Category: Blogosphere

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Drollerie Press Blog Tour

This month, our theme is music, and I’m honored to host Nora Fleischer.  Mark your calendars for the next Drollerie Press chat on September 27th at 4 PM Eastern.  We always have a ton of fun and usually end up talking about zombies, Muppets, Sting, and everything in between!

(My post will be posted sometime today at Sarah Avery’s livejournal here.)

~ * ~

Over Her HeadI love setting stories in the early twentieth century, partly because I like the popular novelists of the era (dig up The Wall Street Girl, if you can, for a fun read), but mostly because they’re the first generation to be recognizably modern.  They have cars, bicycles, and telephones.  For the first time, young women get educated and work in jobs that use their education.  (They called them New Women.)  And, for the first time, people are able to record music. 

Recording music must have been a great thing for musicians– can you imagine knowing that your art would disappear as soon as it was completed?– but it might have been even better for the average music lover.  Imagine living in a period when hearing good, professional-quality music was a rare treat, not something you could get for free just for snapping on the radio!  When if you wanted to hear music, you’d better learn to play an instrument.

Garrett Hathaway, the hero of my novella, Over Her Head, set in 1905, is a huge opera fan, and he treasures his Victrola.  What sort of thing might an opera lover in the early 1900s be able to listen to?  Here’s a recording from the Library of Congress’s American Memory site:  http://memory.loc.gov/mbrs/berl/131113.mp3.  The sound quality makes me very happy to have an iPod!  But here’s the challenge for me as a novelist– people like Garrett were very proud and excited about all the opportunities that modernity brought to them.  I hope, by showing the way Garrett enjoys listening to music, I’m able to convey that excitement to today’s reader.”

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Pen Flourish

You may not have noticed, but Drollerie Press has several different imprints, including Pen Flourish, the romance/erotica line.  We plan to begin posting some spicier excerpts and free reads on the site.  Since these posts will be adult, you’ll be asked to register and declare your age.  Stop by and register — I plan to post some spicy excerpts soon!  Who knows, maybe it’ll be a new free read.  *winks*

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Drollerie Press Blog Tour

In honor of Father’s Day, this month’s theme is, of course, fathers!  Please welcome Angela Korra’ti, author of the fabulously fun Faerie Blood.  The links for the rest of this month’s posts can be found at Drollerie Press.

Faerie Blood

Every writer who’s strung together more than five words in a row knows the maxim “write what you know”. Given that my mother passed away when I was sixteen and that I saw very little of my father throughout my childhood and much of my adulthood before he too finally passed away, it’s therefore probably no surprise to anyone that a lot of my characters wind up with parental issues–if they have parents around on camera at all.
In Faerie Blood‘s cast alone, I’ve got a heroine whose parents are both dead, a hero with a dead mother and a father shattered by her death, and an antagonist who is himself a father with severe issues. And if I go and survey stories I haven’t sold yet, I’ve got an epic fantasy with three main characters whose fathers are all dead, a Greek-mythology-based urban fantasy which by definition has characters with father issues all over the place, and a couple of science fiction novels whose lead characters are decidedly father-deficient.

Are y’all sensing a pattern here?

And yet, I can’t say that I set out to work out my daddy issues through my characters. If anything, I’d say that I picked it up from all the books I’ve ever read in my life–since after all, you can’t swing a stick in a library without hitting a book that involves at least one character with major parental issues. It’s one of the most universal themes there is.

I can say this, though: that memory I have of writing the leprechaun story, the one where the girl gets swept off by the leprechauns to be their queen for a day? I remember telling my dad about that not long after I’d written it. I was riding somewhere with him in his big convertible car, and although I can barely remember the incident now, I’m pretty sure Dad was listening to me with that tolerantly interested way I’m thinking any parent reading this will recognize themselves having whenever their child starts telling them all about leprechaun stories they made up. It was my dad, too, who bought me my first typewriter, the one on which I typed up the very first manuscript I ever tried to professionally submit. So among all of my family members, my father’s still the one who gave me the most support.

