Siegfried Sassoon, "The Dream"

The Dream

I
Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
Sweet songs are full of odours.
While I went
Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane,
I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden
Came the rank smell that brought me once again
A dream of war that in the past was hidden.


II
Up a disconsolate straggling village street
I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet.
The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet
And guide our Company in...
I watched them stumble
Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble;
Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs
Rifles, equipment, packs.
On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face
Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace,
While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.


III
I'm looking at their blistered feet; young Jones
Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded;
Out of his eyes the morning light has faded.
Old soldiers with three winters in their bones
Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes:
They can still grin at me, for each of 'em knows
That I'm as tired as they are...
Can they guess
The secret burden that is always mine?—
Pride in their courage; pity for their distress;
And burning bitterness
That I must take them to the accursèd Line.


IV
I cannot hear their voices, but I see
Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea,
And soon they’ll sleep like logs. Ten miles away
The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife.
And I must lead them nearer, day by day,
To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.

--Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

Moonlight Mistress Excerpt - First Kiss

It's 1914, and World War One is just beginning. Trapped in Germany, English chemist Lucilla and French scientist Fournier are forced into sharing a hotel room, and a bed. Moonlight Mistress by Victoria Janssen is due out December 2009 from Harlequin Spice.


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Lucilla closed her eyes and inhaled scent and warmth, hers and Fournier's mingled. A decorous woman would protest even this chaste embrace, given their dishabille. She had passed decorous simply by being in this hotel, in this room, in this bed. She closed her eyes and felt their hearts beating, concentrating on the sense of well-being that cocooned her, trying to sear it into her memory against future need. She didn't dare move, for fear it would end.

Fournier's voice caressed the inner tunnel of her ear. "This is permissible?"

"Yes," she said. Her throat tightened. Foolish to want more. Foolish. She did not even know this man. This young man. Far too young for her.

"Is it polite among the English, to ask if you have experience?"

Lucilla's breath stopped as the world flipped. She should not have been surprised. The world had flipped more than once today, already. She drew a deep breath. "I don't think so," she said. "That seems silly just now, doesn't it?"

"Well?"

He sounded as impatient as if he demanded coffee from a recalcitrant waiter. Lucilla laughed a little. He was clumsier than she in these matters. "I was engaged to be married, once. It ended badly, very badly. Yes, I am experienced." She paused, as a thought occurred to her. "And you?"

Fournier snorted, a ticklish sensation against her neck. "Somewhat."

A delicious sense of freedom flooded her to her bones. Lucilla rubbed her hand along his arm where it lay against her. She liked its heat and the contrast of soft skin over firm muscle, and the friction of hair beneath her palm. He must have liked it, too, for he shifted a little closer to her. She wondered how his skin tasted. "Have you asked me this for a reason?"

"You are toying with me."

"Teasing," she corrected, giddily. She lifted his arm to her mouth and kissed the back of his hand. It didn't taste of anything in particular. She would need to taste some other spot, such as--her breath caught at the thought--the crease where his leg met his thigh. "I've never done this with a stranger. Or anyone, except the one."

"I do not make a habit of seducing women," Fournier said. "If that is what you wished to know. I have always wondered why numbers are considered to be a factor in these matters, if once is enough to be damning." He paused, rubbing his nose against the back of her neck. Lucilla shivered at the odd but pleasurable sensation. "It was not my plan to seduce you, when I brought you here."

"Oh, surely not," she said. "You were so gallant. Why, when you offered to share your towel, I declare, my heart was all a-flutter."

She couldn't help herself; she began to laugh, at the absurdity of it all, at all the circumstances that had led her, a spinster chemist, to find herself nearly naked in a bed in Germany with a French scientist. She didn't even know his field of specialization.

That thought sent her off again, and she laughed until her gut hurt. At some point, she gasped out a few words of explanation and Fournier laughed with her. Seemingly without transition, she was on her back and his face loomed above her. She lifted her hand and traced his mustache with her finger, then he was kissing her, first gentle brushing and nibbling, then deep kisses full of bristles and heat and wet swirling sensation, whirlpools sucking her down.


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c. Victoria Janssen 2009


More excerpts.

More "first kiss" excerpts are available at these authors' blogs today:

Lauren Dane.
Cynthia Eden.
Vivi Anna.
Sylvia Day.
Moira Rogers.
Jaci Burton.
Shelli Stevens.
Elisabeth Naughton.
Viv Arend.
Anya Bast.
Mandy Roth.
Beth Williamson.
Michelle Pillow.
Taige Crenshaw.
McKenna Jeffries.
Maggie Robinson.
Juliana Stone.
Sasha White.
Maura Anderson.
Shelley Munro.
Jody Wallace.
Eliza Gayle.
Kelly Maher.

How Times Change!

How times change!

On this day in 2003, I noted in my journal that I wrote 183 words on the novel I was writing at the time.

That is, 183 words all day.

Now, I very, very rarely allow myself to stop after less than 500 words, and my more usual goal is at least 1000 words in an evening. Of course, now I have these things called "deadlines." And after years of tracking how many words I write, I have a much better idea of my capabilities.

Tomorrow, stop by for an excerpt from my next novel, Moonlight Mistress and links to excerpts by a list of other writers as part of Snippets Saturday. The theme for tomorrow is "First Kiss." I'll be participating in Snippets Saturday several times over the coming months; each one will feature a different theme, which I think is a really cool idea.

