image by ba1969 on sxc.hu

Winner: Rebecca Enzor
Rebecca posted about her floating-head syndrome, and her love of dialogue. I guess I’ll be seeing both when I crit her full. ;P

And let’s not forget second-place:

Runner-Up: Julie Weathers
Julie will be receiving a three-chapter critique, and maybe a little help working on that habit of writing things out of order.

I’ll be emailing the winners tomorrow to request your manuscripts, or you can email me at adrien-luc(at)entangledpublishing(dot)com if you don’t want to wait.

As promised, here’s the top 5 comments, and my response:

1. Liana Brooks
My worst writing habit is TWITTER.

I turn it on to check the news in the morning and it’s open all day. I’ll write a few paragraphs, and then go chat with other authors. Write a little more, and then check out someone’s new book they tweeted about. At this point I’m almost positive I have a serious Twitter addiction.

You’d think the answer to this would be to close Twitter – Tweetdeck, your browser, whatever. But they’re still right there, waiting to be opened again. Drives me out of my mind, because I do this too. All the time. There’s only one thing that really works for me: writing in TextRoom. TextRoom is a full-screen text editor that blocks out everything else and cuts down to the minimum needed to write. There are other full-screen editors, like Q10 and DarkRoom, but I prefer TextRoom because it allows rich text formatting instead of NotePad-style plain text, making it easier to deal with when I copy to Word to save in .doc format. It also makes sure I can’t see those windows in my taskbar, or the damn Twhirl notifications – and it helps keep me on track with daily wordcount goals, percentage trackers, etc.

Or, you know, you could try this thing called self-discipline. I don’t advocate it. It’s terribly dull and annoying. God knows I don’t have any. Oh hey, someone just tweeted at me…

2. L.S. Murphy
Besides checking my email every thirty seconds or so, I overuse the heart as an emotional cue. You would think my characters should see a cardiologist as much as their hearts beat, drop, slam, or dissolve in the pits of their stomachs. *Sigh* The heart wants what the heart wants…

This is a problem I see rather often, actually, and it’s hard not to fall back on the heart as an indicator of emotion. We’re ruled by our hearts, and everyone understands what it means when the heart stops, stumbles, races. We know the feeling. We share it. So it’s not always bad to use the heart as a way to convey emotion – but you also have a great opportunity here to really strike your readers with something unique, something they’ve often felt but never been quite aware of it. In one story I read, a nervous character curled her toes up inside her shoes–but she didn’t focus on the cliched toes curling. Instead she focused on how uncomfortable it was when the knuckles of her toes pushed against the insides of her shoes, and the fabric on the insoles bunched up in the creases. It made it more real for me, because when I scrunch my toes up nervously, I feel the same thing, but never really think about it.

When you’re conveying emotion in a scene through physical cues, stop and close your eyes. Put yourself in the scene, and try to picture everything. Maybe the taste of the air, breathed in through the mouth instead of the nose because the character’s panting with fright. If they’re blushing, maybe their neck is burning instead of their face, because they’re blushing just that hard. Angry? Forget clenching fists or tension in the shoulders. What about that hard pull of sinew in the solar plexus as the body prepares for action? The point is, we don’t just feel emotion with our hearts. We feel it with our entire bodies. We react from the tips of our eyelashes to the tips of our toes. It’s not something we normally think about, but if you’re going to write convincing emotional responses, you have to.

If you’re having trouble imagining from your perspective, watch emotionally charged movies. They can’t always rely on the beating heart unless they use special sound effects; what they have to rely on is body language and visual cues. Look for those cues, and how the actors convey emotion. Imagine what those cues must feel like – the sensations involved, etc. Use that for a frame of reference when trying to break out of the typical heart-shaped box. (Go ahead. Groan. I know you want to.)

3. Tamara Gill
My worst writing habit would have to be the use of adverb tags with dialogue. And I’m a really lazy writer…punctuation, what’s that?

Okay, the laziness I can’t help you with. Punctuate your sentences, dammit. Unless you like watching my head explode.

…

Don’t answer that.

Anyway, on the adverbs: don’t beat yourself up over it too much. One or two here and there? Actually not that bad…as long as it’s only one or two. When every dialogue tag is “he said softly” and “she said loudly,” it’s a problem. The fun thing about the English language is that it’s ridiculously full of nuance and has about fifty different words for everything, many with different inflections and subtle variations. There’s probably a verb out there for that “said + adverb” combo.

Obviously these two are easy: saying something softly can be murmuring or whispering, while saying something loudly can be shouting or yelling or even screeching, depending on the tone you want. Choosing the right verb can go a long way towards defining tone and even characterization, more so than tacking on any adverb. Just think about the difference between shouting and screeching. Both involve saying something loudly, urgently, but one is aggressive and almost imperative, while the other is high-pitched and can seem angry, bitchy, hysterical, or even panicked, depending on context.

The right verb is out there. You just have to look for it.

4. Sarah Robinson
I tend to overwrite. My manuscript as it sits is at 100,000 words. Young adult Contemporary. I know I need to get it below 80,000 to make it acceptable to agents, but I can’t seem to part with much more. I need fresh eyes.

…my first YA novel (which will never see the light of day) was 135k. Yeah. I know. That’s frightening.

Two tips on how to get around this. One, plan for it to be 75k. If you’re not a planner, that may be hard, but if you have that goal in the back of your mind, it forces you to consider what’s really necessary as you write. It gives you a little leeway for that 80k limit, too.

Another way, though, is to refuse to allow yourself any internal monologue as you write. None. Every time you catch yourself doing it, delete it. Write only the action and dialogue, as straightforward as possible. Don’t even tell us if your MC is wondering what another character is doing. In your next draft, you can go in and add that where it’s necessary – but only where it’s necessary. Most of the time it’s internal monologue and exposition bogging us down, but we tend to write less of it if we’re adding it in after the fact and trying to figure out the best place to fit it into seamless action.

5. Kathryn Sheridan Kupanoff
My worst writing habit? Ugh. I could give you a million, but since you asked for one, I’ll settle for long-ass sentences when I’m on a roll, and just can’t seem to find that period, and how could I stop this train of thought when the character’s mind seems to be going here and there, and what did the beginning of the sentence have to do with this? That’s why it’s always good to reread, kids. Periods are your friends (also told me by my health teacher in high school, but I don’t think it was relevant to this question).

…I admit I picked this one not because I had anything useful to say, but because it made me laugh until I choked. You know how to fix this one. Okay. Well. Maybe you don’t. If you don’t? One action per sentence. Seriously. Go back to baby steps, and write very simple subject-verb-object sentences. Don’t let yourself do anything else, no matter what. In edits, you can combine into more complex sentence structures. The point isn’t to write in a simplistic fashion; it’s to train yourself to break your thoughts up and present them in an organized fashion, so that the more you practice, the more you’ll be able to write concisely and oh hey this sentence is getting a little long here and…

…yeah. Maybe I need to take my own advice.

And that’s it for now. Keep an eye out for two new contests soon: one that’ll show you how to tighten your story’s hook, and one that’ll give you a chance to be a secondary character in my upcoming book, From the Ashes.

In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out at the Romance Author Hotspot 2011 holiday bash from 12.24.11 to 1.1.12, giving away free books and just chatting, so feel free to drop by – especially since RAH is giving away a free Kindle!

Probably not the choices most would expect me to make. Most would expect me to acquire the well-written one, reject the undeveloped one, and send an R&R for the average one, right?

Wrong, because those aren’t the only factors that affect my decisions.

Some of it has to do with technicalities. The sub with beautiful writing just didn’t suit the Ever After or Flirt lines. The R&R had a good voice, but the plot wasn’t where it needed to be if I was going to put the work into honing the author’s writing. The full request looked like it might be a good commercial fit for the lines.

But there’s something more intangible than that. Something that feels right; you just know it when you read it, but you can never really explain it in a single word. Some people have called it a click; others a spark. I don’t think either of those is correct. Clicks and sparks are instantaneous, singular things, entirely fleeting – while this is something more deeply woven, interlaced into every page of the story, lingering with you and telling you, deep down in your gut, that this is the one.

