When Characters Won’t Behave

 

            “Hey baby.”  That’s him speaking.

            “Humm.”  That’s her trying to ignore him.

            “Whatcha doin?”

            Thinking it’s obvious.  “Reading.”

            “Whatcha reading?”

            “Ah … a book.”

            “Is it any good?”

            “No, I’m reading it because I don’t like it.”  Men, she thought.

            Him, studying the cover.  “You’re being facetious.”

            She’s impressed he even knows the word let alone how to spell it.  “Why would you think that?”

            “I can see your … the front of the book.”

            “So?”

            “So that’s a book by your favorite author, Grace Thomas.”

            Not having an answer, she doesn’t answer.

            “That’s two ‘answers’ in the same sentence,” he points out.

            “And that should be in italics instead of single quote marks.”  She turned a page.

            “Have you ever tried to type a blog?  You have to stop and go back and tell it to italicize then it jumps to another part of the text.  Besides, she’s typing this, not me.”

            “She who?  Wonder when spell check is going to recognize ‘blog’ is a word?”

            Ignoring the first question, he asks, “Isn’t she the one who writes all those sexy books?”

            “Grace Thomas writes mystery novels.”

            “Mystery novels where there’s a sex scene in every chapter.”

            She knows what repeated use of the word ‘sex’ means.  “I’m sure there’s not … that type … of scene in every chapter.”

            “Wait.  That’s the first book in the series.  You’ve already read that one.”

            “What’s it to you what I read?”

            “There’s no other reason to read a book you’ve already read except to get hot from the porn.”

            She is getting hot but it’s not sexual.  “She writes erotica not porn.”

            “What’s the difference?”

            “Well, if you don’t know I’m not going to explain it.  Go look it up on the Internet where what you look at is porn.”

            Now he’s mad, too.  “How do you know what I look at on my own laptop?”  His lap top is fizzling. 

            “Oh, please.  No one can look at that much sports.  I’m rereading her books to study the plot … and because she hasn’t written the next one.”

            “Sex is a sport,” he makes one more try.  “You never complain when we watch porn together.  We could go watch some now.  Maybe she’s blocked.”

            She slowly places her bookmark in between the pages and shuts the book knowing she’s not going to get any work done.  “I guess you downloaded some new skin flick.”

            “Yeah.  Wanna come see?”

            “No.”

            “No?”

            “No.”

            Him, in case you’re lost.  “How do you know how much porn I watch?  Have you been in the history on my computer?”

            “Of course not.  I don’t have to.”  She’s wondering about their history and how much longer it would last.  “You leave the sound up loud enough for me to hear the hokey music and moans and groans.  Listening to someone else have sex is disgusting.”

            “Well certainly no one has heard those noises coming from here lately.”

            “That’s not true.  We had sex just …”  She couldn’t remember the last ‘just’.

            “Right, can’t remember can you?”

            “Stay out of my head.”

            “No body is getting any head.”

            “That’s ‘nobody’.”

            “That’s what I said.  No bodies touching or even sitting in the same room.”

            “What do you mean she’s blocked?”

            “What?”  Now he’s the one lost.

            “Back up there on the page, you said maybe she’s blocked.  Do you mean she has writer’s block?”

            “No.  She’s writing this, isn’t she?”

            “Who knows what the hell is going on.”

            “I think she has a sex block.”

            “What does that mean?”

            “I mean she broke it off with the latest and there’s no other on the horizon.  She aint’ gettin’ any so neither are we.”

            “You are mean.”

            “What?”

            “You said ‘I mean’.”

            “That’s not what I mean.”

            “Stop saying ‘mean’.  That’s the dumbest, sexist, only-a-man-would-think-like-that thing you’ve ever said.”  Her voice has risen up several octaves. 

            “Is not.”  He’s wondering which statement she’s talking about.

            “Is too and I can prove it.”

            “So prove it.”

            “If she doesn’t have a man in her life, she’d be horny and writing it out would ease the stress.”

