Ready, set? Okay!

Now that yesterday’s WTF inanity is out of the way: the good news.

Yesterday I signed on as a Content Editor for Lyrical Press.

Basically, that means I help authors shape their manuscripts into the best work possible prior to publication, and work with authors for the duration of their careers with Lyrical. I also get to participate in acquisitions, along with the rest of the editing team. It’s not a full-time gig, but it’s one that makes me happy; I love editing. Plus I get to work with the ever-so-fabulous Amanda. (Who’s probably giving me dirty looks right now.)

Lyrical publishes a rather broad range of genre fiction, but primarily romance of some sort or another, ranging from fantasy to paranormal to realism and more. I don’t have my first author yet – but I’m still getting myself oriented with Lyrical’s processes and standards, and meeting the group. Don’t be surprised if, once I do start working with my first author, I start pimping his or her books like mad.

…promise I’ll try not to shill too much, though. Ahem.

But yeah, that was my good news. I’m torn between wiggling happily and being utterly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I need to read just to get started.

Definitely wiggling.

Blog awards?

Okay, looks like I’ve now been tagged for two blog awards and have been entirely lazy in doing something about that, probably because they’re basically memes from hell and “doing something” requires an hour of cadging post bits together. I normally ignore these things and fully expect 75% of those tagged to do the same, but this time I indulged in an effort to not be such an antisocial grouch. (Though the next person to dump one of these on me is dead. I will hunt you down and slap you with fish. Cold, slimy fish.) Allison tagged me for the first: the Sunshine Award, which is…well…c’mon. You guys know me. That’s hilarious. Irony abounds. Rules for the award:

*Put the logo on your blog in your post.
*Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.
*Link the nominees within your post.
*Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blogs.
*Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

It took me a while to actually stop and say, “Wait…out of all the blogs I read, do I actually bloody well talk to a dozen of those people?” Surprisingly, the answer was yes. So here are the twelve people I’m passing the award on to:

1. Anji and her crew over at Cinema Chicks: http://cinemachicks.wordpress.com/
2. Kerry: http://uppington.wordpress.com/
3. Carrie: http://www.carrieclevenger.com/
4. Janet: http://muffintopmommy.wordpress.com/
5. Jinxie: http://jinxiesbabblingblogs.blogspot.com
6. Sabrina: http://coffeequill.blogspot.com/
7. Jennifer: http://www.jenniferambrose.blogspot.com/
8. Lessa: http://gonfalon.org/eclat/
9. Jeffe: http://lovepowerandfairytaleendings.blogspot.com/
10. H.C. Zuerner, also known as the scary hungry kitty: http://kittysbleedingwords.blogspot.com/
11. Wookie’s Girl: http://www.blogger.com/profile/07726231846622344573
12. Slush Pile Hero: http://slushpilehero.wordpress.com

Next, the…uh…”Creative Writer” award, emphasis on the quotes. Which I guess is accurate, since the stories we tell are a big mess of lies. They’re just enjoyable, intricate lies. The rules are a little more complex for this one:

1.)I am to thank the person who tagged me,

2.)Copy and paste the award on my blog,

3.)link to the person who nominated me,

4.)Tell up to 6 lies about myself and one truth.

5.)Tag at leasr 7 people for this award. I tagged 8 because the whole “7″ thing was getting redundant and I despise redundancy.

6.)Post links to their blogs

7.) Comment on each of their blogs to inform them of the nomination.

So, thank you Annarkie. My (sometimes snarky) six lies and one truth, and you get to guess which one is the truth:

1. My name is actually Adrien Luc-Sanders, not Adrien-Luc Sanders. I’m really a woman who married a man with the last name Sanders, but wanted to keep my maiden last name of Luc.

2. I am entirely neurotic about walking on floors in bare feet. As in, I refuse to put my feet in the bed if they’ve touched the floor, because they might contaminate the sheets.

3. Once I came two tequilas away from getting married in Brazil. To a woman.

4. When I was a little boy, I fantasized about having Superman for a boyfriend.

5. I once accepted a dare to eat a live lizard.

6. I’ve left weird things hidden in various places in every apartment I’ve lived in, just to freak out the next renters.

7. I’m really Billy Joel.

And now for my list of seven bloggers to pass the award to:

1. Allison, who bled sunshine all over me. http://mynfel.blogspot.com
2. Kerry, who has a bloody sunflower for her Twitter icon. http://uppington.wordpress.com/
3. Carrie, who rhymes with Kerry but writes bloody stories. No sunshine or sunflowers. http://www.carrieclevenger.com/
4. Janet, also known as MuffinTopMommy, whose Twitter icon sometimes looks like a flower. http://muffintopmommy.wordpress.com/
5. Jinxie, because I’m running out of ways to link these and figured a J-name would work. http://jinxiesbabblingblogs.blogspot.com
6. Sabrina, because her blog name makes me want coffee (and she’s one of my closest friends, not just a fellow writer). http://coffeequill.blogspot.com/
7. Jennifer, just because I like her and completely gave up on the thematic thing. http://www.jenniferambrose.blogspot.com/

…at least I could use part of my list of a dozen for the list of seven, just with a few embellishments.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a crap ton of comments to leave. ~groans~ I have some other good news to share, too, but I’ll save that for tomorrow after I’m done with some paperwork.

