers guild, where it’s not finished, but I’ll finish it if there’s enough interest. Meanwhile it allows me a leisurely breakfast with the guys on Saturday.

Lord Darcy looked around the room filled with mortals whirling in what he thought he must call dances, though he was not sure at all why he should call them that, since they looked clumsy and slow and not like the dances of fairyland.

He had hoped… He didn’t quite know what he had hoped, except he’d thought he could talk to the girls’ mother. She was an adult and though these creatures lived ridiculously short spaces of time and could barely be called any more than addled juveniles when compared to fairy kind, the older one would have lived much more than the younger and therefore should be able to make decisions.

But it took him no more than two seconds after meeting the Mrs. Bennet creature to realize that he could never make her understand anything. Her eyes were vacuous and she seemed preoccupied only with having him notice her daughters and have them make a good impression on him.

Prince Darcy had run into this before. It was not unusual in fairyland itself. As the only grandchild – the only descendant in fairyland itself – of great Oberon himself, he would one day rule all of fairyland. That day might be very distant – since the life span of fairy kind was so extended – but it would still come, inevitably, and many Lords and Ladies of fairy kind bid fair to present their daughters to him all hoping he would honor them with his heart and his hand. His announced intended alliance with Carola had protected him from a lot of this. In fact, Darcy sometimes thought it had been the intent of his grandfather when he had demanded that Darcy become engaged. For surely, there could be no great hurry in Darcy’s producing heirs. Not when neither Oberon nor Titania would die soon.

He was however grateful that he was no longer under siege by the matchmaking mamas of fairyland. The attitude was not any less off-putting coming from mortals. He ran his gaze, disinterestedly above the heads of all five girls. They were girls, and he supposed they were healthy enough, in the animal way of mortals. He saw little beauty and no breeding. That creatures such as these could have the blood of his ancestors seemed amazing. B ut then, he knew, sometimes people left fairyland and conjoined their blood with mortals. The results were plainly not pretty. It was all he could do not to shudder at the thought.

And meanwhile Carolus Bingley – Carolus, almost as well-born as Darcy himself – was smiling at a blonde, and taking her away with him to the dance floor. What could he be thinking?

Darcy distanced himself, going away a bit towards a wall where no one seemed to be. Carola came after him, always solicitous for his comfort. “Do they have vermin, you think?” she asked, interested. “My father once spent a whole week among mortals, oh, a few hundred years ago, and he said they had lice and fleas and all these creatures that fed on them. He found it very interesting, but then my papa is ever the natural scientist, ready to take an interest in all the lesser species.”

“Oh,” Darcy said, not knowing what else to say. The creatures might be stupid and they might be doomed to short lives and disease. But hearing Carola speak like this, Darcy couldn’t help but feel a pang of something. Something he couldn’t quite put a finger on. It wasn’t so much anger at Carola, as an irrational need to defend these creatures whom he held in no esteem at all. “I… they’re not so bad. We must remember they’re similar enough to us that we can have children with them.”

“And what children!” Carola said, waving her fan rapidly. “How could your grandfather…. But on this, it would perhaps be better to be silent.”

And Darcy who both agreed with her on his grandfather’s behavior and who could not but think it would be much, much better to be silent, only inclined his head.

Presently, Carola moved away to dance with a human, no doubt feeling herself very charitable for doing so.

And Carolus descended on Darcy, a huge smile on his good-natured features. The smile alone made Darcy feel queasy. It was just like Carolus. He took these enthusiasms to places and things. Darcy remembered when Bingley had found a particular grove he found beautiful above all others and refused to leave it for weeks, even though there was nothing better to do than watch the fish on the stream. And he remembered the many fairy ladies with whom Bingley had thought he was madly in love for a week or maybe two.

“Come Darcy,” he said. “I must have you dance. You can’t stand about in this stupid manner.”

“I beg your pardon, I have no intention of dancing,” Darcy said. “You know why we came here, and it was not to dance.”

Bingley bowed a little, but laughed. “Indeed, but how can we do anything else if we don’t dance first?”

“Bingley!” Darcy said, exasperated. “Return to your partner, enjoy her smiles.” He didn’t add that his friend would tire of those smiles in a week, but he hoped Bingley knew he was thinking it.

