Yesterday was a comedy of errors, ameliorated somewhat by my friend Red Argyle and his girlfriend coming over for family bowling night. We had a lot of fun, and I tried a new recipe. It came out very well, even if I couldn’t find flank steak.

The cavalcade of errors included my kitchen sink suddenly refusing to work, despite Drano and plunging. I am proud to report that this morning I took the trap off, cleaned everything out, swore five or six times, and restored order. At least under-the-sink gets clean and now I know how to take the trap off. So, it’s all good.

And now my website is back up and working again! Huzzah! So, am announcing the winner of a copy of Betrayals–remember that? And the winner, picked with the help of Random.org, is…

…comment #12, Terry! Who said:

Throwing up in my hotel room (very bad fish from the hotel restaurant) prevented me from likely being being ensnared from what I hope was a beautiful Russian spy (lovely phone voice).

This was in Moscow during the cold war and those things did happen back then.

I have no idea if she really was a “swallow” (old spy slang term, look it up ) and I certainly was no catch but the whole meeting sounded wrong (too long to tell here) and before I could make up my mind, the fish decided to swim to freedom through my throat.

Whether it was luck, bad luck and/or a really complex (and likely weird) conspiracy by the soviets remains unknown.

Terry, if you’ll email me your snail mail address, your signed and personalized copy of Betrayals will be on its way to you! Thanks for commenting!

There will be another giveaway, and I’m working on the most current installation of the newsletter, where there will be yet another giveaway. But first, today, I have to get out to Home Despot. I need plumber’s putty, some dowels, and a snake.

Don’t ask. I just like to be prepared.

Related posts:

1. News! And The Giveaway!
2. What A World, What A World…
3. Win Betrayals!

At my blog today I wrote about how deciding not to engage can save one’s life. Here, because I am feeling both introspective and ambitious, I want to talk about writing saving one’s life. Really, any art can save you, but writing’s what I know. So here goes.

I got my first intimation of the power of art while I was a teenager. I was dating a man seven years my senior, who had a taste for very young girls and using his fists on the same. Yes, I was stupid–but what fourteen-year-old isn’t? I had no means of measuring the threat this predator represented, and I had no other benchmark for affection other than abuse. As a matter of fact, the kid my own age I dated before that was so nice I got nervous and broke it off with him, because he didn’t hit me. It just didn’t feel right if someone wasn’t whaling on me.

So there I was, getting it from both ends, and I discovered alcohol. I’m sure I was drunk through most of my junior-high and high-school. I still pulled a respectable GPA–academics were, at that point, still a fun game for me and I have never lost my taste for learning. But I was desperate. There was literally nowhere I could turn. I had grown used to keeping secrets by then, and staying on top of this pile of things I couldn’t talk about was wearying, to say the least.

This was also the time I was reading (please don’t laugh) Uncanny X-Men. A LOT. Especially when Claremont was writing and Lee was drawing. The idea of being a mutant, with these fantastical powers and loneliness, was very appealing.

So I did what any redblooded junior writer would.

I started writing fanfic in spiral notebooks. Obsessively. I even cut back on the drinking so I had more time to write. It started out so innocently, a story about Wolverine and a mysterious assassin who seemed to heal just as fast as he did. Then there was the Colossus-Storm mix, because I thought Forge was a wimp and Ororo deserved someone nice. Then I started interjecting my own characters–Mary Sues and Gary Stus, to be sure, but they felt good at the time.

Things crept into my writing. Descriptions of punches I’d recorded in my diary, things I noticed about the world, snippets of conversation I’d heard. I cut back on the drinking even more to have more time to write. I wrote in the bathroom in the middle of the night, my heart in my mouth, sneaking out of my boyfriend’s parties to write on the porch, hiding my notebooks in my locker because my mother went through my diaries at home once or twice and administered a whuppin’ because of what she found.