Books on Writing

I have a few favorite books on writing which I'd like to share. Links are to Amazon.com.

This is my favorite, which I enjoy reading for itself as well as for what it teaches me: Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew by Ursula K. LeGuin.

This one is best read slowly and digested slowly: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews by Samuel R. Delany.

This one is good when your enthusiasm for writing is low; I think it's also really good for writers who haven't been writing for a long time: Take Joy: A Writer's Guide to Loving the Craft by Jane Yolen.

This one is slightly unusual because it combines a history of a writing workshop with more practical discussion of writing: Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop by Kate Wilhelm.

Related posts:
How To Learn To Write.

Pithy Writing Advice.

Writing Goals

What are your goals for writing?

I was thinking about this recently, and realized I needed to make some new goals. My first goal was sell a short story. I did quite a bit of that, all the while with the goal sell a novel. After I sold a novel, it was get a second novel contract, which I accomplished in April.

So what now?

I have a lot of ideas I'd love to turn into novels, but using those ideas doesn't really feel like a goal; they're just part of writing for me.

There's the money aspect, but I'm not sure that counts as a goal, either. Though I love being paid for my work, other factors are more important to me, and it doesn't seem useful to me to set a goal like earn X amount of money.

I don't actually have the goal of becoming a full-time writer. If some fortuitous event made me unspeakably wealthy, perhaps, but I don't see that happening. I don't want to worry about my contracts in the way I would need to, if they were my sole source of income. I prefer the stability of having a day job.

My only real goal at present, besides the immediate, finish the pirate novel, is to work on becoming a better writer, but that's more of a constant undercurrent than a goal. There's write what I want to write, which I am pretty much doing already, to my astonishment. It's not every publisher that will accept things like eunuchs and vengeful werewolf spies. And, of course, have fun. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't enjoy it.

For the Love of My Netbook

Whenever Timmy falls into a well, my netbook comes to fetch me...well, no. Not really. But sometimes I feel like my Acer Aspire One has saved from from a dreadful fate.

For example, if I'm stuck in an airport, and it turns out my flight's been delayed for two hours. In some airports, there's a wireless network, so I can use the netbook to log in and send a cry into the wilderness of the internet. Or I might be able to use that two hours--which might stretch into three or four--to get some writing done. And if all else fails, I can surf the internet.

My netbook weighs considerably less than my elderly laptop, and is smaller to boot. If I've been carrying it all day, I don't feel as if I have a knapsack full of iron bars on my back. It's not such a burden when I'm sprinting across an airport to make my connection. I can carry it even if I'm not sure I'll need it. Sometimes, this results in me getting an extra couple of pages written on my lunch hour.

Besides all that, I think it's cute. It's little and cute. It makes me happy.

And anything that makes me eager to do a little writing can't help but be a good thing.

This is one like mine:

Memorial Day, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, "A Lament"

A Lament

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings--
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?


--Wilfred Wilson Gibson, 1918

Siegfried Sassoon, "Base Details"

Base Details

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. 'Poor young chap,'
I'd say--'I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.'
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.

--Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

Siegfried Sassoon, "Banishment"

Banishment

I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.


The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.

--Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

A WisCon 2006 memory - the fan letter

I leave for WisCon in a couple of days, and I wanted to revisit something I wrote while at WisCon 2006. To understand this, there are a few things I should tell my readers who aren't familiar with science fiction.

James Tiptree, Jr., whose real name was Alice Sheldon, was one of the best science fiction writers in the history of the genre; she died by suicide in 1987. Because her gender wasn't known until long after she'd become well-known, and because she addressed gender issues in her fiction, the Tiptree Award is named for her.

Carol Emshwiller is one of the most interesting writers in the sf genre. She's now in her eighties. The collection of her stories to which I refer was published in 1974. Samuel R. Delany is another top writer and scholar in the field.


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Friends of mine came to WisCon this year for the first time, and decided they wanted to contribute something handmade to the Tiptree Auction. Once their item was out on display in the art room, they brought me by to see it. While I was there I looked at the other things.

Towards the end of the table, I found a manila folder, whose tag said something like "fan letter." I opened it.

My heart stopped, or my breathing, or something. I found myself reading it aloud, slowly. It was beautifully written, a gushing fan letter full of complex clauses and humor and self-deprecation and admiration for Carol Emshwiller's collection Joy in Our Cause. The letter was dated, if I remember right, 24 May 75. It had been written by James Tiptree, Jr., or "Tip." Her signature was at the bottom, her perfectly ordinary home address embossed on the top corner. She had gotten Carol's address from the SFWA directory, she said. Carol would laugh, she said, seeing how she rationed the book out. Carol didn't have to feel obligated to reply, she could send the letter to her circular file if she wanted. There was a small stain from coffee, perhaps, and a creased corner. I touched it. It struck me more forcefully, physically, than the first time I touched a genuine archaeological artifact.

Later, I dragged several people into the room to see it, without telling them first why. Each time it was like it was new again. That such a thing could be in the world!

Carol never wrote back. She was too overwhelmed, too shy. I went up to her later in the Green Room and thanked her for donating the letter, thanked her for allowing me and the rest of us to see it. First, she said, "Wasn't it beautifully written?" She said she couldn't possibly have written anything as lovely in reply. After she read it, she told me, she forgot about the letter. I suggested maybe she'd just been thinking about it in the back of her mind. She said, "No, it was if it had never happened." I said, "Maybe it was scary." She said, after a moment's thought, "Yes, maybe that was it." She put the letter away, not finding it again until a couple of years ago, "And it was like a new thing."

