According To Hoyt

As I’ve said before, right now there is a novel dictating itself to me, hampered and slowed only by the time I take away to do research.

Why research if the novel is dictating itself?

Well, because for me at least, it doesn’t work effortlessly. Actually, I don’t think it works for anyone. The character of my novel is not a writer. He knows his story, but he doesn’t know how to tell it. Or if you prefer – I prefer too, if it keeps the men in white coats from knocking at my door – my subconscious has latched onto this story, this voice, these large movements of events and characters, these principles that guide the characters. But my subconscious hasn’t spent the last twenty years carefully analyzing the techniques writers use to get a story across.

I’ll grant you my subconscious is along for the ride when I’m reading – of course – and it is what gives me the indication of what thrills me and what speaks deeply to me (which is very important. I’ll why explain later). But it doesn’t go “oh. Look how she avoids going THERE and fully explaining what happened as he died, to keep it sad and not gross.” Or “Ah, that sentence is enough to tell us he’s noticing the woman. More would be a plot-slowing infodump.”

My conscious knows that. My conscious knows more things too. It knows that I can’t write a book in which the characters consciously and in very different circumstances try to recreate the American revolution and finish the revolution in one book. Look, beyond the initial impetus, there were wars for independence over years, and the system of government wasn’t really stable for a long time (some would say till the Civil War but I’m so not getting into that argument, particularly since I have very definite – and if you know my politics – predictable ideas on centralized government and it’s a pointless argument and one that in fact that was mirrored at the founding of the nation. I can do it better with fiction.) And the American revolution was taking place in thirteen small (population wise) colonies, which had no real experience of self-rule in terms of nations, even in a limited sense for the last few thousands of years. While my book takes place in all of Earth, administratively united but culturally and even politically fractured.

Realistically? This revolution will take centuries to work itself through the system. It will go well in some places and very badly (as in buckets of blood) in others. It will end in freedom in some places, economic freedom in others, and in insanity in not a few. Other places will devolve into dictatorship, even while the stragglers are still freeing themselves.

How do you write that? Well, you do it only in portions. The struggle of people we don’t know anything about is as interesting, of course, but as humans we care most about ours and our friends’ struggles. So it starts there. Pick – to begin with – an interesting place and an interesting character – preferably one who can’t help fight the current regime, because otherwise he’s going to be dead. Then have him free as much of that area as he can reach. Then let the dominos fall. Take one of his associates from quite a different area. Push….

My subconscious however, thinks in terms of “and then they killed the bad guy and the whole world rejoiced.” My subconscious has watched too much Star Trek and fails to understand that whole worlds are too complex a thing.

So I’m sitting here, studying strategy and approaches, and it is merrily dictating along. And I’m slowing it down enough to let me study.

This is btw where the legal pads come in. I can’t write in them, long term, because my mind goes much much faster than my hand in handwriting. OTOH I can write in them for three pages or so to get a voice that’s not flowing right or to find just the right words to open a book or a chapter. And I DO write, draw and sometimes doodle on them while trying to get the PLOT right. I do also make notes along the lines of “Make sure there is a similar incident to x” while reading for research.

Anyway, art and craft intertwine for me. Art is the rush of excitement and interest when an idea first appears. I can’t explain it. It’s a little like falling in love.

Sometimes the idea isn’t even clear in my mind. I don’t know who the main character is, or what he wants. I have clue zero where she lives. I don’t know if it is even human. BUT I get a feeling for the character, a sense of what he/she/it is trying to do or overcome. It’s like… glimpsing someone across a crowded room and catching the movement of the head, the sweep of the hair and thinking “wow.” Then you start crossing the room to meet the person or start allowing the idea to shape.

Does it change sometimes, and do you lose interest after a while. Sure. Sometimes the person isn’t for you. Same with ideas. One of the things that seem to be universal is that not everyone can stay with an idea no matter how good. I used to write down all my ideas when I first started writing. After about a year, with some experience, I realized about half weren’t for me. Oh, they were my ideas, I’d just never write them. And if I wrote them, I’d never make them good because they didn’t make me that excited.

This is like teenagers who fall in love with everyone. It is only when they start considering people in terms of marriage or at least long term relationships, that they realize a lot of those people simply aren’t compatible. Or they don’t like those people enough.

Take me for instance – in my ten years as a professional I turned down exactly one assignment, even though I wasn’t doing anything else at the time. Yes, it was write for hire. Yes, I’ve done very few of those. But if that book had been something I could do, I’d have taken it. You see, I had a refrigerator to replace.

But the book took place in DC corridors of power. It was all about lobbyists and ambassadors and what not.

So, Sarah, you say, you do books set in Tudor courts. Why couldn’t you research the power machinations in DC? Because they don’t interest me that way. They interest me passionately in terms of “what are they doing to us?” and “How fast are the founders spinning in their graves?” but not in terms of writing. I hate books set in that type of place with that type of plot. I don’t read them. Forcing myself to write one would be torture. And it would show.

There are other books I can read but not write. I’m not saying which because they’ll attack me and try to make me write one. (NO, I’m not crazy. I’m just a little unwell. Or I’ll be after writing a fashion mystery, say.)

Anyway, so a year or so of writing practice rendered half of my list moot.

I watched a lot of my fledgelings go through the same process and I can tell you it seems to be universal. There are some characters and settings you can’t write, or at least can’t finish because you don’t care enough.

In the same way there are characters each of you finds irresistible. Mine seems to be the Fallen Caryatid type of character as per Heinlein’s quote: This poor little caryatid has fallen under the load. She’s a good girl—look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her failure, not blaming anyone, not even the gods…and still trying to shoulder her load, after she’s crumpled under it.

But she’s more than just good art denouncing bad art; she’s a symbol for every woman who ever shouldered a load too heavy. But not alone women—this symbol means every man and woman who ever sweated out life in uncomplaining fortitude until they crumpled under their loads. It’s courage…and victory.

Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn’t give up…she’s still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her…she’s all the unsung heroes who couldn’t make it but never quit.

They can be male or female, but they tend to have at least a little of this in them. (Yes, even Athena.) This is not volational. It’s simply the type of character that makes me interested and passionate.

My son, Robert, seems to go for… well… weird. He’s written intelligent cats who drink tea. He’s written intelligent pterodactyls. When dealing with human characters he pits them up against … zombie dinosaurs or intelligent vampire shopping carts. Weird is his muse and what makes his heart sing. (Yes, I do live in fear of the Weird-in-Law I’ll inevitably land.)

My friend Kate Paulk, otoh, goes for evil sobs. I’m not going to say they’re lovable evil sobs, or even redeemable (though some are) but that she makes you interested in them even as you’re thinking you need to take a shower.

And I think Amanda Green invented strong women. Or if not at least she makes it sound like she did. And look you, they’re real strong women, not the shrews screaming their way through plots that most of Hollywood thinks mean “strong.” They’re strong despite their vulnerabilities and they take honor as seriously as any man.

Dave Freer … well, Dave writes outliers who steal your heart and misfits that make the whole work for the non-outliers. And he writes good people. Good but not sappy. (Yes, there is a difference.) You can be good without being nice. And he layers them. And uh… I’m just going to stop there because I shouldn’t be required to analyze the work of someone that far out of my league. It’s cruel and unusual and I’ll decide I am a hack who shouldn’t even be writing, if I try.

I could take one of their character types on, I could – but it would just end up as another fallen caryatid.

The same goes for every element of story, from setting – I tend to the Mediterranean type setting. Look, it’s what I was surrounded with growing up. If I say “Wall” in my mind it’s a stone wall, a little cracked, with plants growing in the cracks. It was a shock to me to see Elis Peters mysteries on TV because they had so much wood where I expected stone. Other people’s preference varies. My futures tend to have gritty sides of town and people who live by manual labor, because I like cities, and I like the working class part of cities, not just the scenic for tourist parts.

So, when a story starts circling, first I determine if I love it enough to stay with it till the end. And then… And then I start trying to figure out accommodations and ways we can live together. “No, I’m not writing a hard science fiction story about the moon landings. I’d have to study it for three years to get good enough to fool the experts. So… we’ll set it in an alternate world. There will be… humans on the moon. And…”

Sometimes in the middle of that, as in A Few Good Men, a character emerges from the swamp of my fervid mind, and is definite and strong enough to feel like “someone else” and to start dictating. And in this case, Lucius is very definite that he knows his story and why am I dawdling. Then the trick is to write just enough to keep him going, but not enough to overrun what I know I need to research, fix and plot.

And that is what I’m doing this week. (Which explains the lame but rather long post.)

And don’t send the men in white coats. I’m too busy writing. Besides, Lucius is one bad dude, and I can TOO send him to deal with them. See if I can’t. Then he’ll leave me alone long enough to figure out the secondary inciting incident in the story……

*If It’s Wednesday, this must be crossposted at Mad Genius Club*

Before I start explaining how cons have changed for me (and I for them) over the last several years, I’d like to tell you about what happened when my older son told a college friend about cons and going to cons and how attending these cons was a family affair. I don’t know how Robert said it. I first sold when he was three and he grew up in the business, so to him a lot of these things are “how life happens.” But after a while his friend asked, “So, these cons your family pulls – on whom do you pull them and have you ever been arrested?” Which of course is when Robert said “What? No.”

For those similarly unenlightened, by cons I mean conventions, specifically science fiction conventions. (I’ve also attended Romance, Mystery and Writers conventions which are very different. I had to explain to my son, after his G_d is a pantser post that sf cons are NOT writing cons as such, it’s just where our people gather.)

I am somewhat of an aberration for an American sf/f writer. Most of them seem to have come up through fandom and started attending cons either in diapers or as soon as they could get away from their parents, if they had the infelicity of being born to a non sf family.