“Oh, Darcy, she is an angel. More beautiful than princess or duchess. She is perfection itself.”

A reluctant look, cast from beneath Darcy’s lashes, registered with some surprise that indeed the blonde girl was indeed beautiful – she had perfect features, eyes of a blue as deep as the summer sky and lips as red and soft as the rose petals in an enchanted garden. But he wasn’t willing to admit to Bingley that he knew the girl was a rare gem. So instead he said, churlishly, “You’re dancing with the only beautiful girl in the room, Bingley.”

“Oh, not so. Her sisters are also very beautiful. Look, there sits one. She is very beautiful too, and I dare say, very pleasant.”

As he spoke, Bingley gestured towards a girl who was sitting in the nearby chairs, clearly one of the creatures who could not find a partner even amid gross mortals. Darcy turned his disdainful eye her way, ready to wither Bingley’s pretensions with a single look. Words about girls who were neglected by other men were on the tip of his tongue.

And stopped. The girl was, it is true, no beauty. Her features had those slight irregularities, those imperfections that could not help but offend eyes trained on the beauties of fairyland.

Her nose was slightly too big. Her eyes were too far apart. No careful hand had shaped her eyebrows which were too straight and far too dark.

But under those eyebrows shone eyes that could blind even immortals – large and golden, like the leaves in autumn when they had just turned, or like the golden throne of fairyland.

Prince Darcy looked, and his gaze was arrested. He looked and felt something – he couldn’t say what.

There was a memory in his mind: a grove of trees, the smell of autumnal leaves and a woman’s voice calling to him.

He did not know where the memory had come from, nor what it meant, nor who the woman might have been. The memory struck him as strange, because the woman didn’t speak the language of fairyland, but the language of these people. How odd. He must ask his grandfather if he’d had a mortal nursemaid.

Somehow he’d approached the girl. He didn’t remember making a decision to, and suddenly he found himself bowing to her, while she appraised him with her cool eyes. There was interest and… suspicion? In them.

“Miss…” He floundered. “Miss Bennet.” That was fairly safe, since that was the family name. “Would you do me the honor of this next dance?”

She seemed shocked. “I…” she said, and floundered in turn, and seemed not to know what to say.

Prince Darcy was not used to having a female hesitate to accept his invitation to dance. Any woman honored with his interest could not but be grateful. He was so surprised, so sure there must be a mistake that, almost without meaning to, he projected a glamoury towards her.

He saw her frown, then sigh, and, suddenly, her brow cleared. “I…” She said. “I thank you, yes.”

He should have felt guilty about tampering with her emotions. He knew that. But he could feel nothing but elation as he led her to the dance space. She felt light as a feather in his arm, and smelled like newly-opened roses.

Prince Darcy could not remember ever having led a more pleasing partner to a dance, not even in fairyland.

UPDATE:  A SLIGHTLY EDITED AND PRETTIED UP COMPILATION OF ALL CHAPTERS UP TO A WEEK OLD IS HERE

*I’m posting this novel here, free, one chapter at a time.  This is being posted as I write it, so it’s in pre-earc (for those from Baen) or in close-to (but not quite) -first draft state. Once it’s finished it will undergo editing and then it will be published in some form. I’m going to put this up with its own category so you can find it.  For those interested in throwing something in the storytellers bowl, there is a donate button on the right hand side of the site.  Anyone contributing $6 or more will get an electronic (non DRM) version of the novel upon completion.  Of course, donating is not mandatory.  I hope you enjoy the chapters.  For Director’s Commentary of sorts, look at the bottom of the chapter. *

*Additional note — this is rushed, and I know it’s rushed.  Normally I would have given it another one or two go-overs, but there are several things I need to have in order for tomorrow, so I’m rushing around and only got to this late.  I promise to make it up to you next week.*

For first chapter, look here

For eighth chapter, look here

Two Attacks and an Alarm

Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, woke up with a sense of foreboding.  For a moment, floating on the edge of consciousness, he thought he was a child, in the nursery in the attics of the house, with nanny hovering by, and that he’d been very ill.