Now, Carol said, she would have replied, to thank Alice Sheldon for the lovely letter (or, probably, thanked Tip).

The real end of the conversation, though, was when Chip Delany, across the table, said that he had once gotten a letter from Tip, and it was now lost.

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WisCon 2009

Today, I'm on my way to Madison, Wisconsin for WisCon. I attend WisCon almost every year, and wanted to attend long before I had the financial means to do so. For many years, it was the only feminist science fiction convention, and is still the largest.

For me, WisCon is like a giant party, one of those good parties where you run into someone you know every few feet, and have to make appointments ahead of time so you can make sure to see all your friends. As most of the conventions I attend are in the northeast of the United States, traveling to the midwest for WisCon means I get to see friends from that area, as well as friends from farther away, for example California and England. Most of them, I see only once a year, at WisCon.

The convention officially begins on Friday, but like many WisCon regulars, I arrive on Thursday to hang out in the lobby of the Concourse hotel and greet friends as they arrive. It's a chance to have a leisurely dinner in one of the many nearby restaurants, and hear that year's guests of honor read at the local feminist bookstore, A Room of One's Own.

I am on deadline at the moment, and am participating less in the convention programming this year than I usually do: only two panels, neither of which I'm moderating. I decided not to participate in a reading, either. But this year is different for another reason. This is the very first time I will be attending as the author of a published novel.

Last year, I had a single cover flat for The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover, which I brandished and forced everyone to admire. This year, I have an actual published book. I'm bringing a few copies to sell at the Broad Universe table, and will have one on hand for people to look at if they're curious. Many of my friends who'll be attending have already read it, but I haven't seen them in person since last year, so this will be my first chance to discuss it with them in person. So exciting!

It feels like I'm going to show off my book at a family reunion.

History of WisCon

I'll be leaving for WisCon tomorrow, and after checking something on their website, I found this excellent page:

History of WisCon.

It contains a list of the past conventions and their guests of honor. For some, the guest of honor speeches are available as PDF downloads.

I highly recommend reading some of the speeches:

Carol Emshwiller.

Nalo Hopkinson.

Ursula K. LeGuin.

I hope some more of the recent speeches make it online soon.

My WisCon 2009 Schedule

These are the panels in which I'll be participating at WisCon this weekend.

Gadgets: Then, Now and When
Sat 1:00 - 2:15PM
Conference 4

Moderator: Michelle Murrain; John Helfers, Elise Anna Matthesen, Victoria Janssen, Allison Morris.

Cyberpunk and steampunk are alluring gadget–heavy genres: what roles do gadgets and their inventors play in characterization and world–building? What gadgets exist that we never dreamt we'd see, and which do we think we may see within our lifetimes? What are the fictional gadgets we wish really existed? Which real gadgets can't we live without, and which do we take for granted?

Witches and Wizards: Gender and Power in Portrayals of Magic
Sat 10:30 - 11:45PM
Caucus

Moderator: Sarah G. Micklem; Gerri Balter, Melodie Bolt, Beverly Friend, Victoria Janssen.

Are witches female and wizards male? Feminism has created a new norm where Hermione gets to go to wizard school too, but let's take a closer look. Are there still implicit assumptions about the gender of magic in many fantasies?

The Obligatory Writing-Music Post

Writers often have a close relationship with music. Some write in silence, but those who write while music is playing are often very opinionated on what sort of music they choose, even to constructing playlists for particular novels.

I'm a musician myself, both an instrumentalist and a choral singer, but the way I use music when writing is very different from how I approach it as a musician.

When I listen to music while writing, often it's merely to mask other noises, whether outside my head or inside it. Frequently, I write in a coffee shop which sometimes plays music that I find distracting, plus there are sometimes loud conversations going on. In that case, I have a special playlist to use. Its title is "Loud." Everything on it is loud enough to drown out other noises (I have good headphones). The German band Rammstein is a big part of that playlist, as are Rob Zombie and Disturbed and Godsmack and Depeche Mode and Metallica.

When I don't need the masking effect, I tend to favor music that enhances my concentration, which for me is usually something featuring long melodic lines or a steady underlying pulse. If volume isn't an issue--for instance if I'm in a quiet place but just having trouble focusing--I usually go for vocal music, mostly early polyphonic counterpoint. (For example, the Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, or the medieval composer Guillaume de Machaut.) If I already know the piece well, I can "turn off" my musician brain and let the music play along at a subconscious level. I'm not sure exactly how this works to help me write, but it does. I also use electronica and trip-hop for this purpose (for example, Tricky--his albums are staple listening for me while writing).

Finally, there's the music that doesn't serve quite the same purpose for me as the counterpoint or trip-hop, but is close to it in effect, with its usually minor key and driving beats. I use Goth bands such as Sisters of Mercy, This Mortal Coil, London After Midnight, Joy Division, and Inkubus Sukkubus on my standard writing playlist.

And when I don't know what I want, I revert to Evanescence on repeat. I've used their albums as writing music for long enough that the words sink into the music and don't distract me; again, it's a band whose music is usually minor key (my favorite, if you haven't already guessed) and features long melodic lines.