Me, I didn’t know organized fandom existed. It didn’t in Portugal when I was growing up – though it might now, as a lot of other countries have fandoms in imitation of the US. (Though knowing Portugal, and I reallly DO say this with the deepest possible affection, as it’s one of the traits I can’t expunge from my character, I can confidently say it is at best a SEMI-organized fandom.) In a country that prizes its place in world lit’chature SF was a shameful habit, somewhat less objectionable than heroine, but more shameful than pot, and we addicts would gather in the grey light of morn outside bookstores on the days when a popular release from the single SF imprint – Argonauta – brought out a popular writer, so we could snag one of the books of the – limited, no reprints – print run. We rummaged hotel trash bins for books discarded by American tourists. Strung out and shaking with our dreadful need, we’d sometimes plunge into the backs of closets of our friends parents to find a pittiful half dozen Simaks or Heinleins hidden away beneath the porn. (You only think I’m joking.)

So the idea that I could gather with like addicts, in the bright light of day – or at least of hotel conference rooms – and discuss the intricacies of our shameful vice took a while to penetrate my admittedly thick skull. I started reading Locus sometime in the late eighties, to put faces to the names I read, but it took much longer than that for me to even look at the con listings. I THINK I attended a Mile Hi Con when all I’d sold were a couple of short stories. I THINK, but I’m not sure. The first major con I attended was World Fantasy after I sold my novel, and I went there to shop for an agent. (Got him, too, for my sins.)

For the next few years we attended both World Fantasy and World Con. World Con was daunting. No one had ever heard of me, I had no fans to meet and because the editors were busy with much bigger names – and fans – I got no business done. World Fantasy, OTOH, which is a business con in fannish trappings, allowed me to talk to editors and agents, and I almost always “did enough business” there to pay for my trip and more. So we attended WF for … seven years, I think, and World con sporadically.

I can’t mark when World Fantasy stopped paying off, but I’d say somewhere around 07? Part of this was because my career had taken a sharp turn away from the more literary fantasy and towards the more popular kinds. The other part was that WF had taken an even more so turn the other way (It was always a bit on the literary side.) I was mostly writing spec fic for Baen, which wasn’t even at WF.

So we stopped attending that too, except for last year, when we had business in Ohio at that time anyway. Of course we attended Denvention World con, though, because well… it’s in our backyard. At the time I was surprised at how different the con experience was for a mid list writer than for a raw newbie.

I still didn’t do business with editors/agents in the sense of getting work/assignments, but then to be honest, I was booked up to my hair roots, so that wasn’t even a consideration. OTOH I got to see old friends and people I’d lost touch with and go to dinner with other pros, and discuss what was going on. It was fun and interesting. Also, I met a LOT of fans. People who’d come from across the country or across the world, clutching my books to be signed. (Well, many of them probably packed them, but you know what I mean.) And I wondered if I needed to do more worldcons, just for the fans.

After this year’s world con, that question is still up in the air. I didn’t have the lines I had at Denvention, partly – I think – because I was a late addition to the program. Judging by the people approaching me in hallways and saying “I wish–” a lot of people didn’t know I’d been there. But I was accosted every ten paces in the hallway by fans, some of which were raving. (Mostly about Darkship Thieves.) Between that and running into old friends we hadn’t seen in a LONG time, it took us three tries to get through the art show (which I always love to look at even when I can’t afford it) and we never did make it through the huckster’s alley. (I always confuse this with hustler’s alley, which of course would make cons FAR MORE exciting.) On the sad side, some of the fans I know from my conference and wanted to see – like Chris French – I only got to drive by hug (to compensate, I’ll need to have him in A Few Good Men).

So… I still don’t know if Worldcon is worth the travel and the expense. I should point out that I don’t “like” cons. Oh, I love meeting fans. And I love talking to my colleagues. The problem is that instead of having an immune system, I have a velcro layer. Anything ANYONE brings to a con, I catch. (And if you saw me throwing up into a trash can at Reno airport at six am, no it wasn’t because I’d drunk too much. I had a glass of wine and a sip of Port ten hours earlier at the Baen party. It seems to be a stomach bug.) This means that a weekend con will in fact cost me three to four weeks. And you guys know I really like to write, and I’m impatient of ANYTHING that slows me down.

The other part of this is that I work seven days a week. I usually take my birthday and New Years off (and sometimes half of Christmas. Most of the time all of it.) We eat out at Thanksgiving, so I can come home to work afterwards (and work before.) I DESPERATELY need a vacation, most of the time, and don’t get it. Now, cons are like a vacation tease. The fans are in vacation mode, and I feel like I should be, only… of course, it’s work for me. I’m “on” all the time. (The exception to this was the Discworldcon before last, where I DID go as a fan and have a blast.)

Liberty con, in Chattanooga TN is my (adopted) home con because it’s more relaxing than the others. They bill themselves as the World’s largest family reunion – and they are. And frankly, I get to see most of my core fandom there. When I can afford it, I also do Constellation where I see the other half of my core fandom. I am booked for Fencon this year, and if I continue going to Dallas around that time of year, (for other reasons) I’ll continue doing it.

As for the big cons… I don’t know. All my peers tell me I need to do Comicon, but I’m afraid it will be like my early exposure to worldcon. I’ll just get lost. I keep meaning to do Dragoncon and will probably try next year.

I don’t want to be one of those writers no one ever sees, and frankly rubbing elbows with my colleagues and seeing my fans helps keep me human. With things moving in a more indie direction for all of us, knowing the fans are out there, eagerly waiting REALLY helps. And with things moving in a more indie direction for all of us the comparing of experiences with other pros ALSO helps. (I found for instance that nine out of ten pros are following The Business Rusch VERY closely indeed.)

As far as promotion and networking, though, which used to be the really important things in cons, I’m not sure how much it helps. My friend Kate Paulk has found these useful for getting word of mouth going on her books, but my friend Kate Paulk lives in the North East, which means there’s a largish con every weekend over summer, and half a dozen during the week. For me … I have two or three mediumish cons a year that I can make I to without braving the dreaded airline juggernaut (Our flights were fine and on time this time, btw.), without breaking the bank, and without taking way too long out of my schedule.

Most networking and promo I do online. So…

I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted as it goes. Meanwhile something I’ve decided to do is print the slightly bigger bookmarks – rack cards, actually – so I can sign them when people can’t fly with all their books (like us. We fly with only carry on, of course, if we can help it.) Also so I have something to sign for “ebooks.” And I think I’ll do chapbooks with some of my indie collections/novellas (no, not yet, but there WILL be some) which I can sell at cons for 99c, not so much as a money-making thing but as a “start the word of mouth rolling” move.

And then I’ll report back on these efforts….

Of course, we know that Pratchett was talking about witches when he said they’re the one who watch and the one who does.

At the same time he was, of course, also talking about writers, because I don’t know if he’s ever met a witch as they exist in his universe, but I know he lives full time in the mind of a writer.

The mind of a writer is a terrible place to live. Mostly, because you can never live something fully. You can never immerse yourself in the moment. Worse, you go through life suspecting yourself of insincerity. How can you suspect yourself of insincerity? Easy. Say, your beloved grandmother just died and you’re plunged into darkest grief (actually started to understand the mourning clothes thing, since any bright colors made me feel distraught.) At the same time, you notice yourself observing yourself grieving. And making notes.

It’s hard not to despise yourself in those circumstances, but I have it on good authority that every writer does this. Or at least every writer that’s even halfway as obsessive as I am.

This intrudes on every moment of life. I believe when giving birth I lectured everyone on the fact that pain was essential in the process of attaching to your child.

It also intrudes – sigh – on winning awards. It felt unreal and strange. I was the one who would be receiving the Prometheus but at the same time I was the kid growing up in Portugal, who knew she could never be a writer, much less win an award.

What this does, however, is also give you a sense for… the dignity of the occasion. I’ve posted here before about what I chose to wear. And part of it absolutely was “well, it’s my chance to dress up” but the other part was more than that. I’ve seen Heinlein give speeches when he was the guest of honor here and there. I’ve listened to them as it’s my only chance to hear the man, barring time-travel.

Now, I haven’t gone so completely around the bend delusional that I think that I am Heinlein. But I do think that my kids or grandkids, or even perhaps great grandkids might listen to this speech someday. You wouldn’t want them to think I was a slob.

Beyond that, there is … how do I put this? What you owe the award itself. I am a winner, in a chain of winners. Yes, it is a Libertarian award, which means it’s amazing no one has shown up to receive it naked. But in the same sense you dress up to attend someone else’s wedding (and for a given meaning of dress up, depending on the groom and bride. New jeans might be dressing up) not because you couldn’t attend it as well in your pajamas, but because you owe it to them and their occasion to look nice and like it’s a special moment – I felt like I owed it to all past winners and all future winners to translate into my attire how important the occasion was to me.

And now, I look at the pictures and I think “Gosh, that’s not me receiving that award. That’s clearly someone important.” So, there is that. I think my speech was incoherent, as I forgot half of it. I might have said that it was a bad thing to legislate equality, instead of specifying that equality before the law was fine – it’s equality of results that’s bad to enforce. BUT at least I looked the part and future people won’t know how scared I was.

　

More on the convention and the friends I got to see again for first time in years later. For now, I’ve got to go and clean the house which is drowned in cat hair and finish painting the fence (no, no neighborhood kids want to pay to do it. They’ve all read Tom Sawyer.)

And that’s the other part of being a writer. Reading Grumbles From The Grave I kept gritting my teeth and going “Okay, then. WHY was he building these water features, instead of writing another book? Didn’t he know he had limited time?”

But of course it is doing these other things that feeds the writing. If you sealed us in a chamber that took care of al our physical necessities and made us write, we’d soon stop, or go insane.

After all, my characters clean house, change litter boxes and paint fences too.

And I’ll be taking notes.

As you’re reading this, I’m not here. I am still here (of course) as I write it on the 18^th of August. I have packed and I think this time I haven’t forgotten anything. (In the past I’ve managed to fly without, in order of direness: glasses, nightshirt, clean underwear, makeup and jewelry. Not all of those at the same time, but one per trip.)