Then he moved in the bed, and the feeling of his body belied the illusion.  Not nanny.  And yet there was someone nearby singing, singing in a high voice.  That was what had given him the impression that he was in the nursery.  Nanny used to sing to him, in a high but not unmelodious voice.  Only nanny had never used words that felt like fire distilled through his bones and woven through his nerves, raking his conscience like unsheathed claws.  Words he didn’t understand.  Words that felt wrong.

The scream of “stop” tore itself from his lips as he sat up.  The voice stopped, immediately, and in its place there was a scream, answering his, a voice much like his own, “Seraphim!”

He opened his eyes to Penny running towards him, and in less than a second, Penny’s hands were on his shoulders, Penny’s voice too loud in his ears, “Damn it, Seraphim.  You’re not well enough to sit.  You–”

He was in his room, his adult room, of course, and it was the middle of the night.  Or at least the window, directly in front of his bed, showed only darkness, which meant it was night.  Though both the bed and the window were equipped with heavy brocaded curtains – somewhat faded since the old duke’s profligate spending hadn’t allowed expenses such as replacing furnishings – Seraphim never let either set be closed.  He believed in the virtues of fresh air.  He also believed in keeping an eye on his surroundings, both within and without the house.  Perhaps if his father had done so–

And then he remembered what about his surrounding, just before waking, had caused such a violent start.

“Who was singing?” Seraphim asked.  “What were the words?”

“What?  There was no one singing.  You were dreaming.  It was a dream.”

Seraphim shook his head.  “No.  Someone was singing.  Working magic on me.  A woman.  Where’s the woman?”

“The– If you mean Miss Felix, the lady you brought back with you, she left,  presumably whence she’d come.  I have a feeling we’ll know all too soon.”  Gabriel Penn felt at Seraphim’s forehead with the back of his own, then did one of the minor passes that allowed one to evaluate the state of health of another, and frowned.  “You have no fever.”

“Of course I have no–” Seraphim would never be able to say how he had seen the attack, much less how he was able to react so fast.  One moment he was looking at Penny, trying to decide if it was possible at all that Penny was had been playing some sort of trick, and thinking to himself that if Penny had been singing in a woman’s voice and performing such unclean magic as those words felt like, then it was time to take him to an exorcist and find which entity had claimed his half brother’s soul.  The next moment he caught a reflection on the glass, behind Penny’s shoulder.  Something.  He could never say more than that he’d been aware of movement.  And he’d reacted.

Perhaps he would not have reacted so quickly, if he’d not wakened to unclean magic.  He couldn’t say.  What he could say and do was cast a protection spell so quick his fingers smarted as the power left them, even as he pulled at Penny’s arm, and made him fall, awkwardly across the bed.  At the same time Seraphim rolled, so he was in a different place.

Through the confusion, and a sudden burning feather smell, he was aware that his protective shield spell had failed and the pillow was now on fire.  He was also aware of Penny across his legs, struggling to get up.  But neither took up his thought, and certainly neither got his attention because he was drawing all his power, all his reserves, and sending them after the spell that had just come in.

There was a moment – he remembered well from his studies at Cambridge – when right after a killing-magic-spell, the kind banned in all civilized countries, it was possible to follow it with one of the same kind and potency, even if you didn’t know from whence it came and certainly if you didn’t know how to cast such a spell, as no civilized man knew, such spells being forbidden in all right-thinking lands.  It was allowed too.  The only time it was allowed to loose a killing spell that was not contained in a mage stick.  It was right of self defense, secured to the English barons by the Magna Carta, and to all English citizens by the Land and Men act of Richard XII.

None of this occurred to Seraphim of course.  His reaction was instinctive, as he seized the feel and magic of what had been hurled at him, and hurled it back as fast as he could.

The power washed out of him in a great wave, and the room swam before his eyes.  He would have collapsed back onto his pillow, but the pillow was on fire, so he collapsed sideways, at the same time that Penny finally managed to rise, got hold of something from the bedside table, and flung it at the pillow, putting the fire out, but adding markedly to the smell of the room with an odd scent of cooked meat.

As Seraphim managed to draw himself up and catch his breath, something about his expression must have given Penny the idea that his action was disapproved of, as he said, “Broth.  For your dinner.  I’m afraid.”

Seraphim, though his mind was on everything but his dinner, managed a smile.  “Better that than the contents of the chamber pot!”