How about you?

Siegfried Sassoon, "Autumn"

Autumn

October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

--Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

Siegfried Sassoon, "Dead Musicians"

Dead Musicians


I
From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,
The substance of my dreams took fire.
You built cathedrals in my heart,
And lit my pinnacled desire.
You were the ardour and the bright
Procession of my thoughts toward prayer.
You were the wrath of storm, the light
On distant citadels aflare.


II
Great names, I cannot find you now
In these loud years of youth that strives
Through doom toward peace: upon my brow
I wear a wreath of banished lives.
You have no part with lads who fought
And laughed and suffered at my side.
Your fugues and symphonies have brought
No memory of my friends who died.


III
For when my brain is on their track,
In slangy speech I call them back.
With fox-trot tunes their ghosts I charm.
'Another little drink won't do us any harm.'
I think of rag-time; a bit of rag-time;
And see their faces crowding round
To the sound of the syncopated beat.
They've got such jolly things to tell,
Home from hell with a Blighty wound so neat...

. . . .

And so the song breaks off; and I'm alone.
They're dead ... For God's sake stop that gramophone.


--Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

Pirate Romance For The Win!

I think romances with pirates in them, or at least sea adventure, have some of the best backcover copy ever.

These are best enjoyed if read with great expression and appropriate emphasis on any use of pirate/sea/sailing terminology. Bonus emphasis on the word pirate whenever it occurs.

And if you have other examples, please share!

1. Susan Grant, Once A Pirate
Love Spell Timeswept, November 2006

Once A Pirate

Andrew Spencer sailed the seas seeking revenge and there were very few merchant's treasures that he hadn't given a jolly rogering. But on this particular voyage, he found his task harder than usual. As a brown-eyed beauty was hoisted from the waves, he found his pirate's soul plundered from without and a fiery need conjured up from within.

Forever Her Man

The freak storm that caused her plane to go down in the Atlantic sent fighter pilot Carly Callahan's life spinning out of control as well. Pulled from the freezing ocean, she found herself in the hot embrace of an Adonis. But his eyes were cold and hard, and the man's burning lips swore she was someone else before he claimed her as his own. Carly knew she had one chance to go home, but there was so much to see and feel here--and the best was yet to come.

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2. Jennifer Ashley, Perils of the Heart
Leisure, November 2002

Uncharted Territory

Evangeline Clemens knew she tread in dangerous waters. Sent to seduce the captain of the merchantman Aurora, the English governess trembled in her innocence. Her stepbrother's life--and the life of the rugged sailor she must tempt--depended on her success. She swore to surrender her body, her virtue...anything Austin Blackwell demanded. But she never expected to relinquish her heart.

On a mission for the American Colonies, Austin suspected the timid temptress was a skilled spy ordered to sabotage his plans. She played the part of an untried miss to perfection, her inexperienced fumbling driving him wild with desire. But after sampling her sweetness, after one harrowing night fraught with passion and peril, the commander vowed to navigate any course to discover the truth. For his soul mutinied at the prospect of sailing into the future without the courageous lady at his side.

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3. Claudia Dain, Tell Me Lies
Leisure, March 2000

They were pirates--lawless, merciless, hungry. Only one way offered hope of escaping death, and worse, at their hands. Their captain must claim her for his own, risk his command, his ship, his very life, to take her.

And so she put her soul into a seduction like no other--a virgin, playing the whore in a desperate bid for survival. As the blazing sun descended into the wide blue sea, she was alone, gazing into the eyes of the man who must lay his heart at her feet....

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4. Julie Garwood, Guardian Angel
Pocket, 1990

The Emerald flew across the seas, carrying the pirate Pagan--despised by the ton, whose riches he plundered, and beloved by the poor, whose plight was eased by his gifts.

The Marquess of Cainewood vows to hunt down the pirate wretch in revenge for his brother's death. But when Jade, an enchanting vision of rippling red hair and eyes of jewel-green, appears at his door to beg desperately for his protection, the Marquess agrees to keep her safe from the villains who want her dead. Jade is infuriating, exasperating, and gorgeous; Caine is noble, strong-willed, and powerful. No woman has ever befuddled him so, nor so deeply aroused his desire. But as Jade answers his knowing caresses with an innocent, wild abandon, they are drawn into a web of treachery that will test the very heart of their love!

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Werewolves in Moonlight Mistress

The first thing I like about werewolves is that, unlike vampires, they are alive. And they will eat you. All up.

Second, I like the fur. Who wouldn't? Warm, furry werewolf to snuggle up to at night? And when they purr...oh, wait. That's cats. Well, you get the idea. Can any romance heroine resist digging her fingers into her werewolf boyfriend's plush pelage?

Third, I like that erotic wet dog smell...no, wait. The rich odor of raw meat...wait. Oh, yeah. That wonderful scent of pine forests and crisp mountain breezes.

Really, none of those things show up in Moonlight Mistress. What I like about werewolves are the same things I like about wolves. Wolves love their families. Wolves can be playful. Wolves put females in charge of many important duties, such as locating suitable dens with adequate nearby food supplies and controlling the pack's matings and thus its future genetic health. For that reason, I'm rarely fond of werewolf heroes in romance who are overwhelmingly dominant.