So…

…it’s almost mid-February. Is anyone surprised that my outgoing Christmas cards are still sitting on the kitchen counter, addressed and waiting to be stamped and sent out?

1,000 Words a Day: January Breakdown

After starting this 1,000 Words* a Day experiment, I thought I’d see how many words I’ve written since December 31st (I started a day early so I wouldn’t forget) – then break them down between the various stories I’ve worked on, to see where I’ve made the most progress.

TOTAL: 46,163 (?!?!? Was not expecting that number!)

NIHILISM: 11,689
EDGE: 4,450
SHADOW’S VOICE: 4,830
THE THIRTEENTH HOUR: 140
WAKING MAGIC: 2,545
SWITCH: 1,694
ICARUS BURNING: 7,141
GESTALT: 8,212
GEAS: 4,097

Summing up the stories doesn’t reflect the total, because there have been times when I counted words for a day only to erase them the next day and start over from scratch – and some of these are only the amount I wrote on the story in the past month, not the length of the stories overall.

Still…it’s pretty telling, don’t you think? It’s sure as hell indicative of what I need to fix in my writing workflow.

I have enough words written for half a novel, but I don’t have half a novel. I have fragments of several novels.

Which is what I expected out of the first month – and while it’s good to know I can write half a novel in a month (without the reckless lack of premeditation that characterizes NaNoWriMo), this demonstrates more than anything a need for consistency. But that’s why I’m doing this. This an exercise in building discipline, making a habit out of writing every day as a professional should; I may be a pantser, but even pantsers have to have discipline and dedication. That discipline comes in stages: first conditioning to write every day, then conditioning to write decently every day instead of page-vomiting to get to the word count, then conditioning to stay with one story and see it through rather than just waiting for one to strike inspiration and hold my attention long enough to finish. I’d say I’m fairly well along on the first two, and getting close to the third. I’ve told myself I’m going to finish NIHILISM, and that’s that.

So let’s see if I can get a good 30,000 words on NIHILISM in February, ne?

Tangent: Last night I finally saw Avatar. In 3D. Yes, I know I’m late. And while I enjoyed it a hell of a lot, I remembered why I don’t do 3D movies: my eyes hate me for a full 24 hours after. Last night I spent wandering around with my eyes terribly strained, struggling to restore depth perception in a truly three-dimensional world after two and a half hours spent viewing recorded images projected in multiple layered depths of field. I bumped into a lot of things. And this morning my eyes are just sleepy and sore, with a little difficulty focusing on things beyond a certain distance. I came away better than Hikaru, though. By the time we were even halfway through the film, he had a migraine so bad he could barely enjoy the movie.

As for the movie itself: it’s pretty much what I’d heard. Beautifully rendered visuals (slight disconnect between real and CGI, more obvious than people say it is), plot a mashup of about five or six other already-good movies, with your classic “white savior learns the old ways**/plight of the natives” storyline with some heavy-handed Earth Mother / environmentalist / corporate fatcat stuff thrown in.

It was still a damned fun film, with engaging characters and heartfelt emotion. And some damned awesome action. Just because I recognize it for what it is doesn’t mean I didn’t love the hell out of it. (And enjoyed that we ended up rooting for the aliens, not the humans, just like in District 9.) I’d like to see it again, actually.

…just…not in 3D.

Final note: I’m not saying much about the Amazon / MacMillan debacle. Others have already said it far better; just hit Google and you’ll see. But I will say that I was one paycheck away from buying a Kindle, and now I’ve started shopping for a Sony Reader because of this. And I’m not the only one. One consumer’s voice often makes no difference. But anger enough consumers, especially when those consumers are both writers and avid readers…and you’ve basically screwed yourself.

 

 

*I can’t type that without thinking of the “1,000 Words” song from FFX-2, and now it’s stuck in my bloody head.

**That’s the one thing I try not to think too hard about, as it would ruin my enjoyment of the movie since it’s a pet peeve. It wouldn’t make me as touchy as films like Last of the Mohicans and The Last Samurai, but that could be because oh, hey, I’m not part blue cat-person. But still. From the perspective of a non-white person, those movies can be a little insulting. And I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and saying LALALALA because dammit I LIKED Avatar and I want to keep liking it.