A quick smile flitted across Penny’s lips, then he frowned, as though coming to himself and realizing the import of all that had happened.  “Someone… Did someone send a killing bolt of magic through your window?”

“I’m afraid so,” Seraphim said, and, rolling off the side of the bed managed to hold onto it, though barely.  Confound it.  He was too weak.  The reason why came to him, in bits and disjointed pieces.  The damn pyramids; the woman; the boy.  How had he let himself be caught so off guard?  Perhaps he should have heeded Penny.  Perhaps he’d been too weak to go off world.

“And you sent a killing bolt after it!  Seraphim.  It’s illegal.”

“Not according to the law I studied at Cambridge.  Self defense, Penny.”  Seraphim tried to make his way to the window, by means of grabbing now onto a small occasional table, now onto the back of a sofa.  But before he reached there, Penny had guessed his intentions and stood in front of him.  “No, Seraphim!”

Seraphim took a deep breath, “Penny, we must find out who it was, and where the bolt hit.  You know such killing spells have to be line of sight, so he was line of sight when he loosed it.  Or she, if it was that infernal singer.”

“No one was singing!  And you can’t mean to show yourself at that window when someone just tried to kill you.”  He had Seraphim by the shoulders again, which was a deuced stupid habit for him to have acquired, and was trying by main force to push him down onto a rosewood-framed loveseat.  Unfortunately at the moment the force was in the main on Gabriel’s side, and Seraphim had to allow himself to be pushed down.

He was not, however, so lost to all reason that he would allow Penny himself to go to the window.  To prevent this, he held fast to Penny’s sleeve and said, “Not you either, then, you damnfool.  We don’t know which of us that bolt was aimed at.”

Penny looked exasperated.  “Seraphim?  Why would anyone try to kill me?  I am not the duke.  I am not–”

“You are your mother’s son,” Seraphim said, and suddenly something that had been bothering him connected in his mind.  “And I have a very good idea that the song I heard as I was waking was in the language of your mother’s people.”

Gabriel Penn went so still his features might very well be carved out of marble.  He stood straighter, and swallowed hard, so hard that it was audible in a room that seemed, of a sudden so quiet that even the crackle of wood in the fireplace sounded as loud as an explosion.  “My mother–” Gabriel said.  He shook his head, looked towards the window.   “Impossible.”  But all the same, Seraphim saw his hand move and from the very faint tracery of light visible only to mage sight, he could see Gabriel setting a protective spell in place.  Nothing like what Seraphim had done in the haste of the moment, but something stronger, harder.  Something odder, too, all angles and askew logic.  Something not human.  And Seraphim knew that despite that “impossible” Penny found the threat possible enough to guard against it.

“I’d swear to it, Penny.  I don’t know the language, as you … Curse it, I never thought of it, but you must know the language.  You were not an infant when…”

“I know the language,” Penny said.  He looked wary and tired.  Very tired.  So tired that ten years at least appeared to have fallen on his features.  He dropped to the rosewood seat, next to Seraphim.  “Blast it all, Seraphim.  It is impossible.  The treaties and the binds are unbreakable.”

Seraphim cleared his throat.  “I don’t know the language as you do,” he said slowly, deliberately.  “But I know the sound and feel of it.  When your mother’s people came, shortly after you came to live here, remember?  When they came to the door–” He stopped.

“Yes,” Gabriel said.  And how was it possible Seraphim thought, that Gabriel seemed to be quieter than silence and more still than stone, and with it convey a sense of urgency so great that it could not be expressed in word or movement?  A sense of urgency that pressed on Seraphim like the knowledge of a life and death race?

Seraphim took a breath.  “Well, this language had the same feel, and I can’t very well imagine any other language, anything at all else in the world that would sound like that.”

“No,” Gabriel said, and then, as though recruiting strength, “But perhaps you remembered and dream–”

“It wasn’t exactly the same words, Penny.  This time there was a spell being said.  And unclean spell.”

“Imp–”

Seraphim said two words he remembered from what he had heard, two words so odd and so powerful they seemed to burn his tongue with saying them.

“Stop,” Penny said.  His hand shot out and covered Seraphim’s mouth.  “Stop.  No more.”

“What are the words?”