Which means a lot to me, to this day.

I wish you could have gotten to see my first real novel come to life, Dad. I miss you. And if I ever sell Queen of Souls, for the record, none of the daddy issues in there came from you.

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Drollerie Press Blog Tour

Our theme this month is “poetry” in honor of poetry month.  The master list of participants can be found at Drollerie Press.  Please welcome Cindy Lynn Speer, the author of the lovely The Chocolatier’s Wife!  My post can be found on her blog here.

I have a strong connection to poetry…I was drawn to it early, partly because it was something that felt accomplishable.  I could finish a poem in one sitting if I felt the words, and it was an outlet for all those jumbled, impossible emotions we feel in our teens, a place to say things about the things I’d seen, to remind me of what I’d felt, of what I’d experienced.   Sometimes you can’t use an image in a story, but it still means something…the abandoned warehouses, the fallen in barns, the boy on the bus with the smile that means a thousand things.
 
For years, I’d be walking around, or doing work, or whatever, and I’d hear a line in my head, over and over again, like a song.  I’d write it down, and sometimes, the lines would follow, spinning like a web.
 
I used to read my poems out loud, to audiences.  Sometimes people would ask for copies.   One of the most popular was this, inspired by a line from Dante.
 
Nor in memory held

It is dark and cold.
I sit on the heating vent in my kitchen floor,
thinking only of
the smoothness of the glass I hold,
the hum of the refrigerator…
mundane, I know,
cut to the chase.
You see, nothing major happened today,
I didn’t have a friend die of AIDS,
or wreck my car.
But the feeling I have
is incomprehensible…
It’s the feeling you get when your husband’s
no longer your best friend,
or you realized that the girl you thought
was your sister in college wasn’t ever going to call,
or write, or even remember you.
Nor in memory held,
you sit in the darkness and feel sorry for yourself,
happy for the warm air across belly and breasts,
for the dusky bitter taste of orange juice,
and the frost defracting into jewels on the window.
That is why I cry,
for beauty not…
Nor in memory held.
 
 
This was me, just before graduating from college…before I was married, before I found out that there may come a time when your “Husband is your husband’s no longer your best friend, or you realized that the girl you thought was your sister in college wasn’t ever going to call…”  It turned out to be prophetic.  I divorced my college sweetheart…and I found that I no longer heard the words in my head.  No lines came to me like a refrain, and any images that came seemed to fit better in a short story or novel…they had their own music to them, but not that kind.  It was as if the part of my mind that wrote poetry had died.  You’d think not, since poetry had been such a huge emotional outlet for me, but maybe it’d gotten overwhelmed, blown a circuit, or just decided to go on strike.
 
Sometimes, I try again.  I found a snippet of a poem I started, long time ago, sitting in the back of a soiree, waiting my turn to read.  It was about the time I started getting interested in fairy tales again, and so I decided, later, to finish it.   I don’t know if I will ever be able to call myself a poetess again, but maybe, sometime, to paraphrase a line from Anne Sexton, the music will swim back to me.
 
The Piper’s Children
 
“…and they were never seen again.” – from The Pied Piper
 
The woods are dark and deep,
but the blackness,
and bleakness,
bother me no longer.
It did when I first entered them.
I was seven and the music,
that lovely sound,
gentle and coaxing like a warm river,
lead us all.
We were leaves,
spinning and turning on that magic current…
But without warning
the music was gone,
leaving us empty,
abandoned and hopeless.
I found a wide stream
and I waited
for the music to come again.
If I wait long enough,
maybe he’ll relent,
lift his pipe to his lips
and that beautiful tide will return.
It will rise and flow
and take us home.

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Connections

Follow me, for a moment.  I swear this will all make sense.  The following are all somehow related:

 

In the back of my mind, I’ve been mulling over May’s crit, in particular her comments about two secondary characters for which I hadn’t done the greatest job.  In fact, I’d gotten lazy.  Remember the week of Valentine’s Day when we ran the Character Clinic, and I said that if you could kill a character, without impacting the story, then the character wasn’t needed?