The writing was always there. I could take almost anything because I was thinking, when I get by myself I’ll write about this. Fixing my attention on that was a disassociative trick to be sure, but it worked. It gave me a future to look forward to.

Eventually, the fanfic stories grew thin. I wanted other characters, I wanted other settings. I had this idea for a book…a fantasy book. And with my heart in my mouth, I tried writing it. Took me years. And I started not writing the X-Men stuff so much, and started writing other little slushy snippets of things. Here and there. Bit by bit.

I moved away from home and in with another boyfriend. That didn’t work out so well. I bounced around different homes, different relationships, writing all the while. An old friend died and I cried with my notebook in my lap, struggling to put the hurt into words so I could get some sort of handle on it–any handle would do, I just needed one.

I found it in the first few paragraphs of another novel–the infamous vampire novel, of course. Which, like the First Fantasy, will never see publication because it’s so sloppy and uneven. But my God, it felt good to write, and it felt good to bleed off some of the pressure of guilt and grief into the structure of a story.

I’ve gone through a marriage and a half since then, and the birth of two children. And several other life events. Writing has been there all the time–the friend that gives me strength to go on when I don’t think I can. The way of transforming the world to make it reasonable, or at least a little less scary.

A few Decembers ago I was in a bad car accident. (Twisty road, nighttime, a deer on its way home and me trying not to kill Bambi.) Hanging upside-down in the truck’s cab, one part of me was screaming in hysterical fear. The largest, Mommy-based part of me was calmly saying, first let’s get this seatbelt off and kick out a window.

Another part of me, the writer, was considering all of this and taking notes. So that’s what this feels like. Damn, it’s good material.

I was fairly calm, all things considered.

It all started with me and a notebook, the pen in my hand and my heart in my mouth, daring to do that most subversive of acts–tell my own story. To honestly and simply tell any story is an act of magic, an act of liberation. It is a lifering when you’re drowning, a way to scramble for higher ground when the water rises. It is sorcery, a way of remaking the world. I felt like a mutant when I was scribbling in those spiral-bound notebooks. Dangerous, lonely, and socially sneered-at–but with a secret power, a talent I could use for good or for evil, something I could do.

And each one of those words saved my life, over and over again. Each was a step up out of the abyss of believing myself worthless, a waste of skin and breath. Even today, each word, over and over, saves my life. It is a net when I’m falling, a rope when I’m drowning, a reminder to be calm when I’m in the middle of smashed metal and glass, smelling gasoline and so scared I can barely breathe.

I once received a fan letter from a woman who rescues elderly cocker spaniels. She said that some of my books had given her hope, that sometimes when she was feeling down about the plight of these poor dogs abandoned by their owners she could read them and forget, or read them and get a little bit of hope. Just a tiny sprinkle.

I cried.

Because if writing can save my own life, and if it can give someone else a little bit of hope, then I consider it one of the greatest acts of magic I’m capable of. Getting paid for it is nice, sure–I have kids to feed, after all. But if something that saved my life can also give someone else a little bit of hope…that’s damn precious. If even one person feels the world is a better place because of this story I’ve told as well as I’m able, I consider my time on earth well-spent.

And that’s really all this writer asks for.

Related posts:

1. Life and Art
2. The Examined Life
3. Why Do We Do What We Do

My beautiful weekend suddenly sprouted Things To Do like a wet log in the forest sprouting mushrooms. Not even the good kind of mushrooms either–not edible or, ahem, fun ones. No, these mushrooms are slimy and gunky and poisonous and…oh, yeah, some of you may be trying to eat. Sorry about that.

Well, it’s better than knocking around the house bored. And after Friday I’ll be able to get back into the swing of yoga. That will help tremendously, I suspect. The deep breathing and stretching does wonders.

The Little Prince has fallen in love with, of all things, Mozart. He has a Mozart CD that must be played during schoolwork or at bedtime. If we can’t find the Mozart CD, it is a tragedy comparable to the sinking of the Titanic. Complete with tears, teeth-gnashing, the whole nine. Funny little guy.