I debated taking a laptop with me, but given how short our trip is (we’re only there two full days: Friday and Saturday and back again very early in the morning on Sunday) and that we’re flying only with carry-on (yes, we do learn) a laptop becomes cumbersome. I’m taking a notebook, (no, the paper kind) and have downloaded the stuff I need to read for the next book.

So, you’ll have to make do without me until late on Sunday, when I’ll post something to tell you I landed back safely.

If you’re at World con come to the Prometheus Award ceremony on Friday at one. I can’t promise the speech will be worth listening to (I’m still working on it. It’s on the idea that the future is free [with the purchase of another future!]) but I’m wearing a decolete black dress with a slit skirt. (I couldn’t find the black and silver. Sigh.) And I have truly wonderful black lace stockings. I’ll be sure to flash them. (What do you mean vapid? I aspire to vapid, most of the time.) So, there’s that at least.

I’ll report back on Sunday evening.

The most difficult writing question I was ever asked was at a party at Romance Writers of America annual meeting, three years ago.

Like that, out of the blue and without anesthesia, a fellow writer turns to me and asks, “So, are you a plotter or a pantser?” There was a small ring of people nearby, listening. And I froze badly.

Finally I managed to blurt the truth which was “Yes.” And when people proceeded to tell me that was impossible (ah!) other people said “I think that’s more common than people admit.”

To make things clear, though, if the plotters and the pantsers were enemy clans, I’d stand and fight with the plotters (except I never would because my friend Kate is on the other side, and frankly that’s one scary woman to fight with.)

I’d stand with the plotters, because I need the structure and the support. Think of my plotting as a map, but not on a GPS or at least not on a GPS that’s been updated in the last three years. Or perhaps it’s a map of Portuguese roads, where often a beautiful unconcern prevails about the common details of road turns and intersections. After all, a road with fewer, larger intersections looks better on the map, and surely you’re not such a ninny that you won’t realize you can get to the larger cross street by taking that alley over there, so tight that the mirrors of your car will scrape the walls….

I’d still need a map to get anywhere – children, I need a map to find my way around my living room, such my sense of direction – but you can’t trust it when you come to the fine work.

So I start writing with something like twenty to fifty pages outline (these days, usually, handwritten, but when I needed to send in detailed outlines to sell, they used to get typed up.)

And then I take that outline and pin it up somewhere, take one of my legal notepads (I buy a package of this per month or so. If I amount to anything, when I die, I wish my biographer good luck. Into these goes everything and anything from plot notes, to notes about character appearance, to phone numbers of whoever I needed to talk to while writing. Sometimes finding someone’s phone number involves going “So, what was I writing, at that time?”) ) and plot more finely and usually for the next ten chapters.

Say the first movement of the novel is “Nell sets off on her ship to the lands beyond the sea” (I’d like to insert a disclaimer that this character, these lands and this ship exist only for the purpose of the example. Please don’t get attached to them and demand I write them!)

In my head, it might have been clear that the book started before Nell went off. I need to have the reason she’s pushed off her native land, wherever that is. Say a messenger comes and tells her that her younger brother, Giles is about to be hanged for piracy. She must go free him.

So in the notebook, the chapters get outlined in bullet points, somewhat like this:

1 – Nell receives messenger telling her that Giles is about to be hanged for piracy in the distant and terrible city of Leoniba, where her older brother also met his end.

2- Nell’s decision to go rescue Giles, and argument with Mira who does not want to be left in charge of the house – and who might wish Giles dead so she can remarry.

3 – Convincing Michael to captain her ship. He’s none too sure she should leave the trading house in Mira’s hands and besides he’s not sure he wants a woman on board giving orders.

4 – Nell uses Michael’s secret to blackmail him into captaining her ship.

As I write them, sometimes the chapters mutate slightly, still, or have “kittens.” Say 2– Nell might see a man leaving Mira’s chambers and run after him to find out who he is. He might be Michael’s brother Steven, which then gets used in chapter 4.

By the time I’m ten chapters in, I usually need to write the next series of chapter bullet points. By then I’ve come across an intersection that wasn’t in that general and imprecise map, or I have a wild hankering to go see if there’s a castle beyond that hill on the side – metaphorically speaking. The plot has deviated enough from the written one that more chapters might be needed to keep the story on course, generally speaking.

It is very rare – though it has happened a few times – that the story deviates so much that I end up somewhere different than where I set out to be and/or that I don’t hit the major plot points I planned along the way.

On the other hand I’ve never written anything that doesn’t deviate and take excursions of brief to medium duration. Or that a character meant to be a villain isn’t after all a very flawed hero. (Or vice versa.) Mira, for instance, might have been trying to rescue her husband herself, intends to set off on a ship captained by Steve, and doesn’t want to manage the house while Nell is gone. That’s all right. It means an extra dramatic confrontation at the end, and the women fighting side by side to rescue Giles, but the part of the plotline that says “They fight the bad guys” is still the same.

You’re probably wondering why I do this the most complicated way possible. Well… there are two reasons. The first one is that if I don’t plot at all, with my attention span, I tend to go haring off over every hint, clue and bit of interest that drops into the soup.

Nell would see someone come out of Mira’s chambers, the someone would go by a jeweler. Nell would go into the jewelers and find the diamond that belonged to her grandmother. Talking to the jeweler she’d find the diamond is actually the twin of her grandmothers. It has magical properties and was given to her great aunt, who–

Even if I get back to the story ten chapters later (and I probably would because I’d have in my head the story is Nell rescues her brother) for the first ten chapters, this would have been a book about magical diamonds. By the time I snap back to ships and rescuing brothers, the reader is likely to get whiplash or a broken neck.

On the other hand, if all I have is the very general outline, which does keep me on track, I have trouble imagining the story in enough detail to be interesting. I don’t know how to explain this, but my first approach to a story is always as though I’m floating above it. I need to pull myself close enough to even see what’s going on, and then I can decide where to drop in and which alleys to describe, which cobblestones to walk, etc. If I try to write directly from the general outline, you get something like “Nell walked down to the wharf and hailed the first ship she came to. “Hey,” she said. “I want to sail to Leowhatever where my brother is going to be hanged for being a pirate.” It won’t even read like an outline. It will read like insanity.

Except, since my subconscious has fail safe mechanisms to keep me from being terminally stupid, what ends up happening is that I actually can’t write at all. I stare at the general plot and at the keyboard for days on end. (This sometimes happens when I try to do it. Why do I try to do it? Because I’m terminally stupid. Or can’t find a legal notepad.) I moan, yell, sob, and make all my friends consider offing me rather than putting up with my nonsense. And then I get a legal notepad and plot in bullet points.

So, have I always plotted this way? No. Only since about Draw One In The Dark.

The problem is that, before that, I had the general outline, then sort of forced myself to write from that, then went back and ruthlessly uprooted all deviations and side-excursions.

I’ve told people often enough that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that each of my first three books was actually twice the size it ended up. (For Ill Met probably three times.)

In Draw One In The Dark I plotted via notebook, but still things fell in that weren’t in either outline. And when I was revising I came to the scene with the three guys in the car and considered cutting it out. And then I made a decision to leave it in. It doesn’t advance plot, but it advances character development. Best decision I ever made. I get more fan mail on that scene than on all the rest of the book. Over time, I’ve come realize the scene is essential for character development, I just couldn’t see that in the overarching outline.

And that’s why I decided, since then, to allow things to fall in.

However, the plotting soup is a scary thing. I’m forever in danger of ending up with ten first chapters about diamonds in a book about ships. Hence, I still need the general outline to keep me on track as to where I’m going, why, and which plot points need attention and which can be downplayed.

This later mistake of throwing in everything that crosses your mind is a beginner thing (Guilty as charged with the thing called Mirrorplay, aka the doorstop, which will eventually be a six or so book series.) The problem with it is that you end up dragging the reader in odd directions, until the reader loses all interest. (The other problem is that the book becomes six hundred and fifty five thousand words long, and, in printed form, can be used to insulate a mansion with forty bedrooms.)

My mother used to make a “Whatever” stew, into which she threw whatever leftover meat she had around, whatever veggies were in danger of going bad, and whichever condiments struck her fancy. Note she didn’t throw in grass, a vase of flowers and some fur from the cat just because they were around.

So I let the plotting soup in only with a baster and in controlled circumstances. And generally Nell does get there and rescue her brother.

Will it work for you? Who knows? Worth a try if nothing else does. But whichever way you find to both unlock the subconscious and not let yourself get drowned in the plotting soup, is good.

Just hold on fast to the plotting line, and you’ll come to your destination by and by.

Yes, I’m doing a series of craft and “stupid things writers do to themselves” posts. Partly because as I am packing and getting ready to go to World Con I’m not reading as many field blogs as I should. Partly because for the last week I’ve been running into people who are – I think – doing things I once did. (Or tried to do, like the idiot high expectations game that wouldn’t allow me to write at all.)

I’ve often say that I’ve made every possible mistake in learning to write, and actually came up with one or two that should be impossible, and I swear that’s true. But this one is one that SHOULD be impossible, particularly for people who’ve read a lot, but that I’ve seen practically every one of my fledgelings make – particularly those that fall into the category “So sharp you cut yourself, uh?” And yeah, I managed to make it too, though I have no explanation for that.

Imagine you are reading a story that starts like this Myol strapped the deolins to the kzart and said “It’s a fine day to parralt.”

If you’re me, you’re probably going to read another two or three sentences, right? I mean, that first sentence doesn’t exactly give you anything, but it might make your eyebrows go up and you go “Well, now…”

But what if the other three sentences or four, or the first three pages are exactly the same? Oh, wait, someone named Kyar will join Myol, and they discuss the coming parralt at length, but in the end you still have no clue what this parralt has. For that matter you don’t know if Myol and Kyar are boys, girls, yes, or fish. You have no clue if the deolins are lasers, swords, horses or ribbons. And you truly have no idea what a kzart is and if animated or not.

