The HEA Cafe

You’ve likely heard the expression about “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” which cautions people not to quickly discard something that might be valuable (baby) with something of little value (used bathwater). It’s a tired old cliche. It came to mind, however, as I breezed through the brouhaha surrounding allegations of author Cassie Edwards’ plagiarism. If you’ve been living under a rock this week and I have no idea what I’m talking about, go here and here.

Okay, back with me?

I’m not going to talk about whether or not Ms. Edwards copied research text verbatim into her books. That’s already being talked about everywhere and my input on that would be superfluous.

I’m going to talk about something that I saw in a lot of comments and postings on the issue. It set me back a tad. It’s not something I’d not heard before, but I was surprised to see it crop up so quickly. And that something was this: “I’m never buying another book by Signet (Edwards’ publisher).”

Yes, I saw I’m never buying another Cassie Edwards’ book, which is a feeling I understand. An author has betrayed your trust or no longer subscribes to the same belief you do.

I don’t understand penalizing hundreds of other authors who had absolutely nothing to do with what Ms. Edwards did or did not do, simply because they write for the same house.

Note: I do not write for Signet/Penguin. I write for Bantam/Random House. Unrelated.

But this scares me. The last time I saw this reaction crop up was with book covers. A few–blessedly few–readers log from time to time at various blogged cover art discussions, and state that they 1) hold the author responsible for the cover art, even though they realize the author has little say and 2) if they don’t like a cover, they’ll never buy that author again. Ever.

Those are the kinds of things that make me want to pound my head on my desk.

The “I’ll never buy another Signet book” seems to be in that same camp. I understand readers are trying to send a message to Signet, or punish Signet for the stand Signet took in defending Ms. Edwards. But in my humble opinion, and as an author whose day and night job is writing books, penalizing authors who have had nothing to do with the brouhaha is tragic at best, stupid at worst.

Trust me, I have no idea what my sister and fellow authors at Bantam Spectra are doing right now. I have no idea if their prose is perfect or their research is annotated. I don’t have time. If one of them does something heinous and provably so, and you ask me, I’ll decry their horrible action with all my heart. But I’m not responsible for whatever they do, and to hold me in thrall in such a way is… nuts.

If an author from my publisher wins a huge award for his books, would you conversely buy all my books as well?

I’ve long had a problem with broad-brush tactics: all blondes are dumb, all Polish-Americans like to bowl, all teenagers are lazy, whatever. All Signet authors plagiarize and must be shunned. That would mean shunning Nora Roberts. A victim of plagiarism herself. And a Signet author.

I think it’s good to get impassioned over injustices. I’m all for taking a stand. Those of you who know me personally know I don’t suffer fools quietly and, after ten years of carrying a gun and a badge as a licensed PI, I’m a great believer that wrongs need to be righted, that the guilty should pay.

But as you raise that heavy tin bathtub of oily, soapy wrongs, please take a look at what else you’re tossing out into the gutter. There may be more than a few innocent author babies in there.

Respectfully yours, poolside, at the Home for the Perpetually Confused…

Namaste (I salute the Divine in you), ~Linnea

The Down Home Zombie Blues, an RT 4-1/2 star TOP PICK! Nov. 2007 from RITA award winning author Linnea Sinclair:
http://www.linneasinclair.com/DHZBCOVER.htm

“Linnea Sinclair’s recipe for success—undeniable passion, clever conversations and perilous situations, combine to produce another sensory delight with The Down Home Zombie Blues.” –SingleTitles.com

Apologies for the short posting. I intended to have better internet access. However, being I’m in the middle of the Caribbean Ocean… no, not channeling Captain Jack Sparrow but am on Holland America’s cruise ship, Westerdam. At 75-cents a minute, this is not the best way to blog and due to a storm our stop at Grand Turk Island was cancelled. So here I am, in the internet cafe on Deck 10 (top of the ship) trying to finish writing SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to GABRIEL’S GHOST. And trying to blog with all of you. Fact of an author’s life: working on vacation.

So greetings from the upper deck on the high seas! And now I have to get back to work, savvy? Oh, look, there’s Captain Jack… ~Linnea

While the title of this blog may appear to reflect my sentiments at having three writing contests to judge in one month, it is (deliberately) misleading, with a tad of double-duty. Okay, three contests while in a howling deadline is tough. But that’s not the more I want to talk about.

I want to talk about word choice and word use, because in judging three writing contests back to back, I saw a lot of the same problems, over and over. So if you’re yet-to-be-published and using contests as a means to get feedback and a possible entry to an editor (a method I heartily endorse!), this is a blog you might want to take note of.