Penny shook his head.  “Unclean.  And dangerous.”  He waved a hand, again, setting some form of cleansing in place.  A form that Seraphim had never seen.  Then he took a deep breath, loud in the room.  “Two attacks then,” he said, in the same tone as he might inform Seraphim that his carriage was ready or that, alas, the boot boy had ruined Seraphim’s best boots.  “Because that kill spell through the window was all human magic and none of ou– Theirs.  Two attacks.  Aren’t we the lucky ones.  And they are after you, not me.  For two days, Seraphim, you’ve been not only unconscious, but shielded under so many healing spells not one would be able to get a spell on you.  Or to find you with one.  But today, as the healing spells slid off two enemies found you.  It was you they were aiming for.”

Seraphim shrugged.  “Or perhaps you were close enough to me while I was under healing spells, to make you less noticeable also.”

Gabriel rose, “I shall send some footmen down to see who you killed.  There will be trouble over that, mind, self-defense or not.  Death must stand examination and trial.  And the King’s court, because of your damned rank.”

“Tell them to go armed,” Seraphim said.  There might be more than one out there.”

Gabriel nodded, as a matter of course, then returned to the room.  “As for the other matter, duke, those words you overheard, if they were part of an attack aimed at you would indicate that they think you too have my mother’s blood.  And if they were aimed at me…”  He shook his head.  “Did you ever tell anyone?  About me, I mean?”

“Which of the many things about you?” Seraphim asked suddenly cautious.

“Any of them.”

“My dear Penny, I don’t tell your secrets to anyone.  Oftentimes not even to myself.”

Chapter 10 is here

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Director’s commentary — I’d like to keep secret, at least a little longer, the identity of Gabriel’s mother and people.  Part of this is because neither of them is, frankly, going to name it.  However, let’s just say that I knew about that attack before I wrote this chapter, though I have only the vaguest of ideas as to why or what the heck they have against the guys — though I have some idea of the effect of that spell, had it finished.

On the other hand, the other attack took me completely by surprise.  Neither of these were in the outline.  They both feel needed and unavoidable, though.

And where the heck is Nell?  Two and a half days?  I thought she was going to see them right right away.  I’m not a pantser, but books do escape the leash now and then.  This one doesn’t feel wrong, just as though my subconscious has been up to something and not told me.

We shall see.

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Unrelated note – I have put up another collection of five shorts Five Far Futures — for $2.99.  Two of the stories, Learn To Forget and Touch are rather more sombre, though it would be hard to say they have bad endings, at least compared to what they could have.  The other three have happy endings, though one is perhaps qualified.  Anyway, they’re available wherever fine electrons are sold. :)

“We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Yesterday, in responding to my post, RES  Mark Alger (Update — yes, I got who said it wrong.  But in retrospect, it was all RES’s fault for saying Pfui in such a Nero Wolfe like manner.  Coff.  Oh, okay, fine, my mind has been coming back — slowly and by degrees — from wherever it went while I was ill.  But slowly is the operational point.  So my excuse is that I was ill.  Besides, I was led astray by evil companions, and further more I was never there.  And I have a whitlow!  Pfui.) made the point that there is such a thing as story comfort-food.  He brought up Rex Stout, whose stories I tend to devour again and again, particularly when I’m feeling down, and which are, in fact, set pieces.

He could have brought up other examples, too.  Like, say, romances.  I have recently started going on binges of regency romances when I’m not feeling quite the thing.  (No, not contemporary romances, because half of those break the story for the obligatory feminist rant, and then the book goes against the wall, and it’s just bad for my disposition in general.)  Romances, in general, in fact, have weathered the trouble in the book business better than most.  There are other books that fall in this category: Cozy mysteries, for instance (for those who are not versed with the terms, these are similar to the works of Agatha Christie) and classical space opera, or even quest fantasy.

If the main couple didn’t end up getting together at the end of a romance, if the detective didn’t solve the mystery, if the brave and plucky young man/woman didn’t win out at the end of the space opera, and if the quest fantasy didn’t fall out in the expected way, the reader would be very disappointed indeed.

Note that all these genres and subgenres are hated by most publishing houses, who have spent the last thirty years either trying to subvert them and giving them “astonishing” endings, (which lose readers) or suppress them by proclaiming ex-cathedra things like “cozy mysteries aren’t real mysteries” or “space opera isn’t really science fiction.  Science fiction needs a big idea.”  Romance in turn inspires them with a sort of incoherent rage, unless it’s the sort of “mainstreamish” literary “romance” in which everyone lives lives of astonishing irrelevance and is not allowed an happy-for-a-moment, much less a Happy-Ever-After.