And now, for your chance to win a copy of Betrayals! Don’t forget, you can also win a copy over at the Deadline Dames–the Readers on Deadline event ends Wednesday Nov 12th.

But here, it’s a little different. You know I’m doing this luck experiment, right? And it seems to be working. So I want to hear about the luckiest thing that ever happened to you, dear Reader. Put it right in the comments HERE. The contest closes Saturday the 7th at midnight, and I’ll use Random.org to pick a winner from the comment numbers. Please note that I can only send prizes to US addresses. (Please do not tell me what a horrible person I am for not being able to send stuff overseas, mmmmkay?) You will get a signed, personalized copy of Betrayals. And if that ain’t cool, I don’t know what is.

See you tomorrow–the Friday post will be late, because I’m due at the airport in the morning. (Don’t ask.) But I will be around.

Now, tell me about that lucky thing.

Related posts:

1. Win Betrayals!
2. A Small Digression…
3. The Personal Slush Pile, And A Contest!

To enter, go here, to the Deadline Dames. I’m offering a copy of the second Strange Angels book (the one that isn’t even out yet) as a prize for Dame Rinda’s Readers on Deadline #9. Go, have fun! Participants have a shot at winning the book! Signed, no less.

I will be doing other giveaways starting this Friday, both for my blog AND for my newsletter. I don’t have many copies, so stay tuned and keep nimble.

I’m keeping this short and sweet today, because things are crazy with a capital cray-cray. They’ll calm down soon–I’m just putting my head down and moving steadily onward. Some days that’s the only way you get anything done.

Related posts:

1. Shiny Betrayals!
2. Win A Copy Of HP
3. Contest Winners!

On the bright side, this will give my discipline a little extra boost. I can always use that.

So if you don’t see me around for a while, I’m probably hunched feverishly over a keyboard somewhere, tryi like hell to get 3K a day out. My brain is going to feel like a wrung-out sponge at the end of this.

Buckle up, baby. We’re going to ride.

Related posts:

1. Time To Wheeze Out The Old Brain
2. Not Funny Anymore
3. Ladies And Gentlemen, Drums Please…

Critique is like marriage counseling. One does not want to admit that one has done something that matters so much less than perfectly. Critique in a workshop/convention setting is even more dangerous, because there is the added fun of exhaustion, convention emotion, and fluid interpersonal rules.

I very rarely do critique sessions, mostly because I have beta readers I’m comfortable with. And I hate having to pick apart a stranger’s work, unless it’s in the comfort of my home where I can read a book and bitch in peace. Plus, in a group, there’s the whole group dynamic to worry about, and I’m usually far more concerned with people getting along than with the work at hand. Which is why I work alone, I reckon.

But I realize other people feel differently about it. So, in the interests of making things easier (always one of my favorite things to do) I’m going to offer some thoughts and tips about critique sessions.

Recently I participated in a Clarion-style critique session, where the more experienced critiquer goes first, everyone gets five minutes, and the writer is only allowed to respond during the brainstorming session. A fellow published author and I** were critiquing two unpublished authors, and the two unpubs were critiquing each other too. Which is a good way to get a range of advice.

One critique session went smoothly, the other not so smoothly. The one that went smoothly had an author who managed to keep his mouth shut and really listen to the advice being offered despite it being about one of his babies. He held his peace and during the brainstorming mentioned that he had majored in drama, so he could understand our concerns about dialogue. He asked our advice about specific ways to solve the problems inherent in the stories and took notes. Not only did the story impress me, but (and this is critical) the author’s taking of the critique impressed the editor in me. The guy seemed like he would be easy to work with, and that leads me to the first major thing critique sessions should never be used for.

Pitching. Please, dear God, DO NOT pitch your story to a published author or an editor during the critique session. It’s in bad form, especially to the others being critiqued. If they like your story, they may give you submissions tips, but that’s as far as it goes. Critique is supposed to make you a better writer, not sell your fantasy epic.