You can read my first blog on those issues on the Alien Romances Blog here.  It’s called “On a Score of 1 to 10″, referencing the score sheets that accompany each entry. I wish I could give every writer a perfect ten. I wish I could have all their entries sent to the final judges, the editors and agents. I wish I could jumpstart all those careers. I can’t. Three of those reasons: Flying Body Parts, Head-hopping and Dialogue Tag Usage, are detailed in that blog. You might want to start there, then come back here.

Ready? Okay. More is not better. More words, more description, more adjectives do not a better story make. Good writing is all about choosing the word that most succinctly and memorably imparts that image or sensation. It’s not about dumping words on a page like a bucket of confetti.

I read far too many first-three-chapter entries in a variety of romance novel categories that suffered from this problem. At first I thought it might be because my poison of choice is science fiction and fantasy, and I’d lost my ear for contemporary or chick-lit. Not so, I realized, when I ran into a few entries—one was a lovely historical romance, another a contemporary with a distinct Texas-twang—that just flowed. They were tight, imagery was on-point, pacing was perfect. And they were in genres I normally wouldn’t chose for myself. So if I can be beguiled by what I don’t like, imagine how much easier it would  be for me to be seduced by my preferred genres? And yes, I did judge a paranormal that erupted with so many adjectives I felt as if I needed to hose myself off afterward.

So it wasn’t genre. It was word choice and word usage.

Noted science fiction author C.J. Cherryh calls the problem “Florid Verbs” and “Scaffolding and Spaghetti.” The woman’s books have won Hugos and Nebulas and she’s been on bestseller lists for decades. When she gives writing advice in her Writerisms and Other Sins, I listen:

FLORID VERBS:

‘The car grumbled its way to the curb’ is on the verge of being so colorful it’s distracting. {Florid fr. Lat. floreo, to flower.}

If a manuscript looks as if it’s sprouted leaves and branches, if every verb is ‘unusual’, if the vocabulary is more interesting than the story…fix it by going to more ordinary verbs. There are vocabulary-addicts who will praise your prose for this but not many who can simultaneously admire your verbs as verbs and follow your story, especially if it has content. The car is not a main actor and not one you necessarily need to make into a character. If its action should be more ordinary and transparent, don’t use an odd expression. This is prose.

This statement also goes for unusual descriptions and odd adjectives, nouns, and adverbs. 

I’d highlight the “odd adjectives, nouns and adverbs” here. And not just odd, but simply overdone. You can tell me (though I’d prefer you show me) that the hero has muscles. But the third time in two pages that I read something about his “hard, sculpted, sinewy, muscular” chest or forearms, I’m ready to scream, “I get it, already!” The heroine runs her fingers down his sculpted, muscular chest then over his sculpted, sinewy arms—which are rock-hard, by the way—and then notices as he puts the coffee pot on the shelf how his hard, sculpted, muscular, sinewy muscles ripple.

The heroine also has time to notice—in detail—her own appearance and attire, flipping her soft, silvery-blonde, lustrous and wavy hair off her slender, cashmere-clad shoulders with her slender, delicate, French-manicured fingers while her perfect alabaster complexion glows in the candlelight. Yes, all in one sentence like that. Not only do I hate her as a character, I’m in imagery overload.

Which brings me to another suggestion from Cherryh:

SCAFFOLDING AND SPAGHETTI:

Words the sole function of which is to hold up other words. For application only if you are floundering in too many ‘which’ clauses. Do not carry this or any other advice to extremes.

‘What it was upon close examination was a mass the center of which was suffused with a glow which appeared rubescent to the observers who were amazed and confounded by this untoward manifestation.’ Flowery and overstructured. ‘What they found was a mass, the center of which glowed faintly red. They’d never seen anything like it.’ The second isn’t great lit, but it gets the job done: the first drowns in ‘which’ and ‘who’ clauses.

In other words—be suspicious any time you have to support one needed word (rubescent) with a creaking framework of ‘which’ and ‘what’ and ‘who’. Dump the ‘which-what-who’ and take the single descriptive word. Plant it as an adjective in the main sentence.

Flowery and overstructured. More is simply not better. Plus it lends itself to inaccuracies.

As a writer, your job is to be a wordsmith. Okay, I call myself a wordslut but it’s essentially the same thing. You have to love words but you also have to know how to use them. You have to know what their use is, what their flavors and nuances are. Pretty does not have the same meaning and mind-image as gorgeous. Plump isn’t the same as obese. Red, crimson, burgundy and rose are not the same shade. House, cottage, mansion and chateau all create distinctly different images.

Descriptives in your prose—be they adverbs, adjectives or phrases—are like spices. Too much and the dish is overwhelming and unpalatable. Not enough and it’s bland. Spend more time finding the right adjective to attach to your character, rather than burying him or her in an avalanche of description that becomes, essentially, meaningless. Or worse, comical and cliched.

