RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
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You’ll note this trophy has someone else’s name on it. That’s because I haven’t actually WON. But Petals & Thorns is a finalist in the 2011 PRISM awards for Best Erotica and Best First Book. I’m so delighted and thrilled.
And I really want one of these trophies.
Pretty.
Shiny.
And congrats to Marcella, for finalling with Enemy Within for Best Futuristic. She might also be up for Best First Book. If she knows what’s good for her, she won’t get her dirty fingerprints on MY trophy!
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Over the weekend I got to attend a Regatta.
Don’t you love how that rolls off the tongue?
Regatta.
It was just that styling, too.
Laurie’s daughter, Catherine was rowing with her schools’ team. She’s the ripped blonde in the red cap.
Here’s her team rowing out for their race while the boys prep.
Steaming to the finish line. They won handily.
Love the synchronicity.
Almost made me feel athletic, just to watch.
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On Saturday, my hosts took me on a hike on the Sweet Trail. Madison is a big fan of hikes, too.
All of this is freshwater estuarian marsh. Teeming with nesting birds of all types.
So lovely. The still water makes for great reflections.
If you look sharp, you can see lots of heron nests here.
The trail leads to the Great Bay. There’s a memorial there. Laurie’s husband, Bob, felt quite contemplative. For those of you keeping notes, this is what I want – a bench and an engraved marker in some beautiful spot.
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I’m over at Word Whores today, talking about perfection and lack thereof.
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I’m at my boss, Laurie’s, house this weekend in Durham, New Hampshire. All the flowers are in bloom.
I love the natural rock walls. And every opening looks like a lane into an enchanted forest.
The pond near their house. (Though the huge place in the background is not theirs.)
On the drive here, I wound through rolling hills and small towns. All along were small and ancient cemeteries, edged right up next to what used to be narrow lanes in dense woods.
Forget-me-nots all over their garden.
Always a special blossom.
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After work last night, we went up to Hanover, reputed to be a very pretty college town.
It was.
Nice little burrito spot for the students.
Weather vanes are big here.
Another snazzy eating establishment.
All the Dartmouth students were out on the grass, enjoying the sunshine and warm weather.
(You’re welcome.)
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It’s interesting being in New England, in such a different landscape from my home. As soon as I landed in Manchester yesterday evening, I smelled the ocean. Not the sun-warmed southern California surf, but the damp spring brine of the northeast sea coast.
There is SO much water here.
I’m staying in White River Junction, which is at the meeting of the Connecticut and White Rivers. They’re celebrating their 250 year anniversary this year – which seems funny to me after Santa Fe’s 400th. But it seems old to me here. Quiet at night, industrial on the edges, renovating nicely.
I took a walk this evening and saw these neat lofts with lovely glass balconies that overlook the river.
Neat sculpture in the Veteran’s Memorial park along the White River.
Road bridge crossing the river. I love how these staid little New England churches have been repurposed – this one into a Zen studio.
The White River itself.
This is a railroad town from way back and the Welcome Center is in the old depot.
Very pretty weather, but all this damp makes me feel chilled!
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I’m on the road again. Well, on the air, really.
At one time, I traveled pretty much nonstop. Like one to two weeks out of every month-type nonstop. I’ve gotten spoiled since that project was canceled. It felt traumatic to pack up and leave home for this two-week stint in New England.
Alas.
I’m hoping for some good photos. And pithy observations. Hey, it could happen.
Meanwhile, there have been interesting developments with Petals & Thorns. It was reviewed on Dear Author. I was simply thrilled. This is a major site – one I really like and respect, for the honesty of the reviews. Janine, the reviewer, only gave it a C+, because she was bothered by some of the aspects of the story. She talked about her reactions in depth and it stimulated great discussion. I loved having this kind of thoughtful review.
In turn that stimulated another thoughtful post on the topic.
I commented briefly on the first and really wanted to on the second. I might still. But so many reviewers complain that author commenting has a chilling effect on reviews.
Still, many of the issues raised are those that prompt me to write these stories, to explore these power issues and darker emotions. I feel a bit, what, deprived that I can’t leap into the discussion.
We’ll see how long I last.
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In working through my Sapphire line edits, I’ve learned something new about myself.
I know – who’da thunk it?
And yes, the line edits have been dead easy. I’m sending them off today. I don’t know why I was so worked up on Tuesday about it – thanks to all of you who said supportive things.
At any rate, one of the things my editor, Deb Nemeth, picked out was phrasing that kept the reader out of deep point-of-view (POV). The reader, instead of feeling like the reader she is looking through the character’s eyes, feeling what they feel, can get yanked out by these filter words and phrases. So an example would be “she saw the cat prancing through the cactus” instead of “the cat pranced through the cactus.” The second takes out that step of observation.