This knowledge isn’t something that can be taught, but it’s something that can be acquired with time and experience. It’s a matter of instinct, and the more time you spend acquiring and editing, the more you learn to trust that instinct. That instinct will make you reject a book that might sell 500,000 copies for another publisher, but that you know would completely tank with yours. That same instinct will make you pick up a book dozens of others have passed over, and see the potential not just in the story, but as a good fit for your publisher, their capacity to market it, and current industry trends.

As a writer, there’s a similar instinct that tells you when a story isn’t working, and warns you to change course before you write yourself into a corner. To be honest, some writers don’t have that instinct. Some writers will get an idea in their heads and charge forward, convinced that no matter what they do to the story, it’s made entirely of pink sparkle ponies and glitter farts because they’re writing it and that makes it just the bestest thing ever lolololol. These are usually new writers who haven’t developed their literary palates, and haven’t acquired the instinctive, almost subconscious knowledge of good story development that comes from not only practicing your craft, but reading widely to understand the craft as a whole.

You might scoff at that, but don’t. I scoffed at wine tasting until I tried it. I swear to you it all tasted like dry, bitter crap to me…at first. I didn’t know what all these pretentious douchemonkeys around me were talking about. Oaky. Nutty. Full-bodied. Fruity. Whatever. I was fruitier than that crap, and you don’t even want to know about the time I embarrassed myself asking, “What the f*** are tannins?” Red wine was red wine, and it was nasty.

Slowly, though, I started to notice the difference. I started to pick up the subtle undercurrents that could hint to a wine’s age, fermentation techniques, numerous other factors that shaped the flavor in almost indefinable yet still distinctive ways. It didn’t make me like red wine, but it made me appreciate it. It made me understand the subtleties of flavor, until I could instinctively tell a good vintage from a bad one even if I was looking for the first opportunity to spit it the hell out.

Maybe I should’ve used scotch for this example. I actually like scotch.

Anyway. The point is that you think you know everything about taste until you realize you don’t. I still don’t know everything. For example, even though I read literary fiction in my off time, I’m not devoted enough to it to trust my instincts. I’d never acquire literary fiction, because my tastes just aren’t honed enough. I don’t have the instinct for it.

I have, however, spent a rather long time developing my instinct for commercial genre fiction. And what I look for when reviewing subs is a writer who has that same instinct, and trusts it to tell him or her when the story is going in the wrong direction. A writer who uses that instinct to tell a story with an engaging voice, strong characterization, a beautifully woven storyline, tight pacing – and yes, with spark, but more still than even that. A truly great book is more than the sum of its parts, to the point where those distinct pieces blend together into a whole that takes on a life of its own.

And when I find it I know, without rhyme or reason, that this book is for me.

My novella, From the Ashes, just sold to Entangled Publishing as part of their 2012 superhero anthology. Not only that, but I’ve been recruited as Senior Editor for Entangled’s Flirt and Ever After lines.

So, yeah. I’m dancing like a fool.

image by MeiTang on sxc.hu

It’s kind of funny how things happen, really. Back in January, Savvy Authors ran their EditPalooza writers’ workshop; back then I was working as an editor for Lyrical Press, and when Liz Pelletier asked for participating editors from various publishers, I joined in. EditPalooza was a lot of fun; I got to meet some really cool authors, and got to work with Liz, who turned out to be pretty awesome.

Then life went back to normal. I took a break from editing for a while; I needed to simplify my life and destress, as I’d managed to work myself to the edge of a nervous breakdown fueled by the fact that I wasn’t coping with my grandmother’s death as well as I thought. Things calmed down, I settled back into my daily routine in the day job as a freelance business writer, and got back into the habit of writing fiction on the side. I’m not sure what chain of links led me to Entangled’s website, though I’m pretty sure it had something to do with Twitter. It always has something to do with Twitter. Twitter will be responsible for the downfall of the western world.

Well, no. But it’s pretty much destroyed my attention span.

Anyway. I ran across the Entangled website, recognized the folks from Savvy Authors, and thought what they were doing was pretty cool. I also noticed the submissions call for their superhero anthology.

A week before the final submission date.

Meaning I had four days to churn out a 30k story if I wanted time to let a few beta readers hack it apart.

I don’t know how I did it. I do know I didn’t sleep, but that’s not news. Somehow From the Ashes made it out the door in time, and so help me but I’d have embarrassed myself if not for my friend Amanda, who is just about the best editor in the world and who caught my more cringe-worthy mistakes. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything for a few weeks, so when I saw an email from Liz the very next day, I think I died a little inside. Wow, I thought. That was fast. My story must’ve been really bad.

But it wasn’t a rejection. It was a note from Liz asking if I remembered her from Editpalooza, and asking if I was interested in joining the Entangled Publishing editing team.

So. After I picked myself up off the floor, I sent back the coolest, most composed email ever, stating my interest. Yeah. Stop laughing. You know I was shrieking and squealing and grinning like an idiot even in text, but let me have my illusions. Liz said great, and I took the editing test to see if my editing style and skill level were a good match for Entangled’s needs.

Let me tell you something: everything you know about the agony of waiting for a response to a submission is compounded exponentially when you’re waiting for a response not only to a submission, but a job application – with the same people. I bit my nails down to the quick. I refreshed my email obsessively. I think I sprouted a few more grey hairs. I drove my husband out of his mind, constantly asking if he thought I should have made the story hetero instead of LGBT, if they’d hate the story but love my editing, hate my editing but love the story, or absolutely despise both and wonder how I ever ended up involved in publishing the first place.

It was more a “none of the above” situation. I’m pretty sure I deafened an entire city block when the email came. I had to reread it six or seven times to convince myself it was real, and yes, they wanted the story and wanted me. I’m 99.9% certain I made a rambly, awkward jackass out of myself on introductory phone calls with Liz, the inestimable Heather Howland, and K.L. Grady, the walking epitome of awesomeness who’ll be my editor on From the Ashes.

But jackass or not, there it is. I’m happy. I think “happy” may be the biggest understatement of the year, actually, but it’s a start. I’m really looking forward to working with the Entangled team, both as an editor and as an author, and I think 2012 promises to be an amazing year all around.

But right now, well…

…I have a slush box to clean out. ~flees~

Don’t be silly, I told myself. This is a progressive new e-publisher that accepts LGBT submissions, and they didn’t specify no LGBT for this anthology. But I couldn’t help being paranoid. It was the same paranoia that haunted me throughout the story, that told me maybe I should turn Tobias into Tabatha, or Sean into Sarah, and make it a heterosexual relationship. My paranoia said that even though they accept LGBT, they won’t consider my story for the anthology because it won’t match the tone of the other stories, and might turn off potential buyers who only want to read heterosexual stories. I nearly talked myself out of submitting because I was convinced my submission would be judged not on the merit (or lack thereof) of my writing, but just because the characters are gay.

That paranoia isn’t without foundation. For decades stories of open homosexuality have been either rejected, or “straight-washed” before acceptance; Publisher’s Weekly posted a great blog about the topic, and the outpouring of vocal support from editors and agents who actively want LGBT submissions was phenomenal. Read the comments; there are some amazing and very well-known people speaking up to say “send me your stories. Send me your characters as they are.” They don’t care if they’re gay, straight, bisexual, or transgendered. They want good storytelling regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, and it’s the writing that matters. Some of the comments there will really brighten your day.

It wasn’t always that way, though. As I said, there’s been a stigma against stories with open homosexuals as anything more than secondary and tertiary characters, and even as acceptance grows that stigma lingers. It haunts writers, makes us cautious, makes us edgy, makes us paranoid. We can’t stop thinking about it. I thought about it while I was writing From the Ashes, and while struggling with the dilemma of my gay protagonist. I thought about how despite the acceptance and support shown in that one blog post, despite the personal support I’ve received from friends, we still don’t see that much LGBT fiction being published in the mainstream, rather than as niche fiction or through smaller e-publishers alone. It happens, but very rarely. It’s easy to put the blame on the publishers, and say we aren’t seeing it because they aren’t accepting it.