It is vital as well that you not seek to explain your story. If you have to explain your story during a critique session, you haven’t done your job as a writer. The story needs to stand without explanation, and most critique sessions will show you where the weak spots are that keep a story from doing so.

I don’t think any writer really loves to critique. We understand how dreadful a feeling it is to have one’s baby flayed and pinned to the wall, the flaws on open display. (Note: there are some toxic critiquers who delight in emotional banditry, insulting others’ stories. This post isn’t about them.) We don’t want to tell someone else what is wrong with their story–but we will in a critique session, because the information is valuable. It could be the difference between the slush pile and a contract. Try to remember that the critiquers by and large are overcoming their own natural reticence to help your story.

Above all, don’t get loud. If you disagree, wait for your turn and say, “I disagree.” But come on–if two of your critique partners agree on something, it’s something you need to seriously take a look at, not disagree with. At the very least there is a problem that might need tweaking in your text. But do not get loud. Do not blame your editor, or say that your story is for a small select audience who will Understand.

Because that sort of shit means you’ll never get published. An editor sees that sort of behavior and thinks, thank God I don’t have to work with that. You’re in the slush pile regardless of the quality of your work, and that is something no writer needs. Conversely, you can never tell when an editor will recognize your name and associate it with the great way you took a critique. Remember, editors are people too…and if they have to make a choice between 1. moderate quality and a person who’s easy to work with, and 2. higher quality but an a$$hole to work with, guess what they will choose most of the time? (Hint: it isn’t #2.)

Critiquers understand this is a delicate and explosive situation***. That’s why there are Rules. The Rules are there to take the emotion out or at least tone it down, to mitigate the hurt, and give a framework that makes it easier for us to be human beings instead of screaming emotion-driven banshees. Of course, Rules are only as good as the people playing by them or breaking them…but that’s beside the point.

So, things not to do during a critique:

* Don’t try to explain your story.
* Don’t get loud or combative, or distraught.
* Do not blame your editor, your beta reader, the sad state of literacy in America, the stupidity of readers, etc., for the fact that your story is inoperable.
* Do not talk when you’re not supposed to.
* Do not take the critique as a personal attack.
* Don’t try to sell or pitch the story.
* Above all, do not be rude.

Things to do during a critique:

* Take notes. You won’t remember everything without help.
* Keep your trap shut when you’re supposed to.
* Try to divorce yourself from the story for an hour. The clearer and more dispassionate you can be, the better.
* Be polite. Be polite, be polite, be polite.
* Thank the critiquers.
* Don’t ask how you can sell the story. Ask how you can make the story better.
* It is perfectly acceptable to ask for clarification. Use this with caution, though, as it is easy to slide down the rabbit hole into Defending Yer Story.

As usual, thy mileage will vary, my ducks. Take all my advice with a grain of salt, since this is only my personal perception, etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

Disclaimer done. Good luck out there.

* Heh. I make this joke only because I saw “kretek” on every packet of clove cigarettes I ever smoked.
**Not that I believe published authors are “higher” on the food chain. It’s just that they found something that worked and so, are uniquely placed to give advice.
***At least, the good ones do. There are still those emotional bandits, who are still another post.

Related posts:

1. Kill Your Darlings–Send In The Man With The Gun
2. Theme Songs, Quotations, And Lucidity
3. Writing Can Save Your Life

And, yesterday, guess what happened? I was just hanging out on my front step, minding my own business, when FedEx dropped off a box. Guess what was in it. NO, GUESS! Okay, I’ll tell you.

Copies of Betrayals, that’s what!

Isn’t the new cover gorgeous? I really like this one. It’s due out November 17th, and I’m so glad to get a few of them early.

Of course, the Princess screamed in anticipation and grabbed one, and last night retired to bed with it. “I can’t wait to find out what happens to Dru!” she told me at least five times during dinner.

It’s nice to please even one reader.