I understand their point of view.  Truly I do.  I understand it beyond the easiest explanation which is “most traditional house editors are poopy-heads.”  Most of them are NOT poopy-heads, and most of them are, in fact, trying to do the best they can.

However, I’ll also note, that though I can’t prove this, the feeling I have from countless writer-editor dinners and countless talks at cons, is that with one notable exception (yes, you know who.)  most of them aren’t readers, either.  Not in their spare time.  They might have started out as readers, but – defeated by the pile of stuff that must be read for work – now relax in front of the TV or the game console. This has caused them to forget what the feel of being a reader is, and what it is like to read for entertainment.  Hence curious ideas like “the reader doesn’t want more than one book by the same author in one year” and also, of course the “astonish me” mode.

The main driver of the “astonish me” mode, though, is that they read so much for work.  IOW they read so much with an editorial eye out, and when they don’t really feel like reading for fun.  And they get bored.  They get astonishingly bored.

I remember this from when I read slush for friends, or even when I’ve edited invite-anthos.  You have to be very careful not to read more than say three stories in a row, because after that, your readers-mind is numbed, and the editor comes out.  And the editor gets bored.  And the editor wants surprise.  He (or in my case, she) wants something to break the mind-numbing boredom; something different, startling.

Of course, this is not ALL that is wrong – there is also the fact that most editors, at least since the sixties or so, have been liberal arts graduates.  As a literature major (forgive me, it was another country, there were fewer options, and besides, the wench is dead) I know what that is like.  You analyze literature, you think of it from angles that would never occur to a normal human being (“in this paragraph, Goethe refers to his feet carrying him into the forest.  This denotes an almost psychotic loss of control” – or, the jaded writer says, maybe he just didn’t want to start another sentence with “he walked.”) This creates a feeling of “separation” from the common writer, a disdain for people who read merely for pleasure.  Oikophobia sets in, which leads editors to regard falling numbers or complaints from the readers as proof that they’re in fact right and readers need to be “educated.”  Most of all, due to the way evaluations and pronouncements are made in most literature courses, they are afraid of putting a foot wrong and rely on the quality-judgements of their equals, i.e., other literature graduates, because hey, would you trust the mere readers?

All of this has combined over the last thirty years or so to push the surprise ending and the surprise denouement into most genres.  Unfortunately, this is not what the average reader wants.  A surprise ending is fine – if the trail has been laid very well indeed, though, I’ll point out, this is more difficult to do than it seems – now and then, for a break of ennui.  But someone like me who mostly reads for entertainment and to decompress, or simply to keep the voices in her head quiet while she does dishes or cooks (there are times I don’t need another story idea, thank you sooo much.) doesn’t often need surprise.  And unless you have the genius, of say, Jill McGown, who can spin a mystery on its head three times in the last four pages, all using the same facts, most surprise endings are, in fact, disappointing.

I remember the first time in the seventies when I hit an ending to a colonization story and EVERYONE died.  Two more of those and I stopped reading that subgenre of SF.  There was no conscious decision.  I just stopped.  If the book wasn’t going to pay off, why invest hours reading it?  I’d just re-read Heinlein instead.  And the more er… “modern” mysteries ran me off most genres and into cozies only, until they shut off that spigot.

The truth is, demanding “a surprise in every book” is akin to demanding “an atomic explosion in every fireplace.”  While atomic energy can be useful (and atomic warfare too, at least as a threat, and no, I’m so not debating this) having an atomic explosion in your fireplace is not only not useful, it’s not convenient, defeats the purpose and, oh, yeah, makes the entire area into a radioactive desert.  Which large portions of genre literature have become, after thirty years of this treatment.

Most of the time, we really don’t want the hero in an erotic romance to turn into a spider on their wedding night and devour the bride.  (Which is why most people wouldn’t read erotica written by me, more’s the pity.)

Most of the time we want the ending to be more or less what we expect.  The occasional good surprise – oh, look, the little dog that was lost in the first chapter came home after the guy and gal got together.  Cuuuuuute. – is okay, but it is not what we read for.