Those are the traits I borrowed for my werewolves in Moonlight Mistress. The first werewolf character is female, and though so far her attempts to start a family have been disastrous, it's an important goal for her; in their world, werewolves are rare, and must be born rather than made. The second werewolf character, male, is a bit of a rake but that behavior is related to his search for another werewolf with whom he can create a family. He's playful, and willing to let her control him in certain things. Their shared goal leads to her accepting a marriage of convenience, so they can have children who are also werewolves. Someday, I'd like to write a novel about their marriage of convenience and how it progresses, which wasn't within the scope of Moonlight Mistress.

Related post:

Of Wolves and Men.

Of Wolves and Men

This post includes some of my research on wolves, for Moonlight Mistress.

I particularly liked Of Wolves and Men by Barry Holstun Lopez, because it featured a lot of observations he and others had made in the wild. The book is from Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1978.

Some quotes:
p. 53 "Wolves do not get hungry in the way we normally understand hunger. Their feeding habits and digestive systems are adapted to a feast-or-famine existence and to procuring and processing massive amounts of food in a relatively short time. They are more or less always hungry. Wolves commonly go without food for three or four days and then gorge, eating as much as eighteen pounds of meat at one sitting." Digestion then takes 2-3 hours.



"A Russian record reports a wolf going without food for seventeen days...."

p. 54 "Wolves consume an average of 5-10 pounds of meat a day and wash it down with large quantities of water to prevent uremic poisoning from the high production of urea associated with a meat diet. The wolf has a large liver and pancreas to aid digestion...."

p. 59 "If the prey runs, it is almost certain to be chased. If it refuses to run, or approaches the wolves, it may be left alone...signals, perhaps, between predator and prey."

p. 67 ."The wolf seems to have few relationships with other animals that could be termed purely social, though he apparently takes pleasure in the company of ravens."

Resting, or Not-Writing

There's an expression British actors use: when they're out of work, they don't say that they're unemployed, they say that they're "resting." I like that for more than one reason.

"Resting" is an active verb. You're doing something if you're resting. In other words, if I'm not writing, I am resting. I am making an effort to not-write.

(Remember how I keep saying writing is all about psyching yourself into it?)




Things happen when I'm resting. My conscious mind might not be grinding away at a story, but I feel that underneath, story is happening, coalescing from disparate thoughts and experiences like a weird plankton colony. When the colony of ideas is big enough, they show up in my conscious mind, and that's when I "have an idea." So to get ideas, I have to rest. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Sometimes, resting seems to happen spontaneously. I don't mean that I suddenly can't write; it's that I suddenly don't want to write. My creative feelings are knotted together, and every sentence is a struggle, even if I know what I'm supposed to be writing and have a good plan for achieving it. When that happens, if the deadline allows, I stop. I put the writing aside for a few days, or even a week. I allow myself to read books (see yesterday's post!) and go out and socialize. It isn't the same feeling as when I've just finished a novel and am completely empty; it's more of a tense waiting feeling. That's when I know I need rest.

Once I give myself permission to stop for a little while, a level of tension vanishes. And when I go back to writing, my love of writing and of my story is renewed.

Related Posts: Synergy in Writing and Research, Reading for the Writer, and Shopping and Recharging. The Art of Waiting.

Reading For The Writer

One of the most important things I do as a writer is read.

I don't think it's possible to become a writer unless you're a reader first, and for most writers, reading is as integral to their development as writing itself.

But what should a writer read?

The short answer is everything. That, of course, isn't really possible; and also, writing takes up a great deal of time, so reading time has to be prioritized in the same way. So. Allow me to pontificate on this subject.

First, a writer reads in the genre she is writing. That only makes sense. You needs to know what's there so you don't write the same story as everyone else. I think it's important to read what are considered the best examples of your subgenre, because the best books can give you something to strive for. However, the worst examples are important, too; the "worst" books might be doing something new and exciting, even if it didn't work out in the end, and they might inspire you even more than the "best" books.

I also think it's important to know the history of your genre, particularly the early examples of it: for instance, Regency authors ought to at least have read Jane Austen, who actually wrote during their period, and Georgette Heyer, who recreated the period for a modern audience. Authors of paranormal romance might find it useful to read non-romantic fantasy. Fringe examples are also useful. For example, Mary Stewart wrote an early example of a paranormal romance, Touch Not the Cat. Nora Roberts also wrote some paranormal romances long before the current boom. Early and fringe examples can reinvigorate a writer's idea of what their genre is and can be.

Reading classics can't hurt, either. Great themes in literature usually remain great themes, and can provide fodder for your future work. If you've read Jane Eyre or Pamela or Persuasion, even if you're not consciously using that knowledge when writing a historical romance, unconsciously it might make a difference by giving your work a little extra depth or resonance.

From a directly practical standpoint, reading is also an important part of learning to write, if you can remember to read as a writer and not solely as a reader. How do other writers handle pacing and transitions, and how they balance between telling and showing? How do they depict character traits? Describe things? Express themes? What can you learn from their plot structure? Do they use any interesting vocabulary that's new to you? What makes you angry about the book, and makes you want to write a better/different book in reaction?

Writers, what do you read?

Related Post: Synergy in Writing and Research.

Siegfried Sassoon, "The Investiture"

The Investiture

God with a Roll of Honour in His hand
Sits welcoming the heroes who have died,
While sorrowless angels ranked on either side
Stand easy in Elysium's meadow-land.
Then you come shyly through the garden gate,
Wearing a blood-soaked bandage on your head;
And God says something kind because you’re dead,
And homesick, discontented with your fate.