            He’s stressed by now and not the good kind.  “That’s just stupid.”

            “Did you just call me stupid?”

            “No but if the g-string fits … you women think words can solve everything.”

            “And you men think watching porn will relieve you of responsibility.”

            “Stay off my computer.  Certainly gives me relief which I ain’t gettin’ here.”

            “Now you’re just repeating yourself.  I get you’re point.  You’re not getting any …”  Her face takes on that blank getting a flash look.

            “What?”

            “I figured it out.”

            “What?”

            “Why she’s blocked?”

            “Why?”

            “If all we do is fight and we’re characters she’s writing and we’re not having sex then her characters aren’t having sex but fighting all the time then she can’t write sex … erotica.”

            “That’s the dumbest … wait.”

            “What now?”

            “How ‘bout makeup sex.”

            “That’s ‘make up’.  ‘Makeup’ is what women put on their face.”

            “Well, let’s face it.  It’s all you women’s fault.”

            “Oh I can’t wait to hear the explanation for that.”

            “You all are the ones with the power, babe.”

            “Don’t call me babe and just because you’re southern doesn’t mean you should say ‘you all’.  What power?”

            “The power to say yes.”

            “Yes?”

            “Yes?”

            “Well … maybe.”

           

                

           

               

Book Blurbs

Did you ever hear a song everyday on the way to work and then again on the way back home?  You find yourself humming it at your desk and turning up the volume and singing loudly in your car where no one can complain about the earsplitting level of volume or your style of singing (as in ‘ain’t got no’ style).  You’re hooked on this song because the universe plays it for you twice a day and if you surf quickly enough, you can hear it even more (just ignore the fact that the same company owns all the radio stations in your area with the same play lists and commercials).  You might even, after years of not, consider going out and buying a CD or downloading it.  Deejays no longer tell listeners the title or artist of the song they just played, (young people apparently know by osmosis or maybe it’s those ear buds which if you really think about it as a product name sounds like some alien implant which is what they do with … sorry … got off track) so you type the lyrics into Google, find the artist, go to YouTube and find the video and … wait … what the hell …

The singer doesn’t look like anything you could ever imagine even after a long night of drinking (although he looks like he does that on a regular bases) and the video is nowhere near what you have been picturing in your head.  You’ve been seeing fields with butterflies flapping around wildflowers or a big tall mountain complete with tinkling spring tinkling (yes I know, but two tinkles are better than one) over mossy rocks but this guy is walking through a junkyard filled with … well, junk cars and half-naked babes dancing around really rusty metal.  (Hint:  You’re getting old when you worry about the health and safe working conditions of the half-naked babes.)  

That’s how it goes with book blurbs and the cover art.  Unless you’re looking for a specific author, you’re scanning the shelves in the bookstore with your reader/shopper radar on.  (Why do grocery stores turn their books face out and the big bookstores show you the spine?  Because when you’re in the bookstore you’re shopping for a book and when you’re in the grocery store you’re goofing off instead of fighting the little old ladies over after the last pack of steak that’s on sale.)  Publishers know this, having attended many extensive marketing courses and design the outside of the product (the book) to catch your attention.

The Blurbs

I have a confession.  I hate writing blurbs (and the synopsis, but that’s a different problem) but it’s all part of the writing business.  I’ve had entire novels not rejected by publishers but had to write the blurb three times before they accepted it.  Mine either sound like a short outline: Couple meets, has adventures, has sex (a lot), solves mystery or they come out sounding like Internet porn sites:  An erotic exciting romp through the secret world of espionage as our world tripping couple find themselves in bed with the bad guys.  See what I mean?  I wouldn’t buy either of those books (except maybe to see why the heroes are in bed with the villains) and I hate to admit it but the word ‘romp’ does appear in one of my real blurbs, but only one (learn from your mistakes and don’t repeat them).  Book blurbs (I think that should be spelled ‘burps’) are like movie trailers.  You never really know until you sample the product (and don’t ever forget, to the publisher, your book is their product they’re trying to sell.)    