At this point, if this is a writer you know and who has delivered for you in the past, you MIGHT keep reading. Particularly if you know this writer is known for high fantasy, say. Or science fiction. BUT even with a writer you know, by page three you’re working way too hard for the story to be enjoyable.

Why you say?

Well, sweet child’ o’ mine, because I know in your head Myol is a young warrior, who is strapping his (specialized) sabers to his tribal belt and saying “It’s a fine day to carry a complex message that could mean war or peace to my mother’s tribe.” BUT YOUR POOR READER WAS DROPPED HEAD FIRST INTO A WORLD WHERE HE’S CAREFULLY KEPT DEAF AND BLIND.

And if at this point you’re feeling very smug and going “Well, I don’t use weird names for things, so I don’t have that problem, let me enlighten you, sonny (or daughtry :) ) It is not only possible but quite easy to make the exact same mistake without using made up words. (And for your information, no, I don’t recommend made up words. Ever. Don’t call a rabbit a schmerp, don’t call a saber a deolin and don’t call yourself Sherley Unless that’s your name or pen name.)

Take a story submitted by someone who should know better to my writers’ group about ten years ago. It went something like this:

Nyopar came running up the verdant hill and at the top looked at the city below.

And it went on. For FIVE pages. At the end of the five pages, you didn’t know if Nyopar was male, female, yes or cabbage. You had no clue if he/she/it had the normal humanoid body shape. And you had no clue if this city was a medieval keep or a splendorous future dome city. To give the writer her due, we DID know the hill was green, that Nyopar could run, and that there was a city presumably (though not for sure) of his/her/its kind there.

We read it because we had to, and by the time on page six we found out that Nyopar was male, that the city was a keep, and that we were dealing with high fantasy, most of us had already tried to make up surroundings for the poor … turns out guy, so that most of us got whiplash being wrenched into the place the writer wanted us.

I know, I know, you’re thinking “Golly, that sounds like it would be hard to do.” Yes, it does. Guess what, it’s not. In me, and in the writers I’ve mentored, it tends to be the mistake of people who’ve created their world SO vividly and who can see everything SO clearly that they never realize what they’re doing to the reader. It also tends to be one of the last “beginner mistakes.” By this I mean, your structure, plot, character, etc. are all already well above average. You’re just playing silly buggers with the reader. Once you stop doing that, you’ll probably be “there” writing level wise – a professional who can spin a tale everyone wants to read.

Most of the time I wasn’t QUITE as bad as that, I’ll confess, but I also didn’t remember I had readers. (And as a consequence, I didn’t, most of the time.) I just threw things at the page in the order that seemed logical to me, and left the poor reader to lope behind or not as he or she could.

To let you know how LATE in my development this happened, I had already published three short stories (got lucky on those and had the necessary info) and I’d written eight novels. I’d also been two levels of finalist on the Writers Of The Future Contest. And then one day, blindingly, I realized “someone will read this, or at least that’s why I’m writing it. Why don’t I make it EASY for them to do so?”

In my case and in a lot of others it is tempting to say that Heinlein has a lot to answer for, but that is not true. Yes, Heinlein “Heinleined” the information in without vast infodumps. And yes, various how-to-writers have talked about this. And you want to be able to do this, because you’re that smart, that cool, that…

Okay. IF like me that’s where you got this, go and read the first ten pages of Heinlein books. Juveniles probably work best (I don’t know how careful he was in the later books) but Friday is a thing of beauty for this. Take a notebook with you. Note down every time he gives you information. Either do it now, or do it after you finish reading this. But do it.

Yes, Friday, for instance, starts with her coming out of a capsule and killing someone. BUT he gives you information EVERY STEP OF THE WAY about when and where it is, what she is, and what the world is like. Look, even her reaction – seemingly spontaneous – to killing someone tells you she’s a professional in a related line to contract killing.

However, I will note that even with Heinlein and Friday, and even though he DOES give clues before that, I got to the rape page convinced the main character was a male. And then I went “Whoa, Nelly.” and got whiplash when they call her Miss Friday. That is an example of leading the reader into error unwittingly – a specialized one. If you are writing someone of a different gender (I only started writing female characters around the time I figured this out. Up till then all my main characters were male. No, it had nothing to do with patriarchal oppression. I like male heads better, possibly because I’ve observed men more closely. Sue me.) You really need to hit the reader over the head with a clue bat. I had people NOT get it, even when I came outright and said “I was a young boy.” No, seriously. You need like three “clue bat wit’ nails in it moments in the first page. Then hope your reader paid attention.

However, listen to me, because I don’t have time to tell you this three times: if you’re not capable for either reason of craft or of plot to work all that in SUBTLY into the first three pages, then it’s best to give as much information to your reader as you can, BLUNTLY. Save the subtlety for another time, but tell them where they are, in whose head they are, what type of story this is, and what the problem is.

And don’t bridle on my saying you might not be able to do it, craft wise. Look, when Heinlein wrote Friday he’d written how many books? In some of them he was fairly blunt about positioning you in time and space and giving you the problem.

I still have times when I’m starting a novel or a short story and can’t figure out how to do it subtly or want to get you there as fast as possible. Sometimes I later go back and fix the opening, but sometimes I let it be. (Yes, I’ll give examples and when I wrote them below.)

For now, I want you to remember this, when you’re writing a first page of a story. Your reader was just dropped dumb, deaf and blind into the body of your character. (Even if this is not first person.) In sf/f he has no idea WHAT that character is, and even in Romance or Mystery, he’s clueless on gender, historical time period and location. That’s because he was just dropped head first, into your world.

If you want the reader to stay, give him clues as quickly and painlessly as you can manage. Yes, in books your reader will have a cover and cover copy, and maybe title. But, and this makes it more imperative in the new world of publishing, this is not always true in either short stories or ebooks. And at any rate you should never, ever ever – if going traditional – count on your publisher cluing your reader properly. Someday, at a con, buy me a drink and I’ll tell you how that can go DISASTROUSLY wrong.

In fact, if you KNOW you’ve mastered the craft almost to perfection, but your snippets or self-published ebooks are getting no bites at all and your friends find excuses (“but I really have to strap my deolins tonight!”) not to read your stuff, this is probably the mistake you’re making. Most laymen will not be able to tell you what the problem is, only that “I didn’t finish” or “I couldn’t get into it.” A pro can, but most of us try to avoid reading people’s manuscripts unless the people are close friends or are holding our cats hostage [Don’t get ideas. It would be the Ransom of Red Chief. Except with Euclid. He wouldn’t realize anyone was holding him anything. Most of the time he thinks he’s a teapot.)

So, pull out your stuff, and look it over. In the first paragraph – as those of us who were journalism trained know – you must tell us who, what, when and possibly why.

You must not tell us TOO MUCH information, mind. We don’t need to know your character chipped her tooth at five, unless of course, that’s integral to the action later and you want to open with that for whatever reason (Write fiction for dentists much?) The first paragraph needs very little beyond “male female, yes, or cabbage?” “Age?” “General temporal location – past, present, future or alternate.” and “problem”.

The rest can trickle in over the next three pages, and you can work at making it sound natural. And keep the infodumps and/or clues no longer than a sentence at a time, if you can. Or at least do it with style.

Remember to emphasize and/or hang a flag (not literally! I mean do it in a way that calls attention to it!) on the most startling details. Which means if your name there on the page is Mary Hadalittlelamb and your main character is Mario, you’d best make d*mn double sure that people know his gender. And having him think he needs to shave might not do it. (Hey, us Mediterranean women of a certain age use all sorts of depilatory products. Else, we’d be like Helen of Troy at fifty: blousy, grey haired, with a little beard.) It also means if your character is a walking cabbage, you’d best make sure we know he has issues with his inner leaves and his leg-stalks aren’t doing so well. Because the default in our heads is the same thing as when you sign on at one of those blogs that have generic “male” or “female” shapes for icons. The reader sees one of those, usually in the author’s gender. Sometimes in their own gender (which the author controls even less.)

Yes, it takes effort and at first will take you a lot of revision, but believe it or not it will become second nature. I managed to do some of these more or less by accident when I was learning. The opening to Thirst, below, is one of these though the first page is mood setting, and the second gives you the info. Sort of. There’s info in the first paragraph, but not he one you’d expect. Then I spent years doing them on purpose. Now it more or less happens but only because you can get used to ANYTHING, just about and trained into anything so it becomes second nature.

See the examples below, then go and look at your first two pages of any story. The beats should be like this, at least for a short story: First paragraph – species, gender, general setting (past, future, present? For bonus points, city, country or wilderness.) Second paragraph – if not first. This is a “by” not a “not until” – problem facing character. This might not be the main problem of the story but it should be enough to keep the reader reading. Third paragraph, if not earlier, what type of story is this? First page, if it’s a short story, you should know what the main problem of the story will be, or at least have a clue. By page three your character should have a past, even if it’s just “I wasn’t born in space. I was born in Iowa. I only work in space.” (Yes, I love that line, and of course, looking at the reboot now, it was wrong. ) Born on the first page syndrome makes your character less human (or cabbagy, natch) and therefore less interesting.

For a novel, you have slightly longer to introduce the character’s past. You can for instance hint he had an unhappy childhood, but we don’t find out details till page 300. (Or in the musketeer mysteries case, book five, where I discovered why Athos was so tightly wound. If you read the series, look up the chess set scene with his father.) BUT we still must know up front if he’s vegetable, mineral or animal.

It helps to ask yourself questions, like – you’re in the character’s head. Now look down, what are you wearing? Look around. Where are you standing? And what is your problem?

Get that in, and your reader might still hate the story (or you) but he/she/it/cabbage won’t be deaf and blind.

Okay, here are some examples, now, so you know what I’m talking about.

Thirst, 1991. This one is imperfect. I had no clue what I was doing, so there is almost a page of “mood setting” where I make the reader work MUCH too hard for the info. It has some info, but not the obvious. It’s like dropping someone into a new world and telling them how great the food is, before they know if they have a mouth.