Better yet, show me your characters are beautiful and strong but putting them in action. Telling me your character is gorgeous is your opinion. How do I know your definition of gorgeous segues with mine? But if you have your gal walk down the street and every man she passes stops and stares, jaws-dropping…I experience her beauty through them. You don’t have to tell me. You’ve shown me.

So go over those first three chapters you’re working on for that contest with rake in hand. Scrape out the detritus, the word-weeds, the literary-litter. Then send it in. And I’ll give you a perfect ten.

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com
RITA-Award Winning Science Fiction Romance
The Down Home Zombie Blues, coming Nov. 27th from Bantam Books

4-1/2 Stars—Top Pick! From Romantic Times BOOKreviews: “Quirky, offbeat and packed with gritty action, this blistering novel explodes out of the gate and never looks back. Counting on Sinclair to provide top-notch science fiction elaborately spiced with romance and adventure is a given, but she really aces this one! A must-read, by an author who never disappoints.”— Jill M. Smith

“[Sinclair’s] exceptional attention to detail…and quirky slant on the genre highlights her solid world building and allows even passing fans of science fiction to enjoy the ride.” — Nina C. Davis for Booklist

I write science fiction romance. You know, starships and space freighters and starports and ‘droids, and him and her kissing whilst a galaxy implodes somewhere behind (or in front of) them… that kind of stuff. So at book signings and conventions when I sit there with my bookcovers replete with starships and starports and kissing couples, I’m frequently asked about the worlds I build: the planets, the civlizations, the languages, the cultures.

And I’m often sitting there with a romantic suspense author on my left and an historical author on my right…yet rarely do they get asked about their world building.

It’s as if writers and readers feel world building is a disease only SF authors get.

It’s not. It’s a disease all authors get. At least all good authors who want to bring their readers into their books. The reality (of the unreality we create) is this, and I’m quoting writing guru Dwight Swain:

“You need to remember three key points about the world in which your story takes place:
a-Your reader has never been there.
b-It’s a sensory world.
c-It’s a subjective world.”

Notice Swain says nothing about “science fiction story” only. I don’t care that Swain penned those words in the mid 1960s (according to the copyright date on my copy of Techniques of the Selling Writer). SF existed in the 1960s, by the bucketful. But Swain recognized something that all good writers need to: your story world–no matter how common to you or your culture–is still a unique experience for your reader.

That’s why world building is not just for SFF writers. Or SFR/RSF/Futuristics writers. Or paranormal writers.

“But I’m writing a rom suspense in Orlando, Florida!” you wail. “Everyone knows what Orlando is like.”

Maybe they do, if they’ve been mouse-ified. But even if they live deep in the heart of Mouseville, they still don’t know Orlando in the same way your character does. They don’t have the same emotional responses, same memories, same experiences your character does.

So let’s go to item ‘a’: your reader has never been there. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing about Cirrus One Station (as I do), Orlando or Oshkosh. When you bring your readers into the story, it’s a new experience for them. They’ve never been to Cirrus One or Orlando or Oshkosh as you are now going to present it.

So don’t gloss over your book’s setting (apartment, shopping mall, park, grocery store) assuming the reader knows. Swain had another maxim: “Vividness outranks brevity.” That doesn’t mean you slather on oodles of description. It does mean you realize as you write that the reader has never been there before. Don’t miss a chance to use something of the setting to impart something more about your character(s).

Which brings us to ‘b’: it’s a sensory world. What are some of the things someone living in Orlando, Florida might uniquely notice? The intensity of the sunshine at midday? Trust me, Orlando in August at noon is a veritable frying pan. How about the humidity? How about the fact that it’s 98-degrees at noon and then chills down to a balmy 94-degrees by nine o’clock at night. In other words, you rarely stop sweating (at least, in August).

Or how about the plethora of out-of-state license plates on the highways? Or the sound of the breeze rustling through the palm trees. It’s nothing at all like the sound of the wind through the pines.

Sensory experiences.

Which brings us to ‘c’: it’s a subjective world. Even if your reader grew up in Orlando, s/he didn’t grow up in your character’s lime-green Crocs. I grew up outside New York City and I often feel cheated when I read novels set in that city because a character “walks through Times Square” and that’s it. That’s all the author gives us, as if we all should know exactly what that entails. Well, I’ve been through Times Square hundreds of times and if there was ever a setting that cries out that it’s a unique, sensory and subjective experience, it’s that one. Times Square on a Tuesday afternoon in December is not the same as Times Square on a Saturday night in July. And Times Square on a July Saturday night is a different subjective experience for the beat cop sweating on the corner than for the hooker lounging against the taxi. And different for the tourists from Oshkosh and the young party-goers from the suburbs of Newark.