I can’t help but think, though, that we aren’t seeing it because we aren’t submitting it.

I think, out of fear of rejection, we’re straight-washing ourselves. Just as people in the LGBT community stay in the closet out of fear of homophobic and transphobic reactions, we straighten out our stories even though they’re not really the stories we want to tell. And sometimes, our books suffer for it. We don’t invest ourselves fully because we aren’t wholly behind the new, sexuality-switched or gender-reversed identities we’ve given these characters, and it feels like a lie–so we don’t give our all to writing it.

So many of us do it for different reasons. Maybe we’ve heard horror stories about agents and publishers rejecting stories based on the sexuality of the characters alone. Maybe we’ve had our own experiences with those rejections, or with being asked to straight-wash our stories. Either way, that fear hovers over us and affects the choices we make regarding what we write, and what we choose to submit — the same way the fear of being outed can affect how we behave, and the choices we make in our lives.

The thing is, while we’re beating this metaphor to death…being LGBT, whichever one or two of those letters you might fall under, isn’t a choice. Not for us. Not for me. So while we have the flexibility to shape our characters and make them into whatever little people we’d like them to be, in some ways their sexuality isn’t a choice, either. If it’s part of who they are, part of their story, then there’s really no choice about letting it be what it is — and there’s really no choice about whether you or I should continue to submit our LGBT stories.

The publishers are out there. More and more are opening their arms to LGBT novels; what they need to see now is more of them. More of us. More of our stories to show that they’re valid, they’re mainstream, they’re as compelling as every other story out there. Our stories may be part of the LGBT spectrum, but LGBT is part of the spectrum of life as a whole. Including our stories isn’t really a choice.

So don’t let it be a choice whether or not you’ll write them, or submit them. Write what you feel, whether it’s gay, straight, bi, tri, whatever. Write what you know, write what you love. Write through the fear of rejection, and trust that there are people out there who will judge your writing solely on its own merit and not for the characters’ sexuality alone. Write…and send it in.

I wrote my story. I sent it. Tobias is Tobias, Sean is Sean, and to hell with it. They’re in love. And if the story’s not good enough for the anthology, then I’m going to have faith — in this one publisher, and in every publisher I decided to submit to — that it’ll be because of a flaw in my writing***, not just because loving Sean helps make Tobias who he is. I’ll keep writing past that. I’ll keep improving. And I’ll keep submitting my stories, no matter the sexuality of my protagonists.

After all, they can’t accept it if you don’t submit it. If you don’t, you aren’t giving them much of a choice at all.

 

 

 
***Or, y’know, because I accidentally sent from my work email address and not my default email address. ~shakes fist at Thunderbird~

1. He points out your errors. It’s impossible to be perfect with some asshole constantly griping at you about comma abuse, homonym misuse, and proper apostrophe placement. You never do anything wrong. The dude needs to just back off.

2. He explains things to you about grammar, proper usage, plotting, characterization, etc. What does he think you are, five? Of course you know these things. You know everything. He just doesn’t get that you’re exercising your stylistic freedoms. And why is he giving you lessons in history, physics, Cantonese slang, Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and the limits to which the human body can strain in that particular position of the Kama Sutra? You’re creative. You don’t have to be factually accurate.

3. He suggests improvements to your story and style. If you’d wanted to write it the way he suggested, you’d have done it that way in the first place. Even if you’d never thought of it before. Jesus. What an ass. He’s probably a failed writer with nothing better to do than try to undermine your talent. If he’s so smart, he can go write a book. You don’t need to improve anything. Ever.

4. He makes you do all the work of implementing his recommended changes. Cripes. You wrote the book once already. Why should you have to retain ownership of your characters and storyline to write it again? All that BS he spouts about trusting you and your talent, and about not taking over your story…pfft. He’s just blowing smoke up your ass because he’s too lazy to do it himself. He should just whip everything together and take care of it; it’s not your problem anymore. Editors are really just glorified proofreaders anyway. Everyone knows that.

5. He actually thinks your writing should mature with each iteration of edits and each new story. Why should you have to change what’s already perfect? So what if you just had to rewrite ten pages of action because he decided the existing scene created a plot hole the size of a mutant manatee? You’ll just dash it off and send it in as-is, flaws intact. Nevermind the fact that he’s spent the entire manuscript griping like your mother-in-law about semicolons can’t be used that way or make sure the modifying clauses agree with the main subject, verb, and object. Whine, whine, whine. If your writing style changed from edit to edit and book to book, he wouldn’t have anything to do. You’re just being considerate and keeping him from getting bored. After all, he wouldn’t have a job without you.

6. He’d rather go without sleep than miss another chance to go through your manuscript. I mean, obviously he’s just trying to create problems and he’s got a grudge against you. Does it really matter if every instance of the word Green in the Manuscript is CapitaLiZed? Get a life, man. Maybe if he slept more than three hours a day he wouldn’t be so nitpicky.

7. When you halfass your edits, he makes you do them again. Clearly he doesn’t understand that you skipped 75% of his editorial commentary because it was all asinine and destructive, demonstrating that he doesn’t get what you’re doing. Also, see previous comment re: getting a life. Doesn’t he think you have anything better to do?

8. He makes you kill your darlings. You spent months crafting that perfectly placed piece of purple prose, with its precisely poetic palliteration. You love that particular figure of speech and damn it, even if it’s not appropriate, you’ll make it appropriate. Your favorite 20-page scene detailing the movie the lovers watched in chapter 40 just touches your heart and reminds you of when you first watched it at a slumber party 72 years ago. You adore the way you always write “ocular orb-thinguses” instead of “eyes;” it’s your signature. You love your art. You are your art. And he’s trying to destroy you by making you cut out the things you love most. Nevermind that the narrative makes more sense without them. He’s ruining the beauty of the thing.

9. He challenges you. He pushes you beyond your comfort zones and asks you to write things you’ve never written before, try things you’ve never thought of, learn new ways to do an old art. What is he trying to do, give you nightmares? New experiences are traumatizing. If you take risks, you might fail. Wait. That’s it, isn’t it? He wants you to fail.

10. He gives you deadlines. You have other priorities. Your hair appointment is this afternoon, your dog needs a mani-pedi, you’re working on a brilliant new story that will blow the NYT list out of the water. Look, those deadlines can wait. It’s not that hard to put a book together. You can just turn it in the day before the release date and it’ll be fine. It’s not like there are any other books in the pipeline, anyway. Yours is the only one that matters. If your editor really cared, he’d prioritize you above everyone else.

11. He makes you self-promote. And he’s out there promoting you, too. I mean, really. There are marketing and PR people for that. You shouldn’t have to self-promote; you are the author, the diva, the prima donna who watches from an ivory tower as the fans come flocking. You shouldn’t have to do anything to draw them. And heaven forbid anyone expect you to speak with them or engage them in any way. They aren’t authors like you.

If your editor meets even half these criteria, it’s obvious that he or she hates you and wants your book to fail. Or at the very least, they’re trying to make you as insane as they are. You should take up drinking. Make sure you drink while you write and while you edit; it’s a bonding experience, and you’ll be keeping your editor company. It won’t affect the quality of your work at all.

Besides, even if it does, your editor will fix it. That’s what he’s there for, after all.

I just know someone out there will take this seriously. And then I’m going to cry. You wouldn’t want to make a poor, defenseless, exhausted editor cry, would you?

Well, hi.

No, seriously. It’s as simple as that. Just say hi.

Yes, you’ll need to tell me about your book. A little about yourself, too, though don’t overwhelm me. But really, just to start off with, say hi. Smile. Be polite, be friendly, and give me your message. It’s just like making friends.

And just like making friends, it requires a little tact.

Tact means not complaining about how you don’t like the submission format. Tact means not trash-talking other writers. Tact means not whining about how stupid you think the publisher or agent’s requirements are. Tact means not deriding the other agents and editors who rejected you. Tact means not proclaiming yourself the One True Savior who understands the truth of the publishing industry and will show us all the light of your genius.

Tact also means keeping your crazy quite firmly under your belt where I can’t see it.