If I were there we'd snowball Death with skulls;
Or ride away to hunt in Devil’s Wood
With ghosts of puppies that we walked of old.
But you're alone; and solitude annuls
Our earthly jokes; and strangely wise and good
You roam forlorn along the streets of gold.

--Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

Siegfried Sassoon, "Dreamers"

Dreamers

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

--Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

Happy Divaversary to Me!

Happy Divaversary to Me!

Today is the first anniversary of when I joined the Romance Divas, a free forum for writers.

Stop by the forums if you're interested in why I love this site so much.

Today is Star Trek Movie Day!

Mr. Spock (in reruns) was one of my earliest crushes, and the show one of my favorites for many years. Isn't he yummy? You really need to hear his speaking voice to get the full effect.

I might not get quite the same buzz from the new Star Trek movie, but nostalgia moves me to go and see it anyway. If I don't like it, I can take the traditional Trekker approach and complain about it bitterly afterwards.

And who knows, maybe I will like the new movie in a whole new way. It's definitely got some actors I enjoy watching. Sadly, though, I can't see it tonight--my choir has a dress rehearsal for our Saturday performance. But soon. Soon I shall see it! Soon it shall be mine!

It is illogical to think Friday should be happier than any other day of the week.

Defining erotic romance, romance, erotica

I've now read dozens of definitions and discussions of romance and of erotica and of erotic romance, and after all my reading, I've come to the following conclusions, none of which have anything to do with the quality of the writing or the style of the writing or who is reading it and for what purpose.

Erotic romance, in my mind, is just romance. I don't care how much sex is in it, or how that sex is portrayed. When I read "erotic romance" I read it as if it's romance, with those genre expectations in mind: happy ending and focus on the growth of a couple's romantic relationship (and sometimes a threesome's romantic relationship).

Erotica, to me, includes plotless or "stroke" fiction which is sometimes termed pornography as well as literary erotica. Mainly, though, I think of erotica as any work in which sex is a major component. The story doesn't have to focus on the development of a couple's relationship; it might focus on a couple, or it might focus on several groupings of different types. The story does not have to have a happy ending. It may include couples and happy endings, but it doesn't have to.

I think of erotic romance as a subset of erotica, not the other way around. To me, erotica is an inclusive term for the literature of sexuality.

Your mileage, of course, may vary considerably.

Related post: Erotic Journeys and Bodice Rippers.

Online Promotion - Is It Worth It?

Every little bit helps - that's what I tell myself when I think about online promotion. I also tell myself not to get too excited about it.

There are all sorts of guides to help an author through the process of promoting their book online and to tell them how to keep that effort ongoing. I find them all a bit depressing. The reason? I know how big the internet is.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The internet may not be as big as space, but it's much, much bigger than I can comprehend. There are blogs and websites that I will never, ever encounter, no matter how many odd searches I run. True, a lot of those sites won't be relevant to my book, so aiming publicity in those directions wouldn't do me any good. But it only drives home to me the sheer number of people who use the internet every day. Beyond that, there are billions of people who never use the internet at all. Anything I do online, therefore, is a drop in the bucket. Even blogs with traffic in the thousands every day are tiny, when you think of them in comparison to The Daily Dish or Mashable or BoingBoing.

And, of course, the number of bookbuyers who never even peek online is much larger than the number of bookbuyers who do. An author will never hear a single word from most of the people who read her book. The number of people who post reviews of even some of their reading is, in comparison to the total numbers of readers, vanishingly small.

There are ways to reach a bigger audience on the internet, but I'm not sure I want to do that. It takes time and money to promote via an author newsletter and contests and the like. The time, especially, I grudge. I don't want to take time away from writing fiction to promote so extensively. I don't think it's necessary to familiarize the entire internet with my name and book titles, only those who might want the information (or that I assume might want it). This is especially true because I write erotica. There is a very large audience who don't like erotica whom I feel it's useless for me to approach. Some readers from that audience really, really don't want me to approach, and I am fine with leaving them alone.

I promote online anyway, to some extent. I'm, hopefully, promoting to an audience already disposed to be interested in my writing, which makes the effort more valuable in comparison to the time spent. I write guest posts for other people's (relevant to my writing) blogs, announce my publishing news on various social networking sites, and have an author website. If nothing else, those things mean that readers who might want to send me email have an address where they can send it. The excerpts and information I provide on my books might persuade a reader to buy my book. It might not make a difference to the masses of people out on the internet, but it makes a difference to those few. If I'm lucky, some of those few will like my writing enough to recommend it to others, whether online or otherwise.

However, online promotion makes a difference to me, too. Promoting is doing. It's an aspect of writing which is under my control. When so much about publishing is not under my control, that's perhaps the most important reason to promote online.

As for this blog, it's not really a promotional vehicle, though I do promotional things on it. I just like to talk about writing and publishing and books...if people read it, that's extra. If readers comment, that makes blogging more fun, but it isn't necessary. I needn't fear I'm forcing my opinions on anyone, as they can read or not read as they choose. Most importantly, I enjoy it.

So what do you think? Do I have it all wrong? How has the online promotion business been for you? Good, bad, indifferent?

Today's silent film star, if you haven't already recognized him, is Rodolpho Alfonzo Rafaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla, also known as Rudolf Valentino.