How many times have you stood in the grocery store blocking the aisle with your full-size cart that has three items in it (one of which is hair dye), reading the blurb front cover to continued-on-the-back cover and thought you had found a great novel only to get it home and discovered you couldn’t get past page twenty.  (Okay it’s true; I never stop reading a book once I’ve started it in hopes that it has to get better.  Bad movies I just turn off and send them back to Netflix.)  And how many times have you read the blurb and still have no idea what the book is about only to find you’ve dug out (of the sales pile) a hidden gem you’ll read over and over. 

Yes, I have books I reread every year (when I should be writing) such as ‘The Complete Sherlock Holmes’ and Barbara Michael’s (aka Barbara Mertz, Elizabeth Peters.  See, Ma?  I’m not the only one with lots of names.) ‘Ammie … Come Home’ which is the book that made me want to become a writer.  The movie wasn’t bad either.  Or I read ‘Maynard’s House’ by Herman Raucher which is my favorite rainy-Sunday-there’s-nothing-on-television book.  Imagine trying to carry a storyline with basically one character through an entire novel who may or may not be seeing ghosts and witches.  (Hint:  Rereading is a talent you want to practice because by the time you get done editing your own manuscript you will have read it so many times even the sex scenes will seem dull.  And wait until the editor edits the part you just edited on their suggestion.) 

Maybe there are writers out there whose careers consist of writing blurbs.  Maybe bad writers write great blurbs and great writers write terrible ones which might be a new standard for choosing which book to buy in the grocery store.  (Steak is bad for you anyway and you can’t afford it if you buy a book.  Eat or read, the great dilemma of the week between paychecks.)  My books will be the ones with the really short blurbs because I couldn’t think of thing to write in them.

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            Apparently, that’s all I have to say about blurbs so I will add cover art to this chapter as it is what the blurbs are printed on and this chapter isn’t long enough..

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Cover Art

Walk into any bookstore and start down the paperback aisle of any genre.  It’s like being a kid in a candy store.  (Yes, I know that’s a cliché but I started with food analogies and I’m damn well going to finish with them.  Besides, I’m hungry which is why all the food references.)  Covers with eye-catching bright jellybean colors or pictures of marshmallow fluff snow covered places you want to find yourself at with a cup of latté and a cigarette (no smoking in the candy or any store) wink back at you from the shelves.  Chocolate-eyed nymphs in modern clothes chase taffy-muscled … (wait, that one really didn’t work) … chase rock-candy-hard-muscled gods across fields of lime-green sherbet grass.

Okay, enough of that.  Next time you’re in the book section pretend (use that imagination) that you’re in an art gallery.  Paintings, abstracts, photographs (color and black and white), see-though to the next page, fold out origami, four covers together make a picture … anything goes in cover art as long as it attracts the buyer (you) enough to make you walk over, pick up the book and read the blurb.  (Hint:  See the above section of this chapter but if you got here by skipping it then you don’t know what I’m talking about anyway.)  I personally like the ones with the dark and mysterious line or charcoal drawings.  I hate it when one book comes out with different covers.  I end up buying the same book I’ve all ready bought.  Thankfully, cover art is not something the writer has a lot to do with.  (Unless like me, you publish your own eBooks then you have an excuse to spend hours upon hours searching public domain websites for artwork.)

            Most publishers will ask you to make suggestions to the cover designer but you have to remember, the artist has never read your book which is sort of like drawing the suspect when you weren’t at the scene of the crime.  If you propose a wall with a street sign on it, think about how many kinds of walls and different types of street signs there are.  So just like that music video did not match the fantasy you see, your book cover is not going to look the way you imagined it.  Some will be better and some will be much worse, but it will never match the picture in your head unless you go to art school and who has time for that.   

Night Mov-ies

“What are you thinking about the moment right before you fall asleep?”

            It is a question I have asked since I was a child.  Things are so weird in my own head, I wanted to make sure everyone else was like me or I was like them.  Of course, I found out I wasn’t … like them and to be careful of whom I asked the question and to never ever tell what went on in my mind.