It opens like this: Sometimes I wake up in the evening and think them here, immaterial wisps of dream in the cold twilight air, and yet undeniably themselves: the Emperor and the boy he loved, etched by time into heroic figures without flaw.

The Emperor wears his purple, and the boy stands in one of those sweet, head-drooping postures immortalized in his countless statues.

It is not until the end of that page that, apparently tired of playing games, I decide to drop in all the info. It’s like I’ve been holding the ball above my head and refusing to play, and now unbend and go “oh, fine.”

Hylas is my name, or was my name, when I was a mortal among mortals, a living, breathing being in the sun’s embrace. A Greek name for a Roman boy born in the Suburra, raised in that maze of smelly, noisy streets that was the pulsing heart of Rome.

Ideal? No. But good enough to be my first sale.

Then Super Lamb Banana from 2003 (I need to file my short stories in a rational manner. I’m having trouble finding stuff.)

 

John Lennon thought he was going to be mugged.

 

And it shouldn’t happen here. He was at Liverpool docks where the tourists were as thick on the ground as muck in a back alley. He thought he’d be safer than near his rent-subsidized flat. But these days there was nowhere safe.

And then there’s last week, the opening of (in my defense) a novel. As you see, I’m still enamored of mood-setting paragraphs, but at least these days I tell you all the info by paragraph three. (Oh, you’re NOT going to count one line as a third paragraph are you? Fine, then. Paragraph four. Gee.)

The world celebrates great prison breaks. The French territories still commemorate the day in which the dreaded Bastille was burst open by the righteous fury of the peasantry and disgorged into the light of day the innocent, the aggrieved, the tortured and the oppressed.

They forget that every time a prison is opened, it also disgorges, amid the righteous and innocent, the con artists, the rapists, the murderers and the monsters.

Monsters like me.

My name is Lucius Dante Maximilian Keeva, Luce to my friends, though I killed the last one of those fourteen years ago.

Now go and read your own beginnings and figure out how hard you’re making the reader work to remove the ear plugs and blindfold!

*Crossposted at Mad Genius Club*

The kindle screen saver picture of James Joyce shows him sitting, his forehead on his hand and an expression of intense concentration/pain on his face.

Every time my husband or I hit that screen saver we say “I suffer for my art.” This is churlish of course, since Joyce is dead and can’t defend himself, and also since the idea that a writer was a “tormented soul” was part and parcel of the myths of the time.

But what goads us is that this myth is still there, as are a lot of others. And those myths are not only annoying when you encounter them applied to you, but they make many young writers think that writing is like stew: all flavoring and smell.

Instead of sitting their behinds at the office chair and setting fingers to keyboard, a lot of writers think they have to go out and “suffer.” This usually – humans being humans! – translates not so much into suffering as into the appearance of suffering. One of my favorite books as a kid as Tom Bailey, Story of a bad boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. In one chapter he describes the time he spent being “an unfortunate being.” This was while he was a teen boy and having much fun at “being in unrequited love.” The chapter closes with “Never have I been so happy as when I was an unfortunate being.”

When I read it, I was playing the same sort of game – sonnets my dears, I wrote something like 250 to a blond, green-eyed gentleman. Foolishness and mumming, but it made me feel grown up and important and suffering for love. That passage in the book should have annoyed me, but instead it reassured me that I was “normal” – always a difficult assurance to come by.

Most of the young writers – and other artists – who suffer for their art do the same sort of thing. They’ll take some menial work, but not too strenuous, and spend their free time – instead of writing – sitting at a café, wearing a melancholy expression and aching, aching I tell you, with unexpressed genius.

This is much easier than aching with expressed genius, which actually requires one to work one’s butt off and which always allows one to fall short of the greatness we perceive within ourselves.

So, why do I care? If they’re having fun and not hurting anyone?

I shouldn’t care. They really aren’t hurting anyone else, beyond making half the real estate agents who show us homes and know I’m a writer say something like “You’ll love this house, it has this room where the view of the mountains will just inspire you.” Which of course, would be very useful if I wrote poems about mountains, instead of workaday novels about flawed human beings. Okay, I concede there probably are flawed human beings all over those mountains, but it would take a really powerful telescope to find them, and the gentleman across the alley who paints naked in the room facing mine (no, don’t ask. WHY would you ask?) with the lights on in the early morning dark, is likely to think I’m using the telescope on OTHER things. It also makes strangers say kindly things like “I imagine how difficult it must be to suffer for your art.” (Somehow “carpal tunnel IS terrible” doesn’t seem to be the expected answer.)

But overall the person it hurts is the young writer himself.

Yes, I know that’s none of my business. Hurting others is evil, hurting yourself is simply stupid.

But I’ve seen too many – usually extremely talented – young writers become older writers who don’t write, though they talk about writing and suffer, suffer for their art.

The problem is by the time they reach middle age, the suffering has become real. Their entirely lives, they’ve defined themselves as writers. They often have taken jobs of little account or refused to pursue extensive education because they must “save time for writing.” Often they even have created worlds and characters that they want to write.

But by that time, they’ve created such and… expectancy of art, of how great their book will be, of everything it will incorporate, that writing – actual writing that involves putting words to paper – becomes impossible. Or at least highly improbable. Because if every sentence you put down doesn’t throb with inexpressible genius, then how do you justify all the years you spent, suffering for your art?

So you block yourself before you start, and your own expectations make your ambition moot. And what could have been several pleasant, entertaining and perhaps, even, in the end, enlightening books, die in the vine. Oh, and the “author” might go to his grave considered a great unacknowledged genius by all his family and his two friends, but in fact, even if he were a genius, he never did anything with it. Oh, and he’s added to the whole myth that the really good ones never write.

If you or someone you know, young and old are in that trap, here’s how to find the way back (I fell into that trap fortunately only between fourteen and twenty two, when my husband pushed me out of it, more or less unwittingly.)

1 – what my husband, an amateur musician, told me within a week of marriage. “Real writers write every day” was the beginning of my way out of the trap. Partly because – his being from another artistic tradition, one in which practice is important – he made me realize how much of anything is just habit and practice. How could I expect to write perfectly if I hadn’t made it an habit? If I hadn’t trained to?

2- Come to terms with the fact nothing will be as good on paper as it is in your head. This happens to every single one of us. You do the best you can at that time, and you trust your craft to improve with practice. (Dean Wesley Smith calls this “trusting the process.” I’m not a very trusting woman and this is almost impossible to me, but it DOES work. I’ve seen it. For me, it’s almost the only things that works.)

　

3- Forget writing one book that will live forever. Oh, it might happen. But IF it does happen it’s not because you sat down and ached with unexpressed genius and distilled from your emotions a book that is, to paraphrase my friend Alan Lickiss “a metaphor for the human existence.” Expecting this of any one book is sort of like if you could design your kid and you wanted him to have every talent and virtue that humans ever had. You’d end up childless. (um… nice short story idea.) Instead, work at writing several books that are worth reading. Preferably, though I understand this is MY personal preference, that are worth reading with little effort and that amuse, entertain, make the reader cry or worry or thing. You might get lucky and your entire output in aggregate might be a work of staggering genius that changes the world. Or you might write your tenth, or twentieth book, and find you finally produced that work of genius you wanted to create all along. Or you might simply make a living from this, and make a few people happy for a while. All of those are worthy outcomes, and you’ll never get any of them unless you write.

4 – Forget suffering for your art. There is enough suffering in the normal human life: making enough money to survive; living up to your commitments to spouse, children, even pets; the aches of advancing age; the frustration of never being as good as you want to be. It is part of being human that we can imagine perfection, but none of us can achieve it. The course of true love never runs straight, and that’s not just romantic love, but the relationship with your parents, for instance. How tangled is that? If you say not at all it’s because you’re not looking with open eyes. And that’s part of the problem. If you’re concentrating on suffering for your art, you’re not paying attention to the suffering inherent in being human. All those people who live normal every day lives? You’re seeing them as things, as stereotypes. This is the worst thing you could believe when you set out to create worlds that live.

5- Forget writing what you know. Or don’t. I have a fan who is a long-distance trucker, and reading his blog about his profession was fascinating. I remember a series of mysteries about a woman working construction. Again, it was fascinating because there’s so much about that trade I don’t KNOW. OTOH a lot of people interpret this to mean “write only what you know from personal experience.” Look, children, seriously, slice of life is boring. Oh, some details might be fascinating, but in general? We all live lives of quiet “snuffle. Yawn.” So if you feel a need to “write what you know” a) stop trying to do exotic stuff. You’ll find that normal human beings (well, and me) are just as curious about things like “who do bookstores work, inside?” “I wonder what it’s like to come to the mall before it opens.” “How do bus drivers really do what they do? How are shifts arranged?” etc as about “How do you run with bulls in Pamplona.” And b) unless you’re writing slice of life literary (and for that I’m not qualified to advise you) throw in a murder or an alien landing or a vampire, or for all I care all of them, provided you do it WELL. And no, you don’t need to kill someone to write about it. You can research in books and by attending classes. (There are usually a few on police investigation, run by local officers.)

6 – Read. Read every day. Read several hours a day if you can manage it. Take your favorite books from the shelf and take them apart (not physically) by analyzing how the author introduces characters, how he evokes what emotion. Now, how could you do that in your as yet unwritten opus.

7 – Write. Write every day. Write what you mean to write professionally and write other stuff too. Set yourself a minimum quota of words and write.