It’s been pointed out to me before that I do this. As an essayist, this writing style is no problem. Actually, it lends itself, because the art of the personal essay largely relies on being able to take that step back and observe your own life. But for fiction-writing, especially genre fiction, which is all about sweeping the reader up in the whirl of a new world, you don’t want to do this.
I’m learning.
Deb is an excellent editor and quite deft at pointing out where I create this objective distance. What I’m discovering is why it’s been hard for me to lose this kind of lens.
It’s because that’s how I see my own life.
Ever since I can recall, I’ve kind of narrated my own experiences. My first memory, back when I was in diapers, watching my parents drive away with all the abandonment grief that goes with it (they, um, were going to a movie), was also accompanied by a sense that, hey, here I am in a body and isn’t this interesting? There’s always been that part of me that steps back and observes objectively. Yes, I sometimes refer to myself in the first person. Sometimes I give my remarks dialogue tags. All in fun, but I might IM to a friend “bitch!” and then “and I mean that in the nicest way possible, she added hastily.”
Thus, for my characters to step back and observe, to have “she said to herself” absolutely reflects how I see the world.
It’s good for me to understand this. On the Meyers-Briggs personality test, I come out as an INTJ (introvert-intuitive-thinker-judger). One way they describe INTJs is:
… many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand.
All very interesting to me – and helpful in understanding why I behave in relationships the way I do. But it never occurred to me to examine how that influences how I *write* also.
In the end, it’s just another acquired skill in the craft of writing. It’s easy to say “that’s just how I write” or “that’s my voice” or “that’s how I see the world.” But, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish in a story, you may have to alter those things, to maximize the effect for the reader.
Which is, after all, the point of it all.
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This begs a comment about all reproductive activities following certain patterns…
I took this pic near my folks’ house in Tucson. The agave plants are sending up their spires, with varying kinds of blooms. Some of them will use up all of their resources to make the spire and flowers, much like a spawning salmon, dying to reproduce. That’s my biologist lens coming into play.
Tawna Fenske would undoubtedly find a rude joke to make, perhaps even run a contest about it.
Marcella Burnard would undoubtedly buy a huge textbook on agaves and write a mini-dissertation on them.
Linda Grimes would find an array of dirty pictures derived from cactus to share.
We all see these things differently because we all have different ways of processing the world, particularly sexual matters. Even if it’s plant sex. Sex is a deeply personal and intimate thing. It’s also one of those things where what we SAY about it doesn’t necessarily match what we DO. Because the doing, except in certain circumstances, is usually done privately with only one other participant, or maybe several, plus the dog.
(Had to throw that in, for my CPs!)
At any rate, this is on my mind, not just because of the prodigious agave spawning we witnessed, but because of this article. The author’s intent is to make the argument that if a married man isn’t getting satisfactory sex at home, then it’s better for him to pay a professional than to have an affair.
It also has the, perhaps unintended, effect of illustrating how the author feels about sex in general. To sum up, she finds it normal that she declined sex with her husband so as not to mess up the nicely ironed sheets.
Worse, *all* her friends that she polled agreed. They don’t like sex, don’t want to have it. From this she extrapolates that women don’t like sex.
See, I have a really different circle of friends.
Most of whom still have their mouths hanging open, muttering “she IRONS her SHEETS???”
This is, of course, why I love you all. And hey – if you’re a sheet-ironer out there, you can still hang with us. Then you can explain where you find the time!
I once went to one of those Chippendales shows, back in small town Wyoming. You know the thing – the male dancers take over the bar, women patrons only, they strip and strut about, dancing sometimes an overstatement. I went with this group of gals I worked with. Over the evening, they transformed. Some of it was the drinking, sure, but there was more. These usually demure wives and mothers, who would be disgusted if some cowboy in a bar stripped his shirt off and grabbed their hands to run over his chest were screaming in delight and tipping guys to do this.
You could say it’s a power thing, which could be true, but I suspect it’s more that it’s how they thought they should behave. After all, the guys like that kind of thing. Men are openly honest about enjoying sex and sexual things, whereas women range over the spectrum in how frank they are.
There are lots of reasons for this. But it’s not that all women don’t like sex.
In fact, my main response to that article was a fervent wish that the author would seek counseling. You don’t have to be that woman, screaming with desire and pawing young dancers, but if perfect sheets are more important than being intimate with your life partner, then something likely needs revisiting.
Actually, if perfectly pressed sheets takes priority over anything at all, I think you need to come sit on my patio and have a glass of wine.
We’ll talk.