Related posts:
Jessica Freely Guest Post - Wildly Successful E-book Promotion.
Tweet Tweet! (Twitter).
Professional Writing and Spending Money.

Tweet tweet!

Not so long ago, I became a Twit. Or perhaps that should be Twitterer. As you know, Bob, Twitter is a form of instant messaging. You're limited to 140 characters per tweet, or message. You can follow the tweets of others, and others can follow you. If you choose, you can limit your tweets to certain people. I chose to leave mine open.

You can find my profile here:
http://twitter.com/victoriajanssen

So far, what I've enjoyed most is the interaction of Twitter. I generally follow other writers, some of whom I know in person and some whom I don't. I also follow a few personal friends, one of whom I rarely see because he travels so much for his job; he is a champion tweeter, though, and it's great to hear what he's up to each day. My fellow writer tweeters can share the small frustrations and also the pleasures of their writing day, and not lose too much time about it. As writing is often such a solitary activity, it's nice to be able to stop by one's local virtual pub/water cooler/coffeeshop for a brief chat now and again.

Also, Twitter is a place for off-the-cuff remarks; real time announcements, the sort you just want to share before writing a long blog post the next day; and quick links to interesting articles you just read. Also, more and more Twitter is being used to disperse news rapidly.

There are flaws. I usually don't twitter on the weekends or during evenings, and the conversation moves on without me pretty quickly. There are only so many people I can follow and still keep track of them, particularly if I've never met them or never interacted with them elsewhere online. Some people follow but prefer not to interact, so sometimes it feels as if one has a silent audience, even though on the internet one always has an invisible, unseen audience.

However, for me the benefits outweigh the flaws. I like the quick, casual interaction. I even like the challenge of writing posts of 140 characters or less.

Did I just twog? That is, blog about Twitter?

If you comment, feel free to leave your twitter address!

Related Post: Online Promotion - Is It Worth It?.

Kate Pearce Guest Post: The Regency versus The Victorian

The Regency versus The Victorian

Every so often I get mail or reviews that comment on what my characters get up to in my Regency-set erotic romances. Usually the comments suggest that no one in the Regency period would know about any erotic sexual practices, that it just wasn’t done. Well, um, that just ain’t so. And I totally blame Queen Victoria.

During the Georgian and Regency period, poor, over-protected Princess Victoria grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional family. Because of the Royal Marriage Act of 1772 the descendants of King George II had to obtain the monarch’s consent to marry, or if they were above the age of 25, they had to notify the Privy Council. As you can imagine, family relationships being what they are, none of G II’s descendants were very happy about this. So most of them chose not to marry and had gazillions of mistresses, or chose to marry more than once, sometimes in secret (the Prince Regent, anyone?)


Basically Princess Victoria’s uncles were a roistering bunch of unapologetic drunkards, and womanizers, much pilloried in the press and in the print cartoons of the day, often pictured engaged in the grossest forms of entertainments. Take the monarch who proceeded Victoria, her uncle, King William IV. He had children. He actually had ten illegitimate children with the actress Dorothy Jordan, with whom he lived very happily for many years. But King William did not have a single legitimate heir. Hence Victoria’s accession to the throne.

And I can understand why she might have ‘over-reacted’ a little to the excesses of her ancestors and become a straight-laced repressive old harridan. But it doesn’t mean that my Regency characters have to act like Victorians. The British army was in India and engaged in conflict in Europe, times were uncertain, there was civil unrest at home and in Ireland. Taking risks, living life for the ‘now’, in case it all ended, was far more the mindset of the generation proceeding Victoria’s.

Every generation is determined not to be like the one before them-look at what happened in the 50’s, the 60’s, the 80’s and the 90’s. Cause and reaction, moral to immoral, neon to grunge, excess to eco-friendly. It happens. That’s why I can almost forgive Queen Victoria-almost.

Obviously I can’t give this little, um, lecture to everyone who tells me I have it all wrong and that Regency folk were quiet well-mannered and meek, (but I feel so much better for getting it off my chest here LOL). They had access to the erotic tales of India, they were experiencing a huge revival of interest in Classical Rome and Greece and none of these cultures have the same Christian mindset about sex. Why wouldn’t they be experimenting? I would’ve been.

And guys, if you can bear the thought of untraditional, and quite frankly, naughty sexual practices in your historical romance novels, check mine out. They are definitely not Victorian.

Kate Pearce
http://www.katepearce.com/

Guest post tomorrow! And Wolverine....

Stop by tomorrow for a guest post on mores in the Regency period versus the Victorian period from historical erotica author Kate Pearce.

http://www.katepearce.com/

Me, I'll be reading Kate's post and then running off to see the new Wolverine movie.

Evangeline Adams Guest Post - Writing African-American Romance

Please welcome my guest, Evangeline Adams!

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A year ago, after thinking I would write only historical romance, that I could never, ever in my life write a contemporary romance, ideas for contemporaries popped into my head like a stack of wobbling dominoes. But I was resistant and wary, stricken by the irrational fear that if I set aside my historical romances to write contemporary romances, I would: (a) have my thunder "stolen" by other historical romance writers and (b) have a difficult time moving back into historicals. But the biggest monkey on my back, one I didn't want to acknowledge until just recently, was that I feared writing these contemporary romances because my protagonists would be black.