I spent ten years as a private detective and took many a post-accident witness statement and trust me, you can have five people standing elbow to elbow on the corner and all five will remember something different about the same accident.

It’s the same with your characters and your readers. The character’s experience, perceptions and interactions with the setting you place her in is uniquely hers, filtered by the background and conflicts you give her.

So don’t short-change your readers or your characters. Bring them into your world, let them see it, taste it, hear it, smell it. Let them fear it, desire it, love it, shun it. But bring them in and make the reader feel it.

And now for a bit of BSP: Check out the Out of this World Writing Workshop this weekend:

Writing Out of this World Romance with Some of The Hottest Authors in the Science Fiction and Futuristic Genres 
October 12th, 13th, and 14th at Romance Divas

Featuring:
Susan Grant
Patti O’Shea
Linnea Sinclair
Robin D. Owens 
Gena Showalter
 
Want to know how to write out of this world romance? Romance Divas is hosting a 3-day workshop with some of the hottest names in the Science Fiction and Futuristic genres. It will take place at the Romance Diva Forum. All are welcome. To get access to the forum you will need to register. 

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com

When I volunteered to blog on the 11^th of each month at the HEA Café, it didn’t dawn on me—at that time—that my first blog would be on 9/11. For those of us in North America and in many other countries on this planet, it’s a somber day of reflection and remembrance of the innocents and heroes who lost their lives.

So let’s talk about heroes because this is, after all, the HEA Café.  

Heroes come in all shapes, sizes, genders, race, religions, philosophies and—when you write science fiction romance as I do—species. The firefighters, EMTS and law enforcement officers who took the stairs of the Twin Towers in New York City that day, the military personnel who rushed into the burning Pentagon offices and the flight crew and passengers on the hijacked jets were of no one belief, no one race. And not a one of them, I’m sure, woke up that morning thinking this was the day to play the hero. Their parts were unscripted. There were no first drafts, no cut-and-paste edits to smooth over the rough parts. And the plot was clearly not written by a romance author because the happy endings were few.

But they were heroes, and at times I think it’s the heroism, more than the tragedy, that continues keeps our interest about that day and the days afterwards. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

For years, the romance novel industry has written about police, firefighter and military heroes—both male and female.  We’ve written about their fears, their failings, their rewards, their loves. We’ve chronicled emergency room doctors and nurses, and civilian and military flight crews. The books of Suzanne Brockmann, Linda Howard, Lindsay McKenna, Cindy Dees and others brought us in to the lives of “trained” heroes. Unsuspecting heroes are found books by authors too numerous to list.

And more romance authors than you might be aware of not only write about heroes but are military veterans themselves. The impressive list (along with some terrific Then and Now photos) can be found on the RomVets site: http://www.romvets.com/   This doesn’t include authors, like Lynda Sandoval and Candace Sams,  who’ve worked in law enforcement, or fire and rescue (if someone knows of a site for that, please let me know).

The unexpected challenge of the moment that creates the hero is something that drives many bestsellers. We saw it in real life, on television on September 11, 2001 and if anything, you’d think such stark reality—and with a real lack of happy endings—would have put a serious dent in the desire to be part of the hero business. But military and law enforcement applications rose after 9/11.

I think that says a lot about the human spirit.

I think it also shows the reason why we authors crave happy endings for our heroes. We write about men and women who are pushed beyond their limits, and we want them to succeed. More than succeed, we want them to be rewarded. So we pen happy endings for our heroes. They may be down and dinged-up a bit but they rise, and hope and love rises with them. In a world where happy endings are never a guarantee, we can at least offer a positive outcome in the pages of a book. This police officer, this EMT, this military chaplain, this starship commander will succeed, find love and continue on making the world—or the galaxy—a little better place.

And the world being a better place is something that’s good for everyone.

So as we pass through another remembrance of 9/11 and get back to our regularly scheduled lives—and books—take a moment now and then to think about heroes. The ones we’ve lost. The ones we’ve read about. The ones that are still here. The ones that patrol our streets, staff our emergency rooms, pilot the jets overhead. The ones that run into burning buildings. The ones that stand on foreign soil.

I’ll keep putting them in my books if you’ll keep holding them in your hearts and prayers.  

Every time you hear on the news about people running away from a crazed gunman, remember that someone’s son or daughter in a police uniform is running toward that crazed gunman.

– from What Cops Would Like You To Know, author unknown, posted on various law enforcement sites on the Internet

Namaste, ~Linnea

Linnea Sinclair
www.linneasinclair.com
www.myspace.com/linneasinclair
RITA© Award Winning SF Romance
Bantam Spectra 2005:  FINDERS KEEPERS, GABRIEL’S GHOST, AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS
2007: GAMES OF COMMAND, THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES, SHADES OF DARK