So, I’ll be running giveaways, I guess. Stay tuned–I’ll probably give one away this Friday on my regular writing post. And of course readers of my newsletter, The Dark Side, get special giveaways just for them. I’m just sayin’.

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1. I Must Smell It
2. Win Betrayals!
3. Seasonal Writing

When I was running at the track over at the middle school, I would always dread this time of year. Because American football tryouts and practices would be going on in the field inside the track. I hated the aura of effort and misery over the young kids. I hated how the parents would yell from the sidelines, looking to live vicariously through their poor kids instead of working to live as adults. I absolutely loathed how the “coaches” would yell abuse at the kids. If someone talked to my kid that way, there would be consequences. Someone would lose their job and I’d make a lot of trouble for the school. I realize I am an administrator’s worst nightmare. So be it. Nobody verbally abuses my children, thank you.

Sometimes, when the wind is right this time of year, I can hear the whistle blowing and yelling from the middle school. I’m glad I have the treadmill and I do my running in the morning now. My heart would ache for the poor kids every time I went running over there during American football season.

This little trip down Memory Lane was spurred by this Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker, titled Football, Dogfighting, and Brain Damage. Go read it. (Seriously, go. I’ll wait here.)

Catchy title, isn’t it? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The first brain McKee received was from a man in his mid-forties who had played as a linebacker in the N.F.L. for ten years. He accidentally shot himself while cleaning a gun. He had at least three concussions in college, and eight in the pros. In the years before his death, he’d had memory lapses, and had become more volatile. McKee immunostained samples of his brain tissue, and saw big splotches of tau all over the frontal and temporal lobes. If he hadn’t had the accident, he would almost certainly have ended up in a dementia ward. (Malcolm Gladwell)

Ten years, okay. But surely if a kid stops early they don’t get as damaged. Right? You think it’s okay for a kid to play this “sport”? Really?

McKee got up and walked across the corridor, back to her office. “There’s one last thing,” she said. She pulled out a large photographic blowup of a brain-tissue sample. “This is a kid. I’m not allowed to talk about how he died. He was a good student. This is his brain. He’s eighteen years old. He played football. He’d been playing football for a couple of years.” She pointed to a series of dark spots on the image, where the stain had marked the presence of something abnormal. “He’s got all this tau. This is frontal and this is insular. Very close to insular. Those same vulnerable regions.” This was a teen-ager, and already his brain showed the kind of decay that is usually associated with old age. “This is completely inappropriate,” she said. “You don’t see tau like this in an eighteen-year-old. You don’t see tau like this in a fifty-year-old.” (Malcolm Gladwell)

Yeah. Harmless, aggressive fun. Well, what about those super helmets that are supposed to be coming out now, that are supposed to cut down on brain trauma?

“People love technological solutions,” Nowinski went on. “When I give speeches, the first question is always: ‘What about these new helmets I hear about?’ What most people don’t realize is that we are decades, if not forever, from having a helmet that would fix the problem. I mean, you have two men running into each other at full speed and you think a little bit of plastic and padding could absorb that 150 gs of force?” (Malcolm Gladwell)

The most maddening part of the Gladwell article comes when he’s interviewing Ira Casson, who “co-chairs an N.F.L. committee on brain injury.” Casson is careful to engage in lawyerly doublespeak, and avoid all real responsibility.

“We certainly know from boxers that the incidence of C.T.E. is related to the length of your career,” he went on. “So if you want to apply that to football—and I’m not saying it does apply—then you’d have to let people play six years and then stop. If it comes to that, maybe we’ll have to think about that. On the other hand, nobody’s willing to do this in boxing. Why would a boxer at the height of his career, six or seven years in, stop fighting, just when he’s making million-dollar paydays?” He shrugged. “It’s a violent game. I suppose if you want to you could play touch football or flag football. For me, as a Jewish kid from Long Island, I’d be just as happy if we did that. But I don’t know if the fans would be happy with that. So what else do you do?” (Malcolm Gladwell)

In other words, as long as there’s money to be squeezed out of the public’s hunger to see men beat the shit out of each other, people like Casson will be all too willing to profit. The fact that it’s killing people, driving them to dementia and scarring their brains, doesn’t matter. There’s cash to be had. As long as people will pay, hey, people will play. And that’s it.