You wouldn’t let it all hang out like that when making a new friend. Don’t let it hang out with me. There’s time enough to show me how quirky-awesome you are, when I know you well enough to appreciate it. On that first meeting, what I need to know is that you’re sane, you write well, your story engages me, and you’re capable of understanding the business aspect of this entire crazy machine.

So just say hi, and hope we hit it off well enough for your book and my editing schedule to be friends.

We won’t be friends. We can’t be. I can’t be your friend and do my job. I can’t worry about hurting your feelings when I’m chopping apart incorrect modifiers or urging you to drop the passive voice and use more active verbs. I can’t be your friend when trying to train you out of your little bad writing habits, even if I’m doing it in your best interests so your talent can shine through and showcase the good writing habits that made me love your story in the first place. I won’t be your friend, because friends can’t be honest with friends about their writing.

But we’ll be friendly. We’ll learn to love each other and hate each other–but more than that, we’ll learn to depend on each other through revisions and deadlines, galleys and proofs, cover art quibbles and panicked last-minute changes. We’ll learn each others’ senses of humor and share inside jokes swapped via tweets and MS Word comment boxes. We’ll tease each other about quirks, find out strange little things about each other, and know each other in ways that often, friends don’t. Writing reveals a lot about a person. So does editing. So do those moments at three o’clock in the morning, when we’re both ready to tear our hair out trying to fix that one last sentence before the book’s due in to production the next day.

And when your book releases I’ll share a drink with you in celebration, although I’ll never come to your kids’ birthday parties or help you shop for Christmas. I don’t care about photos of your dog in sunglasses or slideshows of your vacation to Redondo Beach, and please don’t tell me about your hot date last night or the guy you found your wife in bed with. I don’t want to know. I’d rather not picture you that way, and it’s really not my business.

So no, we won’t be friends. But we will be establishing a unique relationship that, if all goes well, could last for many years and through many books. You wouldn’t start a friendship by approaching a stranger and criticizing their choice of those shoes with those slacks. You wouldn’t walk up to someone in a bar and, without even saying hello, begin a spiel of negativity about every person who ever hurt you in the past.

So why would you start a relationship with an editor or agent by antagonizing them?

I only had two between 6th grade and senior year; I had the good fortune of being in the AP English & Creative Writing class, which meant the same teacher guided our progress year after year and gave us personal attention when developing our speaking and writing skills. For my freshman through senior years, that was Mrs. N. She was utterly out of her mind – and utterly brilliant. She was the one who shaped my love of reading and writing, and encouraged me even when others admonished me to get my nose out of the books and go do something normal kids would do. Her lessons have remained with me for my entire life, along with her frizzy yellow hair and enormous coke-bottle glasses.

Actually, she looked a hell of a lot like the principal on South Park. Only crazier. A lot crazier. We’re not even getting into the incident with the eggs and the beeswax.

No matter how dotty she was, though, Mrs. N was a great teacher…and she saved me from Mrs. L, my teacher throughout the three years of middle school.

Mrs. L was a nice woman, for the most part – in that rather false way that said she was only being nice to her students because it was her job, though she really did work hard at teaching us the foundations of proper English while still letting us have free reign to develop individually. She even tried to stimulate our creativity, which led to our 6th-grade project.

We had to write a book.

Oh, not a full-length book. Forty pages, double-spaced…which was still quite daunting to a 6th-grader. We had a semester to write it. Most of us dove in with eager enthusiasm, chattering about our ideas all through class and completely ignoring Mrs. L when she tried to call us to order. I still remember my book; if I recall, it was called CAT PRINCESS.

I was in 6th grade. Shut the bloody hell up.

My heroine was Taylana. Her mother was a postal worker, just like mine. She was as confused about girls as I was about boys. I was projecting just a little – no, a lot. I was young, and at that age where every story I read cast me as the hero inside the shell of the author’s character. So when I wrote my own story, I wrote a story I’d want to be in and a persona I’d want to adopt, with the gender reversed. Taylana had bright green eyes, because I thought mine were too brown and ordinary. She had long, dark hair that didn’t need special treatments to be straight, and because she was a girl she didn’t have to argue with her mother about keeping it long. She had a black cat just like mine.

And she had brown skin, just like mine – though darker. She was purely African-American, while I’m only part.

There were a few other influences; Occula from Richard Adams’ MAIA, along with another story I’d recently read (but can’t remember now) about a middle-aged woman who was transported to another world and at some point discovered her real heritage…about the time her inner self transformed her into an angry mother bear. Literally. Thus Taylana was the lost princess of the cat people, who’d been sent to the human world to keep her safe; the black cat was actually her guardian, and could talk to her. She shapeshifted into a panther.

Let me remind you: I was eleven. Maybe twelve.

I wish I still had the story, for nostalgia’s sake. Other than a 3rd-grade effort about Dolores the talking hamster, it was my first real work of fiction. Well, it would be if I’d finished it. I failed the assignment, because about two thirds of the way through I put it down with no desire to ever touch it again. It was stupid, it was wrong, it was bad, I shouldn’t have even bothered. Or at least…that’s what Mrs. L led me to believe. During our progress check-ins, she’d read the stories and offer a little advice.

In my case, her advice was to make Taylana white.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, why is she black?”

“Because she just is.”

“She needs a reason to be black.”

“Why?” I asked again, confused.

“Because without a good reason for her to be black, no one wants to read about her. Nobody wants to read a story about a black person. Those stories don’t matter.”

And that was it.

Just like that she’d rendered my character and my story invalid without any consideration of its merit, its worth; all that mattered to her was that the character was black, which made it wrong.

Even worse, she’d rendered me invalid. She’d told me my perspective, my voice didn’t matter…and never would. She’d told me that even though I grew up around people of so many races – most of them not white, especially the majority of my family, my neighbors – there was nothing important about the stories they had to tell, real or fictional. There was nothing important about their thoughts, their perspectives, their cultural insight. There was nothing she could ever possibly relate to, simply because of the color of their skin. The color of my skin.

I felt small. I felt transparent, invisible, dehumanized. I was already a wallflower before, but after that I became wallpaper. I retreated into my books, hid my notebooks full of scribblings, and avoided my friends…my primarily white friends, who found plenty to relate to in our common childhood experiences and had no idea what Mrs. L was talking about, or why it should matter. They liked my story, with the unbiased view of the young – but it was too late to change my impressionable young mind, as an authority figure had already told me it was worthless.

It took another authority figure to straighten me out: Mrs. N. She gave us creative writing assignments starting in freshman year, and noticed mine were a bit stiff, unnatural. I wrote about white boys and white girls, not as normal people, but as ideals of what Mrs. L had told me people wanted to read. I wasn’t comfortable with them, and she could tell in every word – when I even did the assignments, as I felt like there was no point in even picking up a pen. She tried to work with me, despite my mutinous silence and withdrawn nature. After some patience, she managed to pry an explanation out of me.

And when I finally told her about my misgivings, she laughed.

Not at me, no. At Mrs. L. She also called her a few interesting names I won’t repeat here. And then she told me,

“Adrien, who cares what color they are? Who cares what color you are? Every day African-Americans and Chinese people and Arabs and Malays and Latinos and hell Nigerians – everyone’s out there having the same experiences as you and I. There’s a fourteen-year-old Mexican girl somewhere right now staring at a handsome boy with her heart in her throat and hoping he’ll notice her, and just because they’ve both got brown skin and black eyes doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel the same damned things as the blonde white girl when she’s looking at her handsome green-eyed boy.” Then she rapped my knuckles with her pen.

“Ow!”

Then she rapped hers. “Ow!” And she laughed. “See? I’m a nutty old white lady, and you’re a stubborn mule of a young – wait, what are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’ve got pretty skin. It’s like nutmeg. And mine’s like flour. Young dark boy, old pale woman. But the pen still hurt us the same way. And if you wanted to write about it, you’d write it the same way, because we have the same experiences, and they mean the same thing. Exactly the same thing. Your pen smack isn’t my broken leg. Do you get it?”