8 – Don’t take yourself seriously. Toss out all preconceptions about what a writer is, or what writing means. Throw out all the nonsense I know you’ve heard (I have) about process, like “A novel isn’t any good unless it takes 3 years (or five, or ten) to write.” Or “A story must be revised ten or twenty or fifty times before it’s any good.” (I came across this recently, of all things in a book aimed at indie writers: “If you don’t have the patience, persistence and pride to revise a story fifty times, you shouldn’t do this.” If I’d been unpublished, I’d have quaked. FIFTY times? My most revised story was revised probably twenty, and it KILLED it, and I didn’t sell it till I went back to the original. Ignore that nonsense. These people are crazy. By all means, if you NEED to revise fifty times [I can’t even imagine it. Do you write in Sanskrit in first draft?] by all means, do it. BUT you don’t HAVE to in order to make it “good” and it’s not a universal process.) Do what you have to do to create stories. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t sweat prescriptive dictates.

And now shut up and write. Ignore all the years you might have wasted. Start today. Sit down. Write.

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I really would like to send Darkship Renegade to my publisher before I go to worldcon. Whether or not this is possible, it depends on whether or not I find anything major – like scenes that are missing but should be in there. But, for now, I’m trying to at least figure out if it can be done.

Revision is never easy, particularly the “final revision before it goes out.” On the one hand I find myself cringing at sentences and expressions or wondering if I truly confused Earth and Eden just because they both start with E. And what bright idea that was! Don’t I know better not to have covalent entities (two planets, two cities, two humans) with names starting with same letter? What an amateur mistake to make.

But of course Eden was Eden for reasons that will become obvious as the series goes on, (if it does, of course) and also because the Mules had a sense of humor. Same sense of humor inspired that as the escape ship named Je Reviens. Or, as my older son put it, “Don’t ya’ll go celebrating our departure too hard. We’ll be back!”

Besides, and this is very, very hard – you can’t change something like that on the second book.

Anyway, when mark the first page in editorial symbols it always worries me a little. I think I’m being rational “How to make this easier to understand” and not over-severe as in “Ah! That is so bad! I can’t believe I wrote that.”

But the truth is, I can’t know except when it comes back to me in copy edited format. By then I should have written another one or two books and be able to face this dispassionately. At which point if I have removed flavor, I’ll add it back in.

But it’s sad when you can’t trust yourself and aren’t sure you did the right thing. However, that’s sort of how revision works. You’re always wondering if you’re being too defensive, or not defensive enough, patting the little darling on the head, or parting its hair with an ax.

No wonder other people think all writers are crazy. (We’re at worst somewhat sanity challenged!)

And now I’ll go load up on caffeine and return to the crazy-making.

A realistic guide to new publishing economics for the Idealistic, the Angry and the Fearful.

In one of my articles on another site, in response to comments about teens not reading (which made any teen reading it justifiably indignant) a – from spelling and word markings – very young woman yelled back that they read all the time, they just do not buy the books. They get them from torrents and friends because “information wants to be free.” She also informed us, in no uncertain – if clearly thumb typed – terms that this was the way of the future, and if we don’t like it, deal with it.

This of course, feeds directly into the fears of the majority of my friends and contemporaries, roughly described as between thirty and sixty.

And both the innocent young lady and my contemporaries are wrong.

Let’s start from the top – this is not a post seeking to prove the concept that information or data “wants” to be free. (Though the animist, not so say personifying statement makes me cringe a little.)

I believe any raw data, and to an extent data collected with governmental money and support, (with caveats on that*), should be “free” to access. This is not out of any deep redistributionist impulse but as a qualification of informed citizenry. For instance, if you hear that during superbowl most assaults by men on women occur, you should be able to trace that factoid and prove it or disprove it. (You’ll disprove it. Or at least you’ll prove it can’t be proven. Try it if you don’t believe me. Yes, tons of people say it, but the statistics don’t back it up. At any rate, it’s flawed psychology. If you believe that, you also believe every teen playing first person shooter games is a murderer waiting to happen. That is something like 90% of teens. [rolls eyes.])

However most books aren’t raw data. And I’m not setting out to prove it wouldn’t be “fair” to not pay for them because “blah blah blah.” Neither the idealistic young, nor the scared old pay the least bit of attention to those bromides, nor should they. “Fair” is a beautiful word and works great in kindergarten where the teacher can enforce the distribution of crackers. And appealing to people’s morality is always risky. Most of them might not have any. And some of it might be different from yours.

Instead, what I’m setting out to do is explain both to the idealistic and the fearful why this model cannot and will not apply to either fiction or researched-non-fiction books. Or if it does apply, it will be for a vanishingly brief time and then collapse under its own weight, and something else will succeed it. Because what this “system” is happens to be economic Marxism by another name. And Marxism, whether called that or “happiness” or “social justice” has never worked as an economic system anywhere, since the dawn of time to now.

I know, I know. Look, I was young once, too. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ve got the pictures to prove it. And though I was always reflexively, knee-jerkingly anti-communist, I grew up in a society even more steeped in Marxist principles than ours, from the elementary school room on. And I thought that “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” was a lovely principle. And then I stumbled across the essential question “Who shaves the barber?” and was floored. Because the question that principle begs is “who decides?” Back then I was a teen, and I ran my nearest and dearest, the people who purported to know me best, through my mind. Who would I trust to decide what I could “give” and what I should “take” – my mom, the woman with whom I had knock down, drag out fights on the subject of what shoes I should buy? And how much housecleaning I could do while attending school? My brother, the sixties idealist who thought I could write great literature by the time I was sixteen? And who thought everyone should subsist on love and a crust of bread? My dad, the poet, who had the vague idea I should write whether anyone bought it or not and perhaps live in a garret and talk to the sparrows or something? (Eating them would be out of the question. Dad likes sparrows. And not on his plate.)

The absurdity of trusting even these people, more likely to have my best interests at heart than any bureaucrat could, to decide for me what I wanted and could do made the entire thing a ridiculous notion. I decided it would be a great system if we could get angels who could see into every heart to come and administer it for us. Until then we had to make do with what each individual knew he wanted, and what he knew he could give. And it was all arranged through this wonderful means of exchange – money – which seems to appear in every society large and complex enough to require it. With money as a reward of effort (not of want, because as the wise man said “you can’t always get what you want) and ability, the person being rewarded (or in the case of midlisters trust me, children, punished) with it can then provide for his or her own wants and needs. It’s not a perfect system – see the part where we’re not angels – but it is the best we can get. And now that I’m older and wiser, if an angel descended from heaven, who could look into every heart, determine everyone’s wants and needs, and undertake to govern us, the shield for minds and hearts and the assassination plot couldn’t come fast enough for my taste.

Now, after this digression to explain what’s wrong with the system, lets look at the whole information versus novels or investigative journalism bit, shall we?

I realize that what we’ll call for lack of a better term creative writing, like raw data, is composed of words, and that it can even convey factual information, as well as emotions, feelings and point of view. This doesn’t make it raw information.

I can give you most of the raw information about the novel currently holding me prisoner in one paragraph. “Man who has been confined for fifteen years to one of the most high tech and unbreakable dungeons humanity has created, escapes. He finds he’s the heir to one of the highest-power positions in his world. He also becomes convinced that the system under which his world is governed is both unfair, unjust and ultimately counterproductive at providing for most people’s needs, let alone wants. Spurred on by the fact a lot of his co-rulers want him dead, he finds himself getting involved in the coils of a revolution to overturn the system.” There. Now you don’t need to read the book, right? Oh, wait, silly me. I forgot a little bit. “There is also a love interest.” So, now you don’t need to read the book, right?

Oh, you do? But why? You already have the information.

The answer to that, of course, is that creative writing is not information. While it uses words as its raw material, its objective is not to convey “what happens” but to make you experience it, feel it. Well done novels (and some creative non-fiction) are the only way you can experience being someone else for a while. It is in fact an “entertainment experience.” The difference between te raw data that goes into the novel and what the author does with it, is the equivalent of reading the lyrics of a song, or hearing it performed by a talented singer.

“But, Oh Sarah,” say the most classically minded of my frightened colleagues, “what you define writing as doesn’t matter. These children think they can get it for free. They’ll steal it. They’ll break our DRM. They’ll read our books without permission and we’ll starve in the gutter and dogs will eat us.”

To which I say, take deep breaths, reconsider DRM and think the situation over.

DRM is at best an irritating barrier, and at worst an annoying one. No DRM will keep your books free, that’s true. So, ignore DRM. I don’t believe in it, and it’s never applied to anything of mine by my request. Some of my publishers insist on it, and I let them because there isn’t enough time in the world to talk everyone out of it.

It is not DRM that will keep your livelihood safe. It’s your talent and – yes – your craft. Why? Because no one has ever worked for free, while starving to death, with no expectation of ever being paid and created good crafts or art. Even those romantic artists of my dad’s imagination, starving their garrets for the love of creation, weren’t doing it without the expectation of ever being paid.

We do have examples of artists who were paid what their betters thought they should be (usually not much, unless you kissed the right #sses) and trust me, children, it is painful to see.

As part of one of my native countries forays into socialist correctness, our TV played eastern European movies. A lot. Let’s say the only time they worked as entertainment was when my brother and I sat together and made a running commentary about the movie, ascribing the characters and events the most outrageous motivations.

And mind you, these artists were being sort of paid – with greater access to the stores, or with villas in the country, or… But the thing is they weren’t being paid to produce entertainment. They were paid to produce “messages” and it didn’t matter how painfully bad those were as entertainment. They got “paid” per message.

How does that correlate with working for free? And – say my colleagues, pulling their hair – how can you say that when you work for free? Like, all your Austen fanfic?

To which I say stop pulling your hair. Half of you are already bald anyway. Also, yeah, I do Austen fanfic for free. I also embroider for free. And I make stuffed animals for free and, occasionally – I don’t have as much time as I’d like to, these days – I draw or paint for free. However, the Austen fanfic, when done for free, is done at the same level as drawing or painting. It’s done as an amusement. Before Naked Reader Press published A Touch of Night, which was the most professional of my fanfics, they had to do extensive editing and chapters and clarifications had to be added.

Let’s just say I enjoy the heck out of writing fanfic because it is NOT my best work, it comes without the pressures of oh… self editing; fact checking; making sense… etc. It’s also highly targeted and I cater irrepressibly to the people who read that site. I use fanfic, in fact, to try out techniques and because of the ready comments, to see how they play to “normal” people defined as “people who don’t write for a living.”

