It’s not a romance, I don’t think, because the couple isn’t about to kiss — they’re dead and frozen in ice. So it’s just suspense, which works for me.

But I also loved the USA Today quote. I’m not sure if that makes it the awesomest book ever, or potentially the biggest trainwreck ever. But I was walking past the display at my local B&N (which had tons of copies of Burning Up, whee! and still tons of copies of Demon Blood, which isn’t as whee, but it’s okay. They sold one! And God knows I’ll end up buying the rest at some point. That B&N probably thinks I have a ton of fans, but really…I just have a lot of contests) and couldn’t resist.

Anyway. Also got: The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (and created the Longest Title Ever) and The Science of Leonardo. Yay, research. Kind of. I liked the covers of these, too.

Almost a year ago, I drove up to Seattle to tape an interview for Project Paranormal. Though I rehearsed my Guardian spiel all the way up I-5, as soon as the camera turned on I became a blithering idiot. (True story. I’m sure you’ll see the evidence of it soon.)

And driving all the way down, I obsessed over my idiocy, and all of the things I said that were dumb — but most of all, over the one thing I forgot to say.

One of the interview questions was something like: What would be the most difficult superpower for a character to have? and I said, Having the ability to read lies and truth. Because it would be very, very difficult to go through life always knowing the truth about how people feel about you, or how they genuinely thought, because we all have ugly thoughts, we all have ugly feelings — and most of us try not to inflict them on other people. But what if you always knew, anyway? I think that it’d be so painful, you’d have to erect impenetrable emotional shields just to get through the day.

And even though I was babbling on, I forgot to add this: But I also think that’s what romance is all about. It’s about finding that someone who you can be absolutely honest with, about finding that person who will accept everything about you, and who doesn’t need to lie, because they’ve taken both the good and the bad, and they love you for both. It’s about being honest, and about trusting that they won’t hurt you, even though they have the power to do so.

So when the interview finally came out, I was going to say all of this on my blog — a clarification of sorts. But today, Ilona Andrews said the same thing over at Odd Shots, only she said it better (and coming from an amazing writer … okay, I teared up. She blindsided me, and the shields weren’t up. Damn her.)

And I have to say, that is exactly what I’m striving for with every single romance I write. Honesty, acceptance, trust…which are often much, much harder to come by than love.

(via Dear Author)

id_ballstothewall_v1.doc

It’s really strange the stuff that reinvigorates me/lets me focus when I’m writing. Sometimes, it’s changing the font or switching from double-spaced-indented-first-line to 12pt-after-the-paragraph-no-indent formats. This time, it’s being reminded of how I’m approaching this series every time I look at the task bar or open the file. Other times, it’s just a matter of getting my ass out of my chair and making another pot of coffee.

A fun link: Map of London 1868. The detail is freaking amazing. I’ve changed a bunch of stuff for my series, but for quick reference, it’s been one of my most-visited sites of the past year or so.

…is up at Odd Shots.

Also, don’t forget that today is the last day to enter to win Carolyn Jewel’s INDISCREET. Her interview (and those amazing pictures of a certain vampire) will always be up, but the opportunity to win the free book won’t.

It’s also the last day to win a copy of DEMON FORGED by commenting on my interview at Carolyn’s blog.

If you don’t get it, lurk. Either you’ll get it eventually, or you’ll realize it isn’t for you.

…talking about motivation.

…and setting a scene, but more about me being a fangirl.

Hi! This is the opening page from SECRET SIX #12 (Gail Simone, writer; Nicola Scott, penciller, image totally stolen from The Source, DC’s blog). Meet Wonder Woman’s legs and the Secret Six:

When it comes to showing, comics have an enormous advantage over prose. We get a huge amount of information in one glance, even if we don’t know who the players are or their histories. We know what they look like, their expressions, their positions relative to one another.

Tangent: If you are wondering why in the world I’m talking about this (aside from hearting this comic book series like crazy)?: I was judging writing contest entries today, and one thing I saw over and over again was the dreaded infodump. And in other entries, not giving enough information. Now, I’m guilty of both myself — and sometimes, there’s just no getting around it, and the only thing you can do is try to make the presentation of the information as entertaining and as organic to the story as possible. And if you withhold the info, you just have to make sure that it doesn’t make your reader incapable of enjoying and/or understanding the story until the information is revealed.

But here’s the thing: It’s okay if you don’t have everything on the front page, as long as you give your reader enough. And that enough often comes from dropping in little details that give not just a visual description, but also show us something about character and action.

Let’s look at the picture. Chances are, you know who Wonder Woman is, and you recognize her boots, her lasso, and her starry pants. You can put a name to her, and as soon as you do, you probably don’t need to describe the boots, the lasso, and the starry pants. But it’s also probable that you don’t know who the other people are. But here is what you do know, right away:

Wonder Woman is facing six people. All but one of them are in their pajamas. Whatever happened last issue, happened quickly.