I nodded slowly, though I wasn’t sure I did, and wasn’t sure I wholly believed her. I’d been burned once already.

“Good.” She started to smack my knuckles again, then grinned when I yanked my hand back before she could. “You learn quick. Let’s see if you’re as quick with a pen. Throw this shit away, don’t tell your mom I said shit, and start over. Write stories about people who matter to you, and if they matter enough…they’ll matter to everyone.”

It took years before I had the maturity to really grasp what she was trying to tell me, but I’d already grasped one important thing: the hand she offered to lift me out of the pit of misconception so I could stand on even footing with everyone else. And what she taught me stuck with me beyond even high school and college, even though I didn’t know until five or six years ago that I wanted to be a writer. I’d thought about computer programming for a while, ended up in data analysis before moving on to full-time writing and editing…but thanks to Mrs. N I never stopped writing on the side, whether it was college assignments, fanfic, or random little drabbles of no importance.

And there was always someone brown in the stories – not just because Mrs. N said it was okay, but because it was what I wanted, and most importantly Mrs. N had taught me to stand up for what I felt was right regardless of any authority figure’s opinion. Whether the protagonist, antagonist, or supporting cast, there were always brown people as part of the landscape of the story – because brown people have been part of the landscape of my life. We’re part of the landscape of your life. You interact with us every day; maybe we’re part of your story. Or maybe you’re part of ours, and we’re the star; that doesn’t make the story any less valid, especially if you stop to think about the fact that we have enough in common in our lives for them to overlap. You talk to us every day; you know us. We’re your friends, your coworkers, people you pass on the street. We have the same concerns you do, the same joys, the same fears.

Just like you, we read. We write. Yes, there are higher rates of illiteracy among the ethnic population, but we’re fighting to change that. We’re fighting not only to make our voices heard, but to learn the right ways to communicate our message on common ground.

We’re fighting to tell stories that give us a little something more to identify with. We’ve grown up reading stories where the white person is the star, and anyone dark is a marginalized token that’s often stereotyped. Yet we’ve found something to identify with in those stories; we’ve found something to love, something that fires our imaginations and makes us want to write our own stories with people like us. People like you, with only a few differences of language, culture, and coloration. We’re trying to be recognized as part of the mainstream – because “mainstream” shouldn’t mean “white only.”

And it doesn’t, anymore. Despite some old voices who still insist no one will buy books with an ethnic protagonist, more and more writers are striking out to speak with colorful voices on every page of their stories. Are readers having trouble identifying? No. No, instead they’re falling in love with the stories and the characters, because good fiction is good fiction – period. They’re proving the status quo wrong.

One day I hope to prove Mrs. L wrong. One day I hope to see Kensington, Akhilesh, Sujit, Hai, Rio, Crow, Akai, Vice, all my rainbowed cast in print – and not just the ethnic rainbow. Grayson, Vee, Marcus, Sebasien, Kira – another rainbow, on the LGBT spectrum; another set of voices who are just as mainstream as the heteronormative ideal.

We aren’t any better than you. You aren’t any better than we.

We’re all the same, but no one asks if there’s a good reason for your characters to be white.

So why do we need a good reason not to be?

Good lord, I’m a wordy bugger.

Also: not too long ago one of my authors, Jason Beymer (author of the upcoming humorous fantasy ROGUE’S CURSE), did a great post on character development and how he finds inspiration for his characters. You should go check it out. (And be nice to him. He’s funny.)

Watch this space for some other guest blogs soon, as I cajole my authors and my fellow Lyrical editors into speaking up. (Cynthia, I’m lookin’ at you.)

I keep meaning to update with photos of my nifty new Sony Reader Touch Edition and faff on about how awesome it is, but every time I talk about the thing I sound like a product shill. Bleargh. Well, here, a couple of blurry photos snapped off on my G1 phone, with the thing on my messy, disorganized coffee table:

Man, do we need to vacuum.

That’s the Pixie skin from DecalGirl.com*, crap about my student loans underneath the reader, and Elizabeth Darvill’s BOUND BY BLOOD on the reader’s screen. Liz and Jason have been great sports about not killing me yet despite the volumes of edit notes I’ve dropped on them. Ashley has yet to find out what she’s in for, but she will. [insert innocent smile here]

What else, what else…OH! One other thing: The latest book in Diane Duane’s YOUNG WIZARDS series, A WIZARD OF MARS, released this week. It wasn’t due out until early April, so imagine my surprise when my preorder showed up on my doorstep on the 23rd.

If you love Diane Duane as much as I do, get the damn book. Seriously. YOUNG WIZARDS has always held a firm position as my favorite YA series of all time, and A WIZARD OF MARS is a great addition to the collection.

……

…oi, that’s a lot of tags on this post.

 

 
*Random aside: DecalGirl has the best customer service. My original order was shipped incorrectly; they sent me a skin for the Pocket reader, rather than the Touch edition. I e-mailed asking how to do an exchange, and they apologized and shipped a priority mail replacement the same day. It’s sad that it’s rare to see good, polite customer service, but it’s always nice when you run across it.

Trust me when I say I’ve used it in all these contexts after nearly a month of digging through the Lyrical slush pile.

I’ve seen some great queries. Compelling writing, clear plot summaries, professional address and presentation. I’ve also seen sloppy, poorly-written queries, bland queries, queries that aren’t queries at all…and some delightful gems bordering on sheer cracked-out insanity. These wanderers off the beaten path have informed us of everything from their life stories to their sexual fetishes to the weight of their dogs’ testicles in precisely measured ounces, which is key to the accuracy of the were-sex in their paranormal romance. (The latter two are thankfully not linked. Um. I hope.)

What were these writers thinking? Sure, these facts are…interesting. Informative. Sometimes unique. But they’re also far too strange and intimate, and vastly off-topic from what your query letter should be about: your book, your previous publishing credentials (if any), and why you chose this publisher or this agent. I doubt anyone would feel their precious Rover’s harbls were an appropriate topic of discussion in an official letter to a business partner – so what’s the logic of mentioning it in a query?

To start with, let’s take a look at the erroneous assumption that your query is wholly private. It’s a special secret between you and the agent or publisher, a little locked diary entry with a single key that you share between you, making moon eyes at each other as you pass it back and forth and hold it to your pulsating hearts (which, naturally, beat as one when you love someone – thank you, this has been your 80s flashback for the day). You poured your heart into it, your soul, and included every quirky, offbeat detail that you hope will make you unique and endearing – no matter how inappropriate those details might be. And when the day’s done you’ve made a special connection, because of this private thing you’ve shared with that precious someone.

Wrong.

First off, it’s possible you’re sending your super special query to an intern who’ll take one look at it, make a face I won’t even try to describe, and toss it in the trash. Second, if it makes it to the agent or to your chosen contact at the publishing house, it’s quite possible they’ll pass it around to everyone else at the establishment. Not to be malicious, no, but for one of three reasons: 1. they’re interested in the project and want counsel from their peers, 2. they’re not interested but think someone else might be, or 3. you sent a query with pictures of cats doing the nasty as relevant to the theme of your supernatural shifter story, and they want to be sure everyone knows your name in case you come across their desks with a fresh pile of crazy.

Do they do this out of spite? No. But industry professionals do talk, they do look out for each other, and at the end of the day memorable queries do sometimes come up. “Memorable” is a word like “interesting;” it can mean something awesome, or it can mean you’ll go down in infamy as the Cat Smut Dog Harbls writer.

Recently literary agent Michelle Wolfson got dragged into a bit of intarwebz drama on Twitter. She posts #queryquotes as she reads queries, with 140 characters of insight into things that make her go “hmmm.” (And “ech.” And “what is this i don’t even.”) Although she makes sure the quotes are anonymous and removes any identifying details of the stories, this sparked an argument with a published author who felt she was demeaning writers for the sake of her own cruel amusement. Many writers, editors, and literary agents jumped to her defense (although it proved pointless; it’s hard to argue with someone who’s fencing with a Nerf bat yet is convinced he’s holding a rapier). They pointed out that #queryquotes is meant to be humorously helpful, not hurtful. Yet many detractors were less worried about what she said, and more worried that she posted excerpts publicly. Was Michelle violating writers’ privacy by publicly posting lines from their queries?