Those of us who are reading-addicts read for the journey; to spend time with characters we like, and to see each get what he/she deserves.

I regret to say this to my fellow literature-degree-holders, but most people want their entertainment to be uncomplicated.  Yes, why, that DOES make you superior to them.  Here’s your cookie, now go sit in the corner, and talk to other geniuses about how much better than average you are.  As for me – pfui – I have a Nero Wolfe book to re-read.

Lately I’ve been delving in the depths of my own trunk stories.  This can be akin to pulling one’s on scabs but not nearly as fun.  It is also, however, useful, since I’m putting up most of those stories (well, the good – or at least decent – ones) with Goldport Press.

It is also, in a way, an education into how a writer grows.  And what (I think) is good and bad despite or besides gatekeepers and all that.

The first thing to shock me is how… mixed my stories are.  Years ago, while taking a workshop in Oregon, I had some inkling of this and told Kris “What annoys me is how mixed my quality is.”  Brother, I spoke a mouthful.  At the time I had no idea, myself.  I had some concept that some of the stories were way better than the others – what I had no idea was HOW MUCH better.  Take 1999, the year I started selling consistently.  It was a good year for short stories.  I wrote about fifty of them.  Twenty of those are – easily – as good as anything I write today.  The others range from bad to appallingly bad to “oh, my heavens, are you going to give me anesthesia before I read these?”

So, what is wrong about the very, very bad, no good, utterly rotten ones?  Am I sure they’re not just a matter of my internalizing gatekeepers’ tastes?  Um… quite.

Amid the stuff I’m putting up, for instance, is a lot of Space Opera, some of it in the Darkship Thieves Universe (well, one story out, for now) and those never sold, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with them.  I suspect what kept those from selling are gatekeeper issues.  First, they were space opera.  Second, they were er… heretical when it came to the perspective of what would be a good future.  With a little clean up, some of it to make sure the history is coherent, there will be ten to fifteen short stories in the future history up by early next year, and maybe a couple of novellas, as well.

But the very, very bad ones are not gatekeepers.  They fall into three camps – the easily salvageable (with work), the “this needs to be seriously expanded” and the “what was I thinking?”

The first one is mostly wording issues.  Yeah, I know, I’m used to thinking of English as my native language, even if I acquired it fourteen years after birth – hey, some of us are built oddly – but let’s just say that in a lot of the stuff written in the late eighties and early nineties you can ear the stiltedness, the “not quite comfortable in the language’s skin” of someone who speaks English as a foreign language.  These grate on me probably more than they would on readers because that’s the way I’m put together.  There are perfectly good authors I can’t read because their language “clangs.”  Again, these stories can be salvaged, given a few rainy afternoons during flu season, when I’m not up to creating anything as such, but can spend time line-by-lining it and changing the wording.

The second category is mostly the future history – the stories that are not just gatekeeper-issues.  You see, I was learning to Heinlein things in with no explanation.  Like any skill you’re learning, I took it to an extreme.  It took me years after writing these to figure out that people like some idea of WHERE in future history the story fits.  Okay, it’s not natural for your character to think “Now that it’s the twenty fifth century” but you can find other ways to drop it in, and people like it.  Being dropped, deaf and blind into the middle of an incomprehensible world irks readers, for some reason.  So, a lot of the future history needs a good go-over and I suspect will become novellas.  (This is at least partly a gatekeeper-in-the-head issue.  I knew there was near to no market over ten thousand words, so I kept things over-lean in an attempt to slid under that bar.  Now the bar isn’t there.  So, never mind, I’ll grow them again.)

The third category is far more difficult and might have to rest-in-drawer though it might get cannibalized for its ideas.  These are wet petards.  In some of them I can, just vaguely, glimpse what I was trying to do, but the story reads like a wet petard – i.e. you get to the end and you go “oh, um” And that’s if you get to the end, because you usually know exactly what will happen all along the way from paragraph two.

So, what gives them their wet petardish quality?  Well… mostly foreshadowing issues.  If there’s only one way for a story to end; if, no matter how big the character’s issue, there is no hope of his succeeding, then why should I read the story?  Or, of course, if there’s no way for the character to fail.  (Series characters and novels are different here.  I’m talking short stories.)  Other serious defects consist of making my villain so loathsome that by page three I’m mad at the hero for not having killed him/her yet, and I don’t want to be in the same story with said villain.