It is no more serious than a professional seamstress doing cross stitch in her spare time. And the work is not the same as that of a professional embroiderer. It’s relaxing because it’s not being done for a living. And I can do it because I make a living elsewhere.

And here comes the rub. The idealists believe it is possible to have a “right” to other people’s labor because they’re by and large not supporting themselves. Their livelihood comes from elsewhere, in large measure parents or other arrangements. So it’s perfectly plausible to them to imagine a world in which “people just work if they want to.”

Of course, when you’re a college student you do a lot of that on the side, because you want to. But let me tell you, as someone who has had to work for a living (besides writing) that while many of my friends manage it they do it for extra money on the side and in the hope of one day quitting and writing full time. There is no one who writes forever, on the side, with no expectation of reward. EVER. And no status is not enough, not when you grow up and have kids and start thinking that this time could be better employed, perhaps, doing something you could sell.

Yes, I’ve heard the utopian nonsense about a society that provides the basics for everyone and where people can work or not. Even if it were possible – it’s not. These are dreams of academics and white collar workers who’ve never been near enough to a farm to get cow muck on their toes. Yes, I can explain it one of these days, but not now – this society would last maybe a generation. We are not angels. We’re creatures designed by evolution. To a vast – and possibly sanest – majority of us “basic needs provided for” translates to “do nothing, wallow in your own favorite vices, get bored as heck, get suicidal.” At the very least it translates to no reproduction. Those people that survive will not be the contented aesthetes people who write about this tend to imagine, but nasty, brutish and short lived. And barbarism will come shortly after.

Yes, I’ve also heard “So writers stop writing. Big deal. We still have nineteen centuries of literature.” Right…. Look, chilluns, if you think you can pleasurably read anything pre-Shakespeare, power to you. I can, but I was trained. (Not for free.) And even I don’t do it for a lark.

If you think you can read nineteenth century fiction for fun the same way you read the latest Urban Fantasy, you’re either highly unusual or you haven’t read much of that.

Science fiction ages, of course. Quickly and badly. Heinlein is now alternate history (and others, more recent, are worse.) But – you might not realize this – fantasy ages just as badly. No, seriously. A lot of it (granted not all) is near unreadable now, because the language feels “stilted” and this is less than 30 years old. Mystery? Well… A lot of it has also aged badly. I know, I know, but mystery when contemporary is steeped in the moment. Even to me references to phone booths, let alone phone books, and encyclopedias, feel odd and stilted, and I have to put myself in an “historical” frame of mind to read that. Only it’s not written as historical, with support and cluing of the anachronisms, so it’s harder work. Romance? Well… Let’s put it this way: I love Heyer. Do I love other romance writers from her day? Children, I can’t even read romance writers from the sixties, for the greatest part. The way people interacted in the sixties taints even the historical stuff. And since I spent the sixties learning to walk and getting potty trained and, at the very end of it, learning to read and write, it also feels stilted and weird to me. And much as I love Austen, I can’t stand the Brontes, let alone any of their lesser contemporaries. I’m not alone in this. If I were, Gutenberg would be a SERIOUS challenge to Amazon. Particularly in these days of tight funds. (And heck, I’ve been known to buy books on Amazon that I KNOW are on Gutenberg, because they’re better formatted or have an active index on Amazon.)

So, let’s suppose the idealists managed to make all “data” to include artistic performances, such as novels, “free” – what then? Well, I predict within a very short time – probably within a year – some writer a lot of people want to read and who has stopped writing to work as a cashier in the local store, will be accosted and offered money to finish the next book in a well loved series. And then the old system will be back.

So, to the frightened I say, Stop pulling your hair! Wipe your nose! Wash your hands before you touch that keyboard. And don’t be afraid. Economics is a natural system (natural to humans, at least) and can’t be abolished by fiat. If you have something worth the selling, people will pay your for it. There might be some lean months or years, but eventually you’ll get paid. Will the pay be commensurate with your effort, craftsmanship and talent? Who knows? There’s a factor of luck in all this. But at least you can try and don’t have some know-it-all angel (or – shudder – bureaucrat) dictating what you can do, and how much you can get.

To the idealist I say, go ahead. Pirate that book. Steal that entertainment. You’re young. We were all young once. (Except my older son, who was born at the age of fifty three.) And you’re broke. We were all broke once. (Some of us have been broke for years. We’re EXPERTS.) And you really don’t have a clue what it’s like to be responsible for your own survival, your own comfort. Worse, you don’t have a clue what it’s like to be responsible for the survival and comfort of creatures – cats, kids, dogs, etc – wholly dependent on you.

So steal those books. Get hooked on them, now when you have tons of time to read. Please do. Because in five or six years, you’re going to want more. And then you’re going to realize you’re not entitled to having someone work for you for free. That’s called slavery and it’s illegal. And you’re going to realize that no one does their best work for promises and prestige.

And then you’ll buy the books.

* Note – The caveat on any data gathered by government programs being free is that some of that data can endanger innocent lives and also that (for continuing research) other data can rob the people who gathered it of their reward. Suppose scientists have been working for years, tracking a gene that allows humans to be far smarter. If all data is published as collected, then someone else can come in at the last minute and scoop them, rendering all their work useless. Why would anyone – government or not – pay for research only to be “scooped” at the last minute. The same caveat applies to proprietary systems and discoveries. If people won’t be rewarded for them, everyone will lose because this type of research just won’t happen. Sorry. “All data should be free” is a fantasy. A pernicious one that – in the end – means “wha, wha wha, why can’t I have a right to other people’s work?”

　

　

　

　

　

　

*I did this for my agency’s holiday newsletter and of course it’s brutally out of season.  But I thought fans of shifters might appreciate it.  Yes, this girl shows up in Noah’s boy.

Yes, I’m fobbing you off, but today I have to finish cleaning the office and I’ve been attacked by a novel that is pouring out as fast as I can write it.  I’ll try to have a toughtful post up tomorrow.*

Three Matches

　

You shouldn’t cry when it’s snowing. Besides, crying wasn’t going to do me a bit of good. Not on New Year’s Night with a blizzard blowing in low and tight over the city of Goldport, Colorado and turning everything further than two inches from my nose into vague shapes that I no more than suspected might exist.

I abandoned my car on Fairfax Avenue. People say Fairfax is the longest straight street in the western states. Perhaps it is, since it runs from one end of Goldport to the other and clean out of town on the other side. Which makes it a very easy street to follow, even in pitch dark night and under the snow. But not when your car was low on gas and the street was coated in ice.

As I got out of the car, pulling my gloves on and wishing I were wearing my snowboots and not the tennis shoes, I thought mom might have been right at that, when she said dad hadn’t left her so much as he’d left Colorado. You see, my father was a meteorologist, and mom said the Colorado weather had driven him insane being completely unpredictable. You could start the day with eighty degrees and bright sunshine and end up at noon in a hard frost and subzero temperatures. I’d always suspected dad had other reasons for leaving, but now I wasn’t so sure.

I’d left Denver, three hours ago, in eighty degree weather and bright sunshine and look at me now.

Blinking, because it felt like my eyes would be frozen in their sockets, I walked carefully along the street, heading for the sidewalk. There should be a space near the buildings where it was relatively warmer and perhaps not quite so icy. Also there was a chance – okay, a chance in Hades – that a coffee shop or restaurant or something had left its door unlocked. And that would be good, even if no one where there, because then there was the chance I wouldn’t die.

The thought surprised me, because I had been thinking of it in terms of stupidity and annoyance. Stupid, stupid Rya had left home without her snow boots, or her emergency kit in the car. Stupid, stupid Rya had blown past the small towns on the way here without thinking to get her tank filled up. Now the thought came, stark and naked. Stupid, stupid Rya is going to die.

Which stopped my mind from spinning on the track it had been playing since I’d left Denver – how to tell one’s mom and step dad about one’s little embarrassing problem. Particularly when said embarrassing problem is of a bizarre enough nature they’ll consider having one committed?

In the sudden blankness of thought, I patted my pockets, suddenly wondering if I had what it took to survive this, if perhaps there would be a reprieve from my fatal idiocy. This was when I realized my stupidity was greater than it seemed. I’d brought my mom’s jacket instead of my own. Which meant I didn’t have my cell phone, or my lip balm – so I’d die with cracked lips – or the mini candy bar I’d put there after grandma’s holiday party. On the other hand, I had a matchbook, that mom must have picked up somewhere and put in there. I brought the matchbook out, wondering why people even gave them out considering that there was no smoking in bars or restaurants in Colorado anymore. It was black, with a name and address printed on it.

I blinked. The George. On Fairfax Avenue. In Goldport. That didn’t even make any sense. I’d come to Goldport to University, but I didn’t think my mom had even bothered to visit since the first weekend of my freshman year. It was all “Rya, won’t you come home.” And “Rya, darling, grandma is having a party.”

Grandma wasn’t really. She was my stepdad’s mom. Not that there was anything wrong with her. Or with Mark, my stepdad, except I always got the impression that they were more interested in having me there so they could show what a great family we were than in me, as such.

How long had mom been carting this around? On the one hand the matchbook looked barely creased. On the other hand, there were only three matches in it. Right. Three matches.

I found the edge of the sidewalk next to the buildings. I was right there was less ice there, except for little patches there the water had melted and run or perhaps run before it froze. I could watch for those, as I moved along, looking at the numbers. From the numbers, the George was about eighteen blocks that way which, of course, gave me plenty of time to freeze to death.

But hey, I had three matches. I flashed on my favorite holiday story as a kid, The Little Match Girl. My dad had read it to me on Christmas every year, with a bunch of others – which was kind of odd since The Little Match Girl takes place on New Years. Even odder since – as far as I knew – my dad didn’t have anything against little girls, and a holiday story where the happy ending is that she froze to death while dreaming of her grandma seemed kind of strange.