No. Not just no, but hell no.

Step back and look at this with a little perspective. You’ve written a book, and now you’re letting that little bugger out into the world. Fly, little pages, fly, and hope that one day you’ll be read and appreciated by thousands or even millions of people. When you’re actively seeking publicity, you have no right to privacy as far as those words are concerned. People will read your book, they’ll talk about it, they’ll quote you, and sometimes they’ll say not-so-nice things – and you can’t do a damned thing about it other than wear yourself out flailing about. You can’t even cite copyright law, as long as they’re only quoting a few lines. Fair use is a bitch when it’s used against you, but it’s still fair use.

Your query is an extension of your book. You’re sending it out into the woolly wild hoping to find that one person who’ll love it enough to launch your publishing career. If you aren’t prepared to have your query seen publicly, then you aren’t prepared to deal with the ups and downs of making a published book available to the widely diverse and highly opinionated world at large.

So here’s a rule of thumb when crafting a good query: if you’ve written something you’d be embarrassed to see on #queryquotes, read to your mother, or have flashed on the big screen during the Superbowl halftime show, stop and take a closer look at your query. Ask yourself why that section is embarrassing you, then delete it. Keep deleting until you have something you’d be proud to place on public display. Rover will thank you. So will all the agents and editors whose minds you saved from irreparable scarring via TMI.

Because if it’s too embarrassing to be seen by the general populace, it doesn’t have a place in your query.

It’s dystopian, YA, fantasy – not swords-and-sorcery or urban fantasy, but just a darker world. To be blunt, it’s a gender-swap story that takes place in a totalitarian future regime with strong flavors of Paris under German occupation, and it explores gender perceptions by completely swapping male and female roles with the understanding that it’s not considered strange or abnormal in their society, nor a reflection on their sexuality, but simply part of daily life. To them the roles aren’t reversed; this isn’t cross-dressing, and there’s no fetishization of the reversal.

It’s something I’m really enjoying writing, because by placing men and women in opposing gender roles without trying to justify it based on preconceived notions of masculinity and femininity, I’m discovering a lot about common gender perceptions in society and my own thoughts about them. On LJ, it sparked a really interesting discussion about how certain characters are perceived, certain assumptions made because they don’t act the way they “should” for their gender. Might be a little heavy for YA, but the classification fits with the story progression I have outlined for my 16-year-old protagonist.

But I should probably stop talking about it and let it speak for itself. So…yep. Chapter.

———————————————————————————-

Sebasien wondered if he would die tonight.

Like a swallowed scream the mournful song of the air raid siren cut across the sky, mere minutes before his set. It strangled the saucy cello and mellow clarinet of the house band, turning sweet sad jazz into a death-march ballad. Swearing under his breath, Sebasien stubbed out the remnants of his cigarette, slipped his cigarette case under his garter strap, and peeked out through the curtain.  Beyond the spotlight’s stark white glow the lounge drowned in darkness, the silhouettes of soldiers as still and square as pasteboard cutouts. Reflected light gleamed from polished black boots, sharp caps, brass buttons, weapons, martini glasses. The siren’s howl mingled with the clink of ice on glass like a mad gypsy melody.

Pierre flung his nanopore eyelash extensions down on the backstage dressing table and, with a little toss of his waxed and pomaded curls, threw his hands up. “Always the raids. The fucking raids! How do they expect us to make a living when – ”

“Shh.” Parting the curtains just a fraction more, Sebasien watched the crowd. All attention in the room trained on the largest table, near the stage; they waited for a signal like a hangman’s crowd watching for the platform to drop. The siren’s banshee wail continued, crying a repetitive warning into the frozen silence. Sebasien held his breath for the earth-tremor, the distant thunder, the burning screams.

Instead “Please,” came from the table, silky and cool. “Continue, gentlemen. I’m quite sure we were all enjoying your lovely performance.”

On stage the band exchanged uncertain glances, followed by a nervous trill of clarinet. By the four-count cello and saxophone and slip-crash cymbals joined in, Vaudeville verve subdued to a jangling croon beneath the constant ululating howl. At the table the speaker straightened, boots slipping off the table and hitting the floor with an at-attention click. Square and trim in her uniform, Marie Cavendell beckoned to someone at a nearby booth. The soldier scurried to Marie’s side, snapped off a quick salute, and leaned in to catch the murmur from slick red lips. After a moment Marie dismissed the girl with a flick of her fingers; with another salute, the soldier dashed for the exit with as much haste as propriety would allow.

Marie leaned forward in her chair. The harsh monochrome light caught the tight blonde sweep of her hair and turned it to sterile platinum. Her eye caught Sebasien’s, and she raised two fingers to the bill of her hat in taunting acknowledgement. He stepped back, tugging the curtain back into place.

“The Fifth are taking care of it. Help me with my gloves.”

Pierre sniffed and stabbed his cigarette in Sebasien’s direction. “Black-booted pigs, and you’re nothing but a lemming.”

“Be quiet!” Sebasien glanced towards the curtain furtively, then stalked over to Pierre, his heels clicking on the floor like a metronome marking time for every chord the band flubbed. He slapped Pierre across his rouged and powdered face. “You know what will happen if you’re heard, you brainless little bitch.”

“I don’t care.” Sulking, Pierre rubbed his blooming cheek and turned his nose in the air. “Let them pluck me from this false throne and throw me into a factory. I’m tired of playing golden songbird when I long to be a plain and common pigeon!”

“You long to be a corpse.” The siren stopped, sound snapping off like a broken thread. Sebasien looked up at the ceiling, then yanked on his gloves, smoothed his gown, and checked his hair in the mirror. He pursed his lips, testing the gloss of his lipstick, and flicked Pierre a disgusted look. “I’m on. Try to keep your loose little mouth shut until they leave.”

“Perhaps I’m loose, but at least I’m not a whore for the Fifth.”

“At least a whore survives,” Sebasien hissed, then ducked through the curtain and onto the stage.

The silver lamé shimmered closed behind him like raining stars. The spotlight centered on him, turning the audience into a dark mass through which the dim shapes of waiters swayed from table to table amidst blinding flares of light. Deep scents of whiskey and smoke coiled around him like silent dragons, creeping into his throat in sinuous curls. The band trailed off, ending their solo set with a palpable air of relief. He smiled for the crowd, lowered his lashes, and curled his fingers around the microphone.

“Sounds like we had a little hiccup out there,” Sebasien purred. “Good thing we’ve got our girls in the Fifth to take care of us.”

A ripple of laughter passed through the crowd, along with a few catcalls and war cries. Only Marie remained silent. Despite the glare from the lights, he could see her clearly; she leaned forward, elbows on her spread knees, mouth set in a tight smile. Her eyes stared into his, pale grey and intense. Waiting. Wanting. He played to the crowd, but the performance was for Marie. It was always for Marie.

The house catered to rank, after all.

“I see some familiar faces in the audience tonight – but for you new gals, I’d like to welcome you to Le Roux Lounge. I’m Sebasien, and I’ll be your first act for the night. I hear the Seventeenth is with us tonight, back on shore leave after six valiant months on the front.” The words were sour in his throat, yet he smiled his prettiest smile. From the back of the room a discordant chorus of roars rose; Sebasien laughed. “Thought so. This song’s for you, ladies. If you’ve got your boy with you tonight, hold ‘im close, enjoy your drinks, and get ready to take a walk with me under the light of a paper moon.”

The band took their cue to launch into the opening chords of “It’s Only A Paper Moon,” jaunty and gay strains hiding sadness like a weeping smile, a song from another time and another world. Sebasien met Marie’s eyes, slipped her a slow little wink, brought the microphone close, and began to sing.

“I never feel a thing is real, when I’m away from you.” The words poured like wine past his lips – sweet little lies that he spun so beautifully, obedient bird that he was. He whispered rhyming temptations into the microphone, swayed across the stage, sent hot little glances around the room until every girl there thought he sang just for her. At the end of each song they demanded more, pouring whistles and applause over him with liquored spontaneity. He gave; he gave until he couldn’t remember another word of Ella Fitzgerald and wore out Peggy Lee, until the spotlight made sweat slick down his neck, until his voice broke and his throat turned raw, until he couldn’t squeak out another note and his lungs threatened to collapse.