Dr. Geoffrey Malcolm was a useless character.  I don’t think it’s too huge a spoiler (since this happens in chapter 2) to say that he’s the guy who dies in the first 10 minutes of the movie.  He’s supposed to help the reader feel sympathetic toward Jaid, to show how she’s damaged, but otherwise, he really didn’t have a purpose.

Huge mistake.  Huge!

Dr. Reyes, a secondary character that Jaid meets in Guatemala, was perhaps even worse.  He was the “plot needs him” character.  I needed him to be there for certain big events, but he had no depth.  I’d gotten lazy again and forgot my own saying:  every character is the star of his own story.

Dr. Reyes had no story to tell other than helping–or causing difficulty–at the right plot point.

So what does this all have to do with the other points above?  I’ve been a fan of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for at least a year or two now, and this year, I’ve been writing more regularly in my daily journal.  I’m trying really hard to remain OPEN all the time, and just watch and wait for the right inspiration to come.  Now, more than ever, I really needed some inspiration.  How was I going to put some sparkle into these two characters after so many revisions already?

Bright and early this morning, the twitterverse and blogosphere was thrilled with Susan Boyle’s performance of I Dreamed A Dream.  I watched it and bawled.  I watched it again, and bawled some more.  While working this morning, I kept thinking about why it had touched me — and so many other people.  Here’s a 47 year old lady who’s never even been kissed!  Going out on stage in front of millions of people, putting her dream on the line.  People laughed at her.  They braced for a William Hung quality performance, and instead, she rocked the house, just as she promised. 

A fantastic story, right?  But there’s more to it, if you look at the song she chose to sing. 

I dreamed a dream.  I dreamed that love would never die.  No song unsung.  But the tigers come at night.  As they tear your dreams apart.  And still I dream he’ll come to me.  But there are dreams that cannot be, and there are storms we cannot weather.

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

*sobs*  That song, coming from her mouth, dreaming since she was 12 years old that she could be a singer, and now, finally, that dream has sparked to life once more.  That’s powerful stuff.

And I’m sitting here, listening, thinking, and I know that I can use this.  This emotion, the common human element of having a dream, watching it die, struggling to live anyway, trying not to hope because it’s so painful…

Dr. Reyes had a dream too, it turns out.  A dream he watched go up in smoke, literally.

As for the other television shows I listed, all of them have impacted the Maya fantasy in some fashion.  I love the FBI as portrayed on Numb3rs and tried to build a similar team under Special Agent Quinn Salazar.  I love the ambiguity in Prison Break:  one moment a bad guy is trying to kill them; the next he’s the only one who can help them.  Back and forth, up and down, there is no “white” or “black” character in that show, merely shades of gray.  Even Michael has been “tainted” by his actions.  People have died thanks to him, even though all he set out to do was save his brother.  Everybody has a line to cross, and that show makes them cross that line over and over and over.

But the biggest impact is probably Charlie’s big map of connections.  I love that idea and I swear I’m going to do this for the next major project.  Every person he comes into contact with goes up on his board and he starts figuring out how they know each other, why they did certain things, whether he can trust  them or not. 

Everything’s connected.  That’s how I found Geoffrey’s purpose.  He’s connected in a way I never expected, and that connection ends up helping Jaid from beyond the grave.  Or as I should say, even though Geoffrey has entered the White Road, he still manages to give her the clue she needs at the right time.

Now to fix–or rather complicate–Dr. Sam Gerard’s life with a little Oedipus complex, and liven up One Death a little more, har har, and then I’ll get back to the synopsis.

This has certainly been the project from Xibalba, but the story is tightening so much I think it’ll squeak when you read it.

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Drollerie Press Blog Tour

Cindy Lynn Speer's The Chocolatier's Wife

This month, we thought it would be fun to interview each other’s characters from a Drollerie Press story.  I was thrilled to interview Tasmin Bey from Cindy Lynn Speer’s The Chocolatier’s Wife. 