The problem is that this breaks the implicit contract between players of American football and the “managers” and “coaches” who push them to give their all. If you are going to push a dog, a child, or a man to give you their best effort, their everything, it is incumbent upon you, as Gladwell points out, not to march them off the end of a cliff. It is not enough to “lead.” One must lead responsibly. Why is this simple fact not taken into account? Oh, yeah. That little thing called profit.

Now, when I hear the whistles floating over from the middle school and the sound of kids flinging themselves at each other, I am going to be even more disgusted. If I’m ever over at the track while “practice” is going on, Jesus, I don’t know. It’s going to be difficult to watch. There are those kids, thinking that their parents and coaches know best. They wouldn’t ask us to do this, or let us do this, if it was dangerous, right?

Right?

Right?

^[1] To me, real football is what Yanks call soccer. American football is something different. YMMV

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1. Random WTF Thursday
2. Three Strikes–You’re Female
3. Caulfield and Continuity

I am in the stage of writing a Kismet book where I have an acute attack of nerves. Nobody’s going to like it, I don’t know what I’m doing, who do I think I am… The usual. The good thing is that I’ve done this so many times by now that I’m prepared for the emotional upheaval. The bad news is…emotional upheaval. And I’ve been writing this book under acid-test conditions, as it were.

I just keep reminding myself: if I could go through pregnancy, 11+ years of being a mother, and getting published in the first place, this is small potatoes. Well, maybe small yams. Or something. I’ve done this before, I can do it again.

Last night I did some yoga on the Wii. It was actually really cool. I’m avoiding Downward Dog (the trainer tells you to put half the weight on your arms, instead of keeping most of it in your legs) and the shoulderstand (what, do I look like I shoulderstand? Not on your life, buddy). But the Palm Tree, Sun Salutation, Grounded V, Chair Pose? Oh yeah. Those I can do. And I feel so good after it’s finished–I think it’s the deep breathing.

Of course, doing yoga with a head cold is hilarious. If only because of the noises one’s nose makes during the deep breathing section of the festivities.

And now, because I’m sure you’re bored of hearing about All That, a link!

Very short stories, courtesy of Wired. com. I love these, especially Margaret Atwood’s. I found a book of 50-word stories once, including one (maybe by Chekhov?) about a woman named for a wolf. When you have so few words, each one counts for more than itself.

And with that, I’m taking myself off to a lunch of tomato soup and yesterday’s bread. Yum. I just wish I could taste it through this damn cold.

Related posts:

1. What A World, What A World…
2. To Get Another Day Done
3. Visible Cold, Vanishing Point

So this morning I’m logy. Enjoying the rain coming down outside, it’s starring the puddles over and over again. It makes me feel all nice and cozy, nevermind sniffles or the mud that’s sure to be tracked in.

I’ve finished reading Kage Baker’s Company novels (at least, I think Sons of Heaven is the last one) and a couple books of short stories in the Company universe. I think Baker really got her feet under her with Mendoza In Hollywood , and after reading the anthologies I’ve found the immortal I identify closest with is Lewis. Though I’d probably get stuck with Joseph’s job.

Anyway, I’ve moved on to Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study In Scarlet and finally managed to get past the slog in the early part of The Talented Mr. Ripley. I couldn’t watch the Ripley movie, it was just too slow for me.

So today is for light exercise, wordcount (I’ve reached the point where I have to read the beginning of the current book so I can pick up the threads and start tying them off) and a little bit of reading. And chicken soup with tons of garlic. Thank goodness I’m feeling more like cooking again.

But more about that tomorrow.

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3. Quiet Monday