However, let me make clear what’s so obvious to me now truly wasn’t then.  And yes, over time I wrote fewer shorts per year, but they are all decent reads with the usual “your mileage may vary” disclaimers.  I mean, I’m still uneven.  The range just has gotten narrower.

So, the take away?  If you write a lot, eventually you get better.  Also, if you’re in that stage where you know your output is uneven, write a lot.  SOME of it will be good.

Other things I’ve learned from this going over old stuff and putting some of it up: the story that’s outselling all the others ten to one is a seriously flawed story I couldn’t sell anywhere.  Note I didn’t say a BAD story.  It is enjoyable to read and kind of cute, but it’s one of those where things happen to the character – he doesn’t do much.  Is this a gate keeper preference but not a reader preference?  It would seem to be so.  Not that I intend to make an habit of writing flawed stories, but, it’s interesting.

Another observation is that most of my short stories are seriously, seriously depressing.  This is funny, because my novels aren’t.  On the other hand my shorts have gotten more cheerful as time goes by, so perhaps I’m finally growing up.  Or maybe the depression was the search for an emotional punch, which was difficult to come by when I was a young mother with two toddlers in the house the whole time.

One thing my limited marketing – I have less than a dozen short stories up – has shown me is that cheerful sells better.  (Give the lady a duh.)

So, if you’re writing stuff for the public, so far: Avoid wet petards plus write cheerful stories seems to equal profit.  And if the public includes Sarah Hoyt, for the love of heaven smooth that language.  (Like nails on the blackboard, it is.)

And that’s the week that was.  Now that I’m getting over the dreaded crud, I shall go back to writing and relegate the editing/putting up stuff to the evenings, when I’m useless for creative work.  (There is a time when my head feels empty and echoes.)

Oh, the other thing I have found out is that, given the fact I know stories will no longer need to languish in a drawer unless I put them there, I seem to have unleashed something.  I am writing MUCH faster than I ever have and keeping up that production longer.  No, I’m not going to write down numbers, because you’ll either not believe them; assume it’s bad if it’s being written that fast; or think I’m bragging.  BUT I’m truly laying down words at a prodigious rate – fast enough to scare me a little.  And I’m enjoying it more than I have in years and years.  Dean called this effect (not on me but in general) “the writer coming back.”  It is the best way to describe it.  And it feels good.

The good news is that I’m feeling better.  The better news is that I’m using the time to catch up on stuff today.  So, various odds and ends.  Real post tomorrow.

First — I put out a collection with Goldport Press:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0067R3Y3K

This is done with my limited resources, so I’m sure we don’t have the slick formatting of Naked Reader Press or Baen, and er.. some typos might have escaped (next on the list is getting a CHEAP copyeditor, or waiting till I make money to get an expensive one.)  Anyway, if you want it, have at it.  I also have several shorts and will — G-d willing and the creek rising slowly — be putting up an SF one today.

So far with ten things out, the wonder for the ages is that the story outselling the others by about 10 times is a) a short story for 99c (are y’all mad?  that’s just not sensible economics!)  b) a short story I could NOT give away for love or money.  It is seriously flawed from the pov of traditional publishing.  So, why is it doing well?  Who knows?  I’d say it’s the cover, but people do download samples before buying, and it’s doing well across all vendors.  One more proof we just don’t know what’s what in this brave new world.

The other incidental is that my son has put up more Ninja Nun.  If you haven’t lately go and look at Agnes.  And if you feel inclined, hit his tip jar.  He’s in pre-med and doing pretty well.  I’m fairly sure he’ll make it into medschool, if nothing else because he’s the sort of stubborn who would try to kill a saber tooth with a leaf (that’s why there aren’t many of us) and he wants to be a neurosurgeon, eventually.  So, the brain you save might, eventually, turn turn turn, be your own.  http://www.robertahoyt.com/comics.html

And now I’ll go and catch up on my editing and writing, because, chilluns, I work for myself and the boss is an unprintable.  My schedule does NOT allow for taking two days off and sleeping (or putting up ebooks) more’s the pity.