Make up a title for this. Be creative.

I’ve written two posts and then deleted the drafts because they weren’t quite right, weren’t really things I felt like discussing here…or they seemed preachy without any real point. I haven’t been blogging much because really, there’s only so many times that you can hear “I’m working on X story, I had problems with X story, I fixed them / I moved on to Y story when I got stuck.” So I’ve only been blogging when I feel I have something worth saying, and for the past week most of what I’ve had to say about writing, querying, etc. has been things I prefer to keep to myself. So…I guess, just for the sake of posting once this week, I’ll just pop on a vague status update in listy-list form:

• Haven’t missed a day on the 1k a day challenge yet.
• Discovered this may not be the best for my writing process, as forcing it is a good way to kill a story. Live and learn. Hitting the goal of 1,000 words doesn’t make them stink any less when all those words are trash. Eau de Literary Roadkill.
• Revived NIHILISM in story form. Go ahead and groan, Sihaya and Indikaze. SHINJI THE ANGSTBUNNY LIVES.
• Started watching Sita Sings the Blues, which has amazing animation and music.
• Got a few more partial requests on SHADOW’S BREATH.
• Got a few rejections, too. Either nice personal notes saying it’s a good story, I’m a good writer, but it’s not for them…or the usual “dear author” form letters. Onward and upward.
• Told my doubts they can kiss my shiny metal ass, and figured I can try to write a better story while waiting to see if an agent will pick up SHADOW’S BREATH.
• …though I also finished chapter one of SHADOW’S VOICE. Not working on that seriously, though. Sell SB first, then worry about the sequel. Although Roman is now popping up in my dreams. In Cabo. With the Kingpin. Yes, from Marvel comics. You really don’t want to know.
• Got really sick of hearing a thousand contradictory, argumentative predictions on the future of publishing. Also, the Apple tablet. Sweet honking baby jesus.
• Made some shiny new writer friends on Twitter. The large majority of them are batshit insane. That’s okay. I fit right in.
• Got a few good nibbles on editorial jobs; response so far has been positive. Looking good. And behaving myself in public while I try to get a foot in the door. Which means I probably shouldn’t be calling people batshit insane.
• Took a stab at writing a classic romance novel.
• Failed spectacularly and hilariously. I’m a little rusty on what goes where when there’s a woman involved.
• Realized drab, blow-by-blow lists like this are dull as hell.
• Signed off.

Is this really what you want in a man?

Guilty not-so-secret confession: I love romance novels. I started reading them as a boy, when they were my only outlet to secretly explore certain things that confused the hell out of me. As an adult I have a little-indulged soft spot for romance, and adore a smart, engaging romance novel with a good mixture of conflict, wit, heart-warming moments, and of course the steamy pages that make romance novels what they are. In my later years I’ve grown a bit more discerning about what makes it onto my shelf of favorites, though; it’s not enough for the books to have lavish descriptions of period dress and a swarthy, broad-shouldered, swoon-worthy hero. I need characters I like, relationships I can understand, love scenes that don’t make me snortgiggle at the euphemisms (or if they do, it’s with that sort of charming self-awareness that many exhibit), and plots that won’t unravel with the simple question of, “Well, why didn’t you just tell him that like a normal person would, saving this entire intricate mess from happening?”

So lately I’ve been rereading some old favorites, as well as exploring a few new titles from the authors of said favorites. Some are modern, some are historical, some are the classic bodice-rippers, but in a large number of them I’m noticing a disturbing trend:

Controlling, domineering, irrational men with very few redeeming traits. They’re insensitive, bullheaded, temperamental, impossible to talk to with any level of honesty, misogynistic, arrogant to the point of self-delusion, sadistic, prone to using physical force to get their way, borderline (and often outright) cruel, difficult to reason with once they’ve made a conclusion, and generally in some position of authority over the heroine’s life and well-being – whether placed there by others, rank, an unfortunate and perilous situation, or themselves. These traits, while superficially infuriating to the heroine, in the end only serve to endear him to her as signs of what a man he is, a true man’s man, an uncompromising force of nature who will protect her and eventually give her many fat babies. And naturally his flaws are forgivable because he’s handsome as the devil and the most amazing lover on earth, and he knows it.

I get the lesson: love isn’t perfect, but it can pave the way for accepting a few character flaws in your mate. And I’m aware that all these traits can exist to some measure in real men, in a variety of concentrations and combinations. And I’m aware that many women (and men) have different tastes in what makes a man attractive. But seeing all these traits combined to such extremes that they make an unappealing caricature of a dominating man-child, I have to ask…

Is this really what women want in a fantasy man?