Stop by Angela Korra’ti’s blog for a talk with Herakles from Beautiful Death!  I’ll add the main blog entry listing all participants once it’s up.  And now, here’s Tasmin!

 

 

One of the things that intrigued me so much as The Chocolatier’s Wife (TCW) unfolds is how very upfront everyone is about the Mating Spell.  It was guaranteed only to find the “best match” not “true love.”  In William’s life, most everyone joined by the Mating Spell had significant difficulties (I won’t expand to avoid spoilers!).  Is the same true in Tarnia?  Is true love viewed as “ridiculous” as in the South?  Did anyone that William and/or you know personally ever disregard the Mating Spell and marry strictly for love, or were all required to either accept the spell or remain alone?
 

T:  I believe that, for the most part the spell is so culturally integrated that we all accept that it has to be done, usually the spell is completed when we are children and are too young to do anything else, and grow up accepting what has been given.  Since it is against the law to go against the spell, no one really speaks about whether they had or not…I don’t actually know of anyone who has gone against it, but you always hear tales of people being murdered so that they can be with the one they love.  It’s more like a whisper, or a myth…like the hook handed pirate who hangs about in the forest at the edge of town to kidnap naughty children.
 
When you found out that William had been arrested for murder, it would have been so easy for you to simply accept the news and remain at the university.  That’s certainly what your entire family wanted!  You’d kept all of William’s letters and gifts over the years.  Were there any special items or a particular tidbit in a letter that made you more determined than ever to join him?
 
T: I don’t know that there was one particular item that drew me, I think that I was far more enchanted by the whole than any one thing…because in some ways, the things he sent me, the letters, were all bits of the puzzle of what kind of man he was, and I knew him to be solid, and good, and generous…the way that he spoke was always kind, and it was comforting to know that the man I am to spend my life with would be all of these things.  
  
Very few people are born in the South with any magic at all, at least since the horrible war 500 years before TCW.  If someone is born with a talent in the South, where could he/she go for training?
 
T: If the talent is minor…the ability to find lost objects, or such, then they usually get taught by the Wise Woman, but if the talent is greater, then someone from the North, called a Finder, is dispatched.  The person will be trained at a university, without their family having to worry about providing for them…tis a public service, since any unchecked talent is even more frightening than a person who has had training.
 
Tell us a bit more about your magic and the other talents.  Are women always Herb Mistresses, never men?  Or are there any clear “classes” that can predict the various talents?
 
T: No, not always.  There are many Herb Masters, as well…there are no truly clear classes, as in any ability there are people who excel at some things and are weak in others.  The talent that comes through the strongest is usually the primary talent that people concentrate on, but they can do other things, as well.  My mother always felt I could have concentrated more on elements and been quite talented, but I was much more interested in the workings of herb and stone.
 
William’s family wasn’t very welcoming, to say the least.  I thought you accepted their dislike very gracefully, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t have been quite so forgiving.  *wg*  Were you ever tempted to use just a teeny bit of magic to teach them a lesson?  If so, what would you have *loved* to do to gain a little revenge?
 
T: Oh, never!  *grins back*  There was never any moment when I would have been strongly tempted to play just a tiny prank to get them to break their absolutely voracious dignity.  They all acted with so much decorum sometimes that I would have loved to have seen one of them do something human…something that would have made them laugh at themselves a little and seem a little more reachable. 
 
This is such a sweet, moving love story.  Tell me, Tasmin, girl to girl.  At what point did you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you loved William, Mating Spell or not?

T: Forgive me for pausing so long on my answer, but I fear you will think me silly.  I think it was when we first, actually, met, and he kissed the palm of my hand.  I felt the warmth of his lips and this sort of fierceness, as if he were truly glad to see me, and it short right down my arm and into my heart. 
 
  *melts*

As I said in our Book Chats last year, The Chocolatier’s Wife is an incredibly sweet, romantic fantasy with a touch of mystery.  Thanks for stopping by, Tasmin!