They’ve been fighting. Bloody noses, bloody stomachs. And if you look closely at the dark-haired woman’s tank top, you can see that the rip patterns match the claws in the hand of the blond man next to her, and it probably isn’t a stretch to assume that her blades ripped his shirt. You can’t know this for sure, but it’s a good guess. And, whatever they were fighting about, they’ve stopped — because a bigger threat has just showed up. And you know she’s a bigger threat because of their expressions.

Four of them actually look a little worried by Wonder Woman’s appearance. One of them is smiling and clearly a freak, and the other is defiant.

And from two dialogue bubbles, you know:

That Artemis has been killed (*if this freaks you out because you love Artemis, ask me for spoilers in the comments)

That the woman who answered Wonder Woman has old-fashioned speech patterns to match her hair, is either very strong or very stupid if she thinks that she can hold out against WW, and that — whatever fight had been taking place between them — she believes that the others will listen to her.

Also, that Nicola Scott’s pencils rock some serious abdominals.

Now, when you turn the page, you know enough that you’re probably not going to be completely lost. This is a story you can follow, even if you have no idea what a) happened in the previous issue, and b) who the hell these people are.

And it’s all because of details that, even if written in prose, can show us a lot about these characters, show what they’ve been doing, and set up the tension in a scene. In prose, it’s important to choose details that can do double duty — not only can we describe what characters are wearing, for instance, but we can use that choice to show us a little about the action and character, too (whose clothes are ripped? who isn’t wearing PJs?). So give a picture, first, of both setting and character. Names and the details of their backgrounds can come later.

ETA: Thanks to The Book Smugglers for the shout out on their BBAW post. And this ended up being a wonderfully appropriate post to thank them on. *g*

So, working on steampunk. I realize there’s a subplot that I need to push forward in the storyline. In fact, I need to start the book with it. So I run back a couple of chapters (something I don’t normally do; I’m usually very linear. But this is for a proposal, so I Make Exceptions) and begin some really bad writing that has me stymied and cursing for several days. It goes:

1. Start with a line that is supposed to hook the reader. Something like:
   

   The device had killed the captain.

2. Go into your narrator’s eyes, and look at the dead captain. Go back in time just a little bit and explain how the captain died. But don’t stay too long, because we want to get back into narrator’s head and get a feel for the setting.
3. Dive into your narrator’s head. We see what he sees. We feel what he does. We look where he looks and see something that lets us…
4. …go back in time again and give more details about how the captain dies.
5. Oh, and then we hop back into real time and finally get a description of the bad guys.
6. Then we have dialogue that introduces a New Danger to our narrator. And continue that until the end of scene.

TA DA! If you’ve followed these instructions, you have a crappy scene!

Sigh. If the progression of your setting description, scene movement, and chronology make your scene look like this

it might seem exciting, but really you’re just going to be stuck in line for hours, waiting to get on and have great writerly fun, and you’ll probably make your readers sick.

The fix? In this case, I used a similar hook line, but instead of it already happening, it starts with the threat of it happening. That easily (hahaha!) the setting description and action can all move forward instead of jumping around. And, that easily, I can start writing and moving forward again, too.

So today is the release date for Must Love Hellhounds, an anthology featuring authors that no one has heard of before — like Charlaine Harris, Ilona Andrews, and Nalini Singh — and me. (I bet they all cried for joy when they heard I was participating in it, too. Their reaction on the phone with their agents was probably all “Who… whoooooooooo! Meljean!” Whoo hoo!)

And my awesomeness knows no bounds, really. While I was heading over to Amazon to link to the Hellhounds anthology, I saw two reviews up. So — DAMN MY EYES! — I read them. And one pointed out that an important plot point in my novella couldn’t have happened … because South Carolina doesn’t require front license plates on their cars.

Oops.

The most crazy and frustrating thing about research: You can only look up what you know that you don’t know. I think it was Lydia Joyce who once mentioned that she’d written about one of her characters putting something on a nightstand in her Victorian romance…only to find out afterward that they didn’t use nightstands then. They are just little items that never occur to you to verify when you’re writing, especially if they are things that you take for granted…like front license plates, which are mandatory in every state that you’ve lived in.

Most of the time, all you can do is accept it and move on (or make adjustments with a second printing). It’s a mistake, you own up to it, you do better next time. Unless, of course, you are a paranormal writer. Then you can say: In the Guardian universe, South Carolina does require front license plates. *g*

…and I guess this means my vacation is over. I won’t be posting every day, but probably several times a week (and I will be posting every Friday at Odd Shots.)