He blew kisses as he begged off, flinging them from his satin-gloved fingertips. “Tomorrow!” he promised, laughing and flipping his skirt as if shooing off clucking chickens. “Tomorrow, mes amours!” With a last kiss thrown out into the crowd, he pursed his lips and ducked back behind the curtain. Pierre waited in their dressing room with his scotch and a pout.

“Thanks for warming them up.”

“Oh, don’t be churlish. God, give me that; I’m parched.” Sebasien took the glass and drained it in two quick gulps; the scotch burned his throat, then numbed it, leaving him gasping and slightly dizzy. “Get out there before they get bored. I saw Kathleen with the Ninth in the audience tonight.”

“Did you?” Pierre’s face lit up; his breaths caught. He really was much more attractive when he smiled; Sebasien found his usual sulking affectations tiresome. Tucking a brilliant red curl behind his ear, Pierre stole a peek through the door. “Do you think she came to see me, Sebasien?”

“Likely,” Sebasien murmured, when what he truly meant was I don’t care. Tugging at the teardrop garnets dangling from his ears, he stalked across the room and flung himself onto the couch atop a pile of crumpled gowns. “Go on.” He wiggled his fingers at Pierre. “While they’re still drunk.”

Flushed as a virgin, Pierre checked his reflection again, fluttered his ridiculously long eyelashes, slipped one strap of his gown down a smooth shoulder, then dashed from the dressing room and out the stage. The jovial chatter of the crowd burst into roaring acclaim, quickly blending into the bawdy, brassy notes of Pierre’s set. Burlesque little tart. Sebasien slipped his cigarette case from beneath his gown and fumbled for a slender, unfiltered cancer stick, fingers clumsy in the gloves. As the soothing draught of mentholated smoke filled his lungs, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the couch. The lazy twirl of the ceiling fan cooled the sweat on his skin, drying it to a sticky glaze.

“Whiskey and cigarettes,” Marie mocked. “Surely not the best lubrication for those luscious golden pipes.”

Sebasien opened his eyes. She stood in the doorway, the faint amber light of the lamps making razors of her cheekbones and slicking like oil from the pistol at her hip. Sebasien’s heart skipped a beat – yet he took his time in plucking his cigarette from his mouth, arms stretching along the back of the couch in languid, studied motions. Just another performance, as much of an act as the silken whisper of sheer hose when he crossed his legs and “accidentally” let the slit in his gown fall open.

“Corporal Cavendell,” he murmured, favoring her with a bored glance through lowered lashes. “You aren’t allowed backstage. You know that.”

She laughed low in her throat. The door closed behind her with an intimate snick, locking them away together; she removed her cap and set it on the vanity. “Doors rarely remain closed to me, little songbird.”

“So it seems.” Feigning indifference to her presence, Sebasien leaned forward to fiddle with the delicate silver buckles fastening the straps of his heels. After a moment long fingers covered his own, warm through the gloves. He caught his breath and raised his eyes to find her on one knee before him, her hand curled around his ankle in a possessive grasp. Her cool grey eyes held him, steady and utterly unreadable. He wondered how many lives she’d ended with the black-gloved hands that unfastened his shoe with such a sure, nimble touch. “Let me,” she whispered.

Hiding his unease behind a cynical little twist of his lips, Sebasien shrugged one shoulder and leaned back. “If you wish to play servant, Corporal, who am I not to indulge you?”

She smiled; it never reached her eyes. Her fingers lingered, grazing the arch of his foot as she withdrew the first shoe, then reached for the other. “Is that what you do now? Indulge people?”

“Sometimes.”

“You stand up there making eyes at every woman in the room, singing your heart out like you mean it.”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“I’ve known a dozen boys like you.” The arrogance and contempt in the hot look she threw him made his cheeks burn. She thought him little more than a whore, just like Pierre. “On the make, every last one of you. You lie like your tongue’s made of silver.”

“Mine’s pure gold, Cavendell. Isn’t that why you keep me here?” He let her remove his other shoe, then pressed his stockinged foot against her chest and pushed her back.

“Perhaps.” She stood and, resting one knee to the couch, leaned over him. Her fingers slowly wrapped around his throat, stroking at the frantic flutter of his pulse, briefly pressing – then easing, sliding up, touching him with loathsome familiarity. Cupping his jaw in her palm, she tilted his face up. “One day you’ll sing just for me, Sebasien. And you’ll mean every word.”

His gorge rose. He resisted the need to recoil from her; instead he slipped his cigarette between his lips again, deliberately flicking his tongue against its length, drawing her gaze to the slow tracery of red flesh along smooth paper. Her pale eyes heated.

“I always sing for you,” he breathed. “I thought you knew that by now.”

“Little flirt. Are you even legal?”

“Sixteen. That’s legal, isn’t it? Old enough for what you’re thinking, I’d say.”

“Gold-digger.”

“I prefer ‘survivor’.” With a toss of his head, he pulled free from her grasp and slid from the couch, rising to his feet. Swaying away from her, he dropped his cigarette into the ash tray on the vanity and began to peel away his gloves. He could feel her eyes following him, sliding over his body with tangible avarice, as if she already owned him. “Last call soon. Best go see to your regiment, Corporal.”

“The Fifth take care of themselves.”

Her boots counted out long, breathless seconds as she closed the distance between them. Her warmth singed his back; her uniform brushed the glittering satin of his gown, bright buttons and medals scratching at the cloth. Her fingers slipped down his spine; her breaths warmed his nape, and her words poured in husky liquor-drops into his ear. He almost shivered, almost succumbed to the dangerous lure of power; the scent of her cologne coiled around him, like iron bands threatening to lock him within her grasp.

“Until tomorrow night, my dear boy.” Her lips touched his bare shoulder, leaving behind traces of lipstick as scarlet as heart’s blood – and then she was gone. Sebasien let out his breath and fumbled for another cigarette. His fingers shook as he lit it and sucked in deep.

“Won’t that be wonderful,” he muttered, and wondered where Pierre had left the whiskey. “Just bloody delightful.”

He stayed halfway through Pierre’s set, watching from the wings as the saucy boy paraded himself across the stage with suggestive winks and bawled out lusty innuendo. Then, slipping his jacket on over jeans and sweater, Sebasien picked up the night’s paycheck and let himself out into the dark and the cold.

Streets still damp from rain glistened in planes of white and black beneath the cones of street lamps. The sky spread overhead like matte paper, starless and cloudless, moon nothing but a shadowed disk lying black against starker black. Circlets of blinding white sliced across the heavens like sickles, searchlights seeking, hunting whatever had alerted the sirens, ever-vigilant against enemies of the State. The spotlights made false moons, too flat and cold to wish upon. Sebasien stood on the street corner and watched their criss-cross patterns.

Just a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea, he thought. None of it’s real.

Nothing in this life is real.

His boots sounded lonely drumbeats on the pavement as he hurried down the street and towards home, hunching into the fur-lined collar of his coat. His breaths rushed ahead of him in thin white clouds, like airy tethers leading him along sidewalks occasionally lit by passing yellow hi-beams. Stillness amplified his steps, the silence of a city muted by curfew, all the good little boys behind closed doors.

Click. The sound of a booted heel. Click. Click. Click. In tandem with his own, separating into two, then one again, quick-march synchronicity that matched his every stride. Click. Click. Click click click click clickclick clickclick clickclickclickclick as Sebasien quickened his step, breaths coming faster. Fear curled around his neck like black-gloved fingers as he glanced back, then looked straight ahead, focusing on the sidewalk as he passed through street lights like ash-gold waterfalls. He’d caught the slick black gleam of cap bills like lascivious, wet tongues. Either the Forty-Eighth Night Watch, or a few drunk soldiers looking for a good time. Either way, he didn’t want to be caught out alone after curfew.