But when I essentially rejected those contemporary romance ideas last year, I couldn't put a finger on that lingering sense of unease I felt by their presence. A few months down the road, around the end of last year, I got an idea for a historical romance with black protagonists. And that frightened me to death. I've read the African-American historical romances written by Beverly Jenkins and Altonya Washington and enjoyed them, but since the majority of my HR and HF readings involved white characters, it was pretty easy to push the concept of black characters in HR out of my mind. But this idea...it blossomed nigh fully-formed in my head, just as fully-formed as those contemporary romance plots. And as I did with the contemporaries, I set that aside, anxious to work on manuscripts with acceptably white protagonists.

This isn't to say that I shouldn't write white characters, nor that my ethnicity should drive what I write, but I was lacking both the balance and proper perspective of both sides of my heritage. I picked up one of the contemporary ideas a few months ago and found that it was a great idea, that the characters were great and the romance would be really angsty and sexy--just one of the ways I like my romances. So I dusted it off and began to work on an outline with the hope of actually writing it. And I was excited about it--until I began to begin the preliminary research for it (one of the reasons I hesitated to do CR's was because it's a hell of a lot more easier to get things wrong, to have real life people telling me I got things wrong, whereas 100-150 years ago, I don't have to worry about someone living in 1904 New York emailing me to say a deli wasn't on that street, or the Central Park Zoo didn't get a particularly animal until a few months after my story was set--you get the picture).

The trouble with researching this CR was not about getting things wrong, but about getting things right. My plot is very much tied to the class, skin-tone, and racial issues with the upper-class black community, as well as the greater issues that all blacks must deal with, and suddenly, I felt overwhelmed with fear that this book would be "too black." That same fear choked the historical idea I plotted merrily the second it came to me (deals with classism, racism and lynchings in 1900s America). At this point, I believed in this plot and believed in its success. I just couldn't shake that incessant fear that kept me from writing it.

It suddenly hit me when I struggled with plotting a "regular" historical romance: the fear was of being considered a second-class citizen. If you've been a regular visitor to Dear Author or Karen Knows Best, you're aware of the issues surrounding not solely black romance writers, but writers of color writing characters of color: it's a jungle out there. To state it bluntly, a level playing field is available to authors of color only if they "write white." Sure, they can branch off into exploring other cultures the way Marjorie M. Liu or Jade Lee (aka Katherine Greyle) do, but the foundation must be "white" in order to reach the same audience white romance authors are allowed to reach. I hadn't realized how profoundly this state of the industry affected me until I could smell my terror when I even thought of writing a book with black protagonists. The saddest thing is that there is really nowhere to turn to deal with this fear (I wonder if other black authors, aspiring or published, have felt this way?), and the industry offers no real, concrete answers (I have contemplated asking an agent where I would stand if I queried them with a "black" romance, and what would happen if they did take me on, sell the MS, and then I pitched a "white" romance to them).

Many imprints state in their guidelines that they accept "multicultural" romances (like Jade Lee, I think that term should not mean "African-American"), but when they reject "multicultural" submissions, it's difficult to know whether the MS was rejected because of its unreadiness or because of its content. I worry about this even more so when I think of the themes I like to explore, and how within a "black" romance, they are given a new dimension. Would the book be considered "too black"? Or would race/racism be "unromantic" for readers? Most romances deal with two people bridging their cultural/socio-economic differences to conquer societal mandates, but to add the extra topping of race? It's seen as scary, taboo, aggressive, angry, it dissolves the "fantasy." It's even more dicey when the romance genre thrives on ethnic/cultural stereotypes such as "Noble [Native American] Savages," "Arrogant Greeks," "Passionate Sheiks," or "Latin Lovers," if not the "tragic mixed-race" plots that seem inherent to most, if not all, romances with Middle-Eastern (excuse me, half-English!!) and Native American protagonists--all stereotypes that have been handed down to us, and rarely refuted, by our Victorian forebears.

I won't say I've completely vanquished this fear, but I do know that the first steps to overcoming it is the identify it, acknowledge it and then to root it out wherever it hides. That said, as I sort out this whole thing, I'm learning to accept that life is a process of "being and becoming," and that whatever the outcome of this struggle, I'll be stronger. To end on a more upbeat note, I will say that over the course of my research for both my AA contemporary and my AA historical, I've come across a few monumental books that have given me a deeper perspective on the history of African-Americans in American history, that has also deepened my appreciation for my heritage: The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty and Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class, both by Lawrence Otis Graham and Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 by Willard B. Gatewood. All three are extremely fascinating reads that turns on its head the assumption that African-American history is strictly that of oppression, racism, and sorrow.

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You can visit Evangeline Adams at her blog, Edwardian Promenade:
http://edwardianpromenade.com/

Photos of women in period dresses courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/floridamemory/

Happy May Day! And Guest Post Tomorrow.

Stop by tomorrow for my guest, Evangeline Adams of Edwardian Promenade, who posts about writing African-American romance.

Happy May Day!

"Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on midsummer eve. This venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which had preserved the slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the old wood monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner, colored like the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with silvery leaves, fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden flowers, and blossoms of the wilderness, laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine-tree. Where this green and flowery splendor terminated, the shaft of the Maypole was stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. "

--Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Maypole of Merry Mount"

but also:

"...and now, disengag'd from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ'd, it must have belong'd to a young giant. "

--from Fanny Hill by John Cleland