I patted the pocket of my jeans, on the off chance I had anything useful there. This was Colorado. We read about people who survived blizzards on three cough drops and snow melt all the time. Not that my big issue was hunger – even if I hadn’t eaten since breakfast – but more cold. And that… well… I’d just have to keep walking.

I stomped my feet, to make sure I could still feel my toes.

As though in answer to my stomping, there was a weird sound to the right, like a muffled hiss/growl.

“Who? Who– ” I said, sounding exactly like a very enthusiastic owl. The hiss/growl came again. All I could think was that someone’s dog must have got out of their yard, but if that was a dog, then it had laryngitis problems. Scare it away with something flashed through my mind which, unfortunately neglected to tell me what I should scare it away with? My keys? The way my lanky brown hair must be all messy and now getting crusted with snow? The matches?

As the hiss/growl came again, I figured what the heck I might as well try, right? I mean, what was the worst that could happen? I’d use up the match and that would seriously cut down my possibilities of smoking three cigarette…which I didn’t have. Right.

And besides, maybe if I lit a match I would see angels or get a great dinner. Right now an hallucinatory dinner seemed preferable to dying out here knowing how cold and how alone I was. I lit the match as the hiss/growl, followed by a slithery noise, dragged closer. And there, in the middle of the snow stood… I blinked. Okay, I was hallucinating, but this was no angel known to man. It was an alligator. A very old alligator, its hide scarred and marked by past fights.

 

The thing is that, though it was walking through the snow, straight at me – and were alligators supposed to even be alive in the snow? Weren’t they cold-blooded? Shouldn’t it be comatose or dead or something – clacking its teeth, it didn’t look dangerous. It looked like a happy alligator, out for a jaunt. Like… something out of a live animation movie about animals who move to the city, or perhaps what happens to discarded pets.

I blinked, but he didn’t suddenly sport a little jacket or a jaunty bowler hat, so I was at least not that far gone. Or perhaps he – for some reason I was sure it was a he – was real.

The idea had me backing up, feeling tentatively with my feet, till my back hit a street lamp and I stopped. “Please don’t hurt me,” I said, as the match burned down towards my fingers. “Please don’t… I’m not… I’m only out here because I couldn’t explain to mom I was a shape shifter. I kept trying to tell her, and she kept asking me if I was gay.” My fingers burned, and I dropped the match, and it was all dark again, except for the snow swirling around. I snorted, a snort half laughter-half panic. “As if that would be such a big deal today. But how do you say Dear mom, I thought I was dreaming of turning into a fox, but my roommate told me she’d seen a fox, and dear Lord, it was running in the gardens, where I’d dreamed of being. And then I started following footprints in the snow, and I think I am a were fox. My mom would have me committed.” From the darkness came a clack-clack that could be the alligator’s mouth opening and closing. “And then I had to storm out, with nothing and without filling the gas tank. Because I didn’t know how to talk to my mom. I am so stupid.”

The clacking of teeth somehow seemed like someone saying tut-tut, and then the alligator’s nose was so near I could see it, despite the darkness and the snow. He… sniffed delicately at my jeans and my shoes, and then looked up, his eyes contriving to look very amused and strangely human. Right. Now I was going nuts.

Fine if it was going to bite me, it could bite me as I was walking towards the more populated areas of town. I thought around that address on the matchbox there were apartments. Someone was bound to find me, right?

The alligator didn’t try to follow me, as I walked on, which was good but also, inexplicably, felt really lonely. Yeah, because you know, a girl and her gator was infinitely better than being alone.

I walked another three blocks, and it felt like my head was going to freeze solid by then, when I heard a weird flapping ahead and a little to the left of me. It sounded like someone was flapping sheets in a really high wind. And while the wind was there all right, the only thing blowing around in it were snow flakes. I tried to see ahead and could see nothing, and reached for my matchbox, because maybe these were magic matches, since they could scare away gators. if I hadn’t dreamed up the whole thing.

I paused, and tried to light my match, then realized there was a parking lot to my left – leaving a space without buildings, but somewhat sheltered, since the parking lot was bordered in warehouse walls on all three sides. I lit my match, then looked up.

The snow was less thick here, and the match did give a good amount of light.

None of which explained what I saw. I’d almost have preferred angels.

Right in front of me, looking like it had just alighted on the parking lot was a dragon. Not just any dragon, no. It was a red Chinese dragon, cute lion face and all.

Okay,

I thought as I blinked at it in the light of my match. I’ve gone completely around a bend.

I registered that it was holding something in its right paw. And then it started coughing. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. The match burned towards my fingers, as it coughed and spasmed. it looked like what it felt like when I transformed into the fox. But… a dragon? Dragons didn’t exist, did they?

Of course, neither did shape shifters.

As I dropped the match, I could barely see the naked young man in front of me. Which was probably good, as he seemed to be trying – simultaneously – to cover his privates and put his clothes on.

I had glimpsed enough to see he looked Chinese and about my age. He had a red dragon tattoo on his arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice an unexpected surprise as not only did he lack any foreign accent, but he had a southern drawl thick as corn bread and slow and molasses. “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. Only old Joe called and said you were one of us and you were lost in the snow.”

“One of… one of … us?”

　

“Yeah, a shape shifter,” he said.

“I’m not a dragon!”

He smiled. He was now dressed and very close, and he had a sweet smile. “No,” he said. “Dragons rarely get caught like this in storms. We fly. But Old Joe said you needed help. Where do you need to go? I’ll shift again and give you a ride.” The smile again. It was impossible not to trust him when he smiled like that.

I thought about it. My dorm would be good, but it was in the middle of campus, and someone would see me arrive on dragon back. I took the matchbox out, “I wonder,” I said, speaking as much to myself as to him, “If the George has a parking lot where no one would see you land.”

He blinked. “The… Why the George?”

“I don’t know. My mom had this matchbook with the address. I just found it in her jacket pocket.”

He gave me a half-evaluating half-puzzled look, then smiled. “The George it is, then. If you’ll just let me change…”

Modestly, he stepped just far enough away from me that he could shape shift without my seeing him naked, which was reassuring. Then the coughing started, and the sort of odd sound that suggested flesh being compressed and twisted and… a red dragon walked through the snow towards me. When it scrunched its face and let down its wing, it looked exactly like the young man’s expression when he smiled. I climbed the wing, carefully, hoping not to hurt him, and sat astride him then, because he seemed to be waiting for something, and because dragons – apparently – don’t come equipped with seatbelts, I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around his neck.

It was oddly intimate, but also very warm. Blessedly warm. I had to fight to keep awake, it was so… cozy and also because the relief of being rescued hit me.

In almost no time, we were flying over a diner. I could see even through the snow, a neon dragon flipping pancakes, and neon letters proclaiming The George.

My dragon friend flew over the dragon, to a parking lot at the back and let me down. I went around the front door which – surprisingly – was open. And the George was lighted and filled with groups of people. A young man with long dark hair, tied back, was at the grill. He turned and gave me a curious look as I came in, but I didn’t care. I was so exhausted. Of course, I didn’t have any money, but perhaps they’d just let me sit down and make a phone call.

I collapsed into a seat and closed my eyes and next thing I knew, I heard the southern drawn, “Kyrie this is the young woman that Old Joe called about.” I opened my eyes to look into the familiar face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never even asked your name.”

“Rya Stevens,” I said.

“Ah. I’m Conan Lung,” and then as though he feared I’d laugh, “My parents used comic books to study English. They thought it was a good American name.”

“Sounds like a lovely name. And you were a hero. I mean, you rescued me.”

I swear he blushed bright red. “Oh, it was nothing.”

The young woman he had introduced me to – Kyrie – grinned at me. “You poor thing must be frozen. Relax and I’ll get you coffee. Do you want a clam chowder?”

“I don’t have any money on me. I–”

“Oh, never mind that, we’ll just get you warmed up. You can pay some other time.”

She bustled away and Conan said, “that’s Kyrie. She and her boyfriend Tom own the diner.” I felt ridiculously relieved she wasn’t Conan’s girlfriend. Like I had some claim on him, or something.

“You said Old Joe told you about me?” I said.

“Yeah.” And at my look. “Alligator shifter. He said you were nice.” The blush came again. It was fascinating. I’d never met a man who blushed like that.

To stop staring at him, I looked around the diner. So many people, and none of them seemed very interested in us. In the next table over, there was a man scribbling in a notebook. He was probably fifty and he had… I stopped. He had hair exactly the color of mine. And I knew him. Oh, I hadn’t seen him since I was five, but a girl knows her own father.

“Dad,” I said.

He turned around, and he was dad. His mouth dropped open. “Rya!”

“Dad.”

“You… did your mom tell you where to find me?”

I shook my head. “My mom knew where to find you?” She’d told me he’d left the state. She’d told me he never wrote.

He nodded and frowned at me a little, then squinted. “Are you… the one they called about?”

I nodded.

“So you’re one of us?”

“Us?” That again.

“Most people who come to the diner, and all here today are shape shifters. This is our safe place. The owners are shape shifters too. You… shift?”

I nodded.

“Fox?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Your mom was afraid… she wanted me to leave. She made me leave and she told me never to contact you or she would… She has pictures. I didn’t…”

“Oh, dad,” I said.

Later on I said a lot more, as we talked over the sixteen years of my life he’d missed. He’d been living in Goldport all along, but mom hadn’t told him I’d gone to college there. Now I understood why she’d tried to convince me to go to UC Boulder – because Dad was living in Goldport, retired and writing a novel. She’d been trying to convince him to move. She’d met him at the George just last week.

“Well,” I said. “She won’t want to ruin me and herself by implication. I mean, she’s my mother.” Though she might cut me off completely now she knew I too was a shape shifter. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I’d be left without any family now.

When the chowder came, I noticed there was an unlit candle on the table, and I struck my last match and lit the candle from it.

This time, the story of the little match girl did have a happy ending.