“Going a little fast there, aren’t you, pretty?” The hard-edged voice snapped him back like a leash. “Might want to slow down, show us a little identification. It’s awful late, don’t you think?”

Sebasien stopped. Just a second to close his eyes, compose himself, still his pulsating heart; then he turned. The two women stood just on the edge of a cone of light, contrast turning them into poker-slim bas-reliefs. The taller of the two slipped her cap off and swept him a derisively elegant bow; briefly the lamp played off her tightly-coiled hair like moonlight on slick, deadly black water. She smiled and straightened. Her hand rested casually on the club at her belt.

“Don’t need to look so afraid, pretty.” Cold brass stars glimmered on her lapel; her breast read Juarez, stitched next to the insignia of the Forty-Eighth. “Unless you think you have a reason to be.”

“Maybe he does.” The other – McCullen, her uniform announced – looked Sebasien over with a leer that warped her rounded face into a grotesque mask. “Violating curfew, eh? Could be he’s part of it, eh?”

“I doubt it. Limp-dicked little pretty boys don’t have the balls to work for savages.” Juarez ran her tongue against her teeth. “But perhaps the pretty’s seen something.”

“I work at Le Roux.” Sebasien lifted his chin and slipped his hand inside his coat, careful to move slowly, no threatening motions. His fingers shook as he withdrew his identification card, but he kept his voice steady. “I’ve been there all night and I’ve seen nothing, Officers. I was just on my way home.”

“Well isn’t he fancy?” McCullen snatched the card from his palm and slid it into the reader dangling from her belt. As it burped and suckled at the card, its internal scanner tonguing encoded bars that spanned everything from his genetic data to his grade school aptitude scores to his parents’ political leanings, she tapped her foot in sharp, hard clicks like the rap of the hammer against an empty chamber. Juarez simply watched him, waiting with a stillness that bordered on inhuman. Wanting to see him squirm, he thought, and set his mouth in a stubborn line.

“I’ve seen you before.”

Sebasien faltered, and hid it with a one-shouldered shrug. “Have you? Apologies. I usually recognize repeat customers.”

“I don’t frequent that filthy little dive you call an establishment.” Her chill blue eyes flicked over him. “You’re the Fifth’s pet nightingale.”

“I’m not anyone’s pet.”

“Is that what you think, pretty?” Her flat, one-sided smile cut into him. He swallowed, wetting his lips, and made himself meet her dead, empty eyes. He’d seen eyes like hers before, hollow and drained of humanity after months or years of atrocities on the battlefield. She looked at him not as if deciding whether or not to kill him…but simply pondering where to start.

Murderer. Bitter anger flourished in his gut, forcing through the slime of fear coating his innards. It took all his strength to hold still while she looked through him, secure in the knowledge there was nothing he could do to stop her if she wanted to beat him, rape him, kill him and dump his body in an alley to be found by the cleaning crews the next morning. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened; nor would it be the last. Sebasien Marquette would simply disappear like many others: no longer spoken of, no longer spared a thought, swept under the rug at her whim.

I will not be another faceless statistic.

“He’s clear.” McCullen sounded almost disappointed, her growl dissipating the dense stillness. She yanked his card from the scanner and presented it to Juarez, who caught it between two gloved fingers and glanced at the encoded, shimmering print the scan’s bioluminescent filters had activated.

“Hm; authorized. And here I thought I’d have to take you in for prostitution.” Something dark flickered in her eyes as they traced the outlines of his legs within tight jeans. He wanted to recoil, didn’t dare. She presented his card to him with exaggerated courtesy, that razor-lipped smile widening. “My apologies, young sir. Do carry on your way.”

He nearly dropped his card when he snatched it back and slipped it back into his coat. “Thank you. If you’ll excuse me, Officers.”

“Quite excused.” McCullen was still leering at him when he turned away; his back felt entirely too exposed as he took a few shaky steps down the street.

“Oh, and nightingale?”

He stopped, closed his eyes, sent up a silent prayer, and listened for the tell-tale tick-tock of a pistol’s safety.

It never came. “You really shouldn’t be out so late without an escort,” Juarez said. “Who knows what unsavory types you might meet? Perhaps you should call on the Forty-Eighth; we’re here for your protection, after all.”

Sebasien swallowed back on his derision. “I’ll keep that in mind, Officer.”

Their low laughter trailed him as he walked away. Pride would let him neither look back nor run – but the moment he turned the next corner, he let his legs fly.

Nearly sobbing out his broken breaths, he dashed the last few blocks to his apartment building beneath translucent false moons, splashing through puddles until his jeans clung to his legs like a skin of ice. The light was on in Mr. Herschwitz’s first-floor window when Sebasien fumbled the key into the unkempt brownstone’s front gate. He thought he saw the curtain flip aside so the widower’s beady brown eye could watch him clatter up the inside stairs. He didn’t care what the old gossip saw; he just wanted to get behind locked doors, safe as he could ever hope to be.

Upstairs he fell against the wall in the hall outside of his single-room loft. Sinking down against the graying floorboards and peeling wallpaper, he hugged his knees to his chest. Mascara smeared against his fingers as he scrubbed at his eyes and choked back the terrified tears that had been building from the moment he heard the bootsteps in his wake. They could have killed him; they could have bloody well killed him, all because he’d been unlucky enough to cross paths on the wrong night. Normally he either left the club earlier, or simply managed to avoid the watch by dint of a short walk and a lot of luck.

Some nights – like tonight – he wasn’t so lucky.

Sniffling, he swiped his knuckles across his eyes and told himself to calm down. He was home now; nothing had happened. His record was clean, his loyalty unquestionable; they had no reason to harm him. Obedience is its own reward, he thought sourly, and dragged to his feet. So is cowardice. His smile felt as painted on as his lipstick. Wiping his face one last time, he slipped his key into his door and let himself in.

The cold struck him first, carried on a wafting breeze. His little loft was usually stifling and stagnant, with no control over steam-radiated heat that Herschwitz kept at boiling to warm his arthritic bones. Sebasien halted in the doorway; his fear resurrected from its shallow grave and clutched him in its slimy, dead fingers. The window glass laid strewn across the threadbare rug, a glittering sea of sharp-edged stars. The curtains draped askew from their rod, tattered edges twisting and flapping in the wind that nosed past the empty frame. Darkness draped the room, the moonless night turning his familiar home into a haunted house of amorphous shapes where every shadow on the wall was the silhouette of a creeping murderer.

Had someone broken in? For what? There was nothing to steal; his bed, sofa, coffee table, desk, and shelves were all junkyard rejects, the most valuable thing in the loft the mandatory data terminal mounted on one wall. Even his utensils were recycled plastics, no metals that could be sold and melted down, and the only decorations were cheap thrift shop knick-knacks and faded playbills for one performance or another, splashed across the walls like curling, crinkled wallpaper. Their only value was to Sebasien; worthless to a thief.

Hovering motionless, holding his breath, he listened for a tell-tale sound: a creaking floorboard, a rustle of cloth. His fingers flexed at his hip as if gripping the weapon he so desperately wished he carried. In the harsh domed light he’d probably find a rock, or a wayward child’s ball. But if someone had broken in, and was still there…

Don’t be a blasted ninny. Where would they be? Hiding beneath the sofa? Turn on the light.

No. He should go downstairs and get Herschwitz, drag the old bat up here in his housecoat and ludicrous pink curlers, a fragile bastion against the darkness. Or call for the Forty-Eighth, if they were so keen on protecting him. Or -

Stop it.

Breathing out slowly, he fumbled around the doorframe, felt for the switch, and turned on the light.

A hand shot from behind the door and locked around his wrist. Inexorable strength dragged him inside. He cried out, but hard fingers shoved against his mouth and sealed the sound behind his lips. The door slammed closed; the light cut. He struggled, twisted, but a heavy body pinned him against the wall like the hot weight of the lion bearing down on the vulnerable gazelle. Heart pistoning, pulse threatening to burst past the fragile layer of his skin, Sebasien stared up at the intruder.

“Don’t move,” hissed a grave voice, deeply accented. “Don’t make a single sound.”