            And I’m not talking about sexual fantasies.  Those fall into a different category and time frame.

            I’m talking about when the temperature is right, the covers are situated, the other (partner, lover, dog, cat or teddy bear) is quiet, the darkness lays soft, the pillows are in their correct position and the night clouds are gently passing by on the inside of your eyelids.  (Does yours change color, have lightening bolts, swirl in patterns, faces?)  Right there at that exact moment of pre-sleep.  What are you thinking of?

            Is it what happened today or what might happen tomorrow?  Is it that you should get up and check the expiration date of the milk you just ate three bowls of cereal with?  Did that burp taste a little off?  Maybe it’s that perceived insult from a coworker (who, right now, is having wild sex with her boyfriend and is definitely not lying around thinking about you) that’s floating around in there.  Or is it worry over that spot growing on the back of your right calf that you can almost see by twisting into a pretzel.  

            I tell myself stories, bedtime stories.  There are whole towns, countries, planets and universes inside my head all populated by a citizenry of characters.  There are good guys and bad guys, evil deed doers and lovers, friends and enemies, aliens and fantasy folks.  It can be any time, past, present or future.  It can be any place, real or imagined.  It can be any season or time of day or night.

            My passport into this world is to lay comfortable, close off my ‘oh my god did I lock the door, turn off the coffee pot and what was that noise’ voice, drift with those clouds and form a picture in my head.  It can be absolutely anywhere at absolutely anytime.  Next, I people it with . . . well, people.  Historical, fictional, real or ones I don’t know where they come from.  They just show up fully formed and alive (relatively speaking).  Story lines, plots and acting and reacting with each other just happens.  I don’t plot my dreams and I don’t plot these semi-dreams, day-(night)-dreams.  I step into the story all ready knowing my place and my lines but I don’t know how I all ready know that.

            Adventures in the mind are more thrilling and less dangerous than real ones, the star is always me, as the director I can take the story anywhere and they’re really not very expensive at all. 

            Sometimes, there are some really great plots or lines of dialogue or one of those ‘ah ha’ moments when I know whatever I’m seeing or doing in there, would make an incredible novel.  I know I have to wake up long enough to jot down a few words, just enough for me to remember this enormous idea for a book.  I keep a pad and pen by the bed for just these occasions (and can never interrupt my handwriting in the morning) but normally I don’t get up.  Moving will destroy the fragile bubble of the world that I am encased in.  So I convince myself I will remember and keep repeating a phrase that will be my mantra to unlock the story into a novel.  (These are the mornings when the other person in bed wakes up craving sesame chicken for breakfast and doesn’t know why.  It wasn’t real sesame seeds in there but poison disguised as sesame seeds.  Let’s hope I never chant ‘the gun is in the bottom drawer under my thongs’ or something along those lines.)  But I never remember.  I always forget in the clatter of the alarm clock.  Whole libraries of New York Times Bestseller List novels have been lost because I didn’t get up and write down the idea.

            Normally, my semi-dreaming fades into real dreaming and sleep.  Rarely, my self-told story becomes my self-told dream and I can become even more a part of my own story.  Those are great dreams unlike the normal ‘I’m in trouble with my mother for doing or not doing or not doing something right that I didn’t know I was supposed not be or to be doing right in the first place’ dreams.  I would much rather dream of rescuing my beloved from the deep dark dank cave where the baddie is holding him captive until I deliver the secret formula for … zzzzz.

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            Please note:  The above mentioned technique works well in doctors’ and dentists’ offices, the Department of Motor Vehicles and Thanksgiving dinners with the in-laws but is not the prescribed method for dealing with traffic jams or that stoplight that catches me everyday no matter how fast or slow I drive.

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The Ten Percent Predicament

I was going to call this chapter ‘Writer’s Block’ or ‘Author’s Arrest’ (no, not that kind of arrest) or ‘Novelist’s Snag’ but that doesn’t accurately describe my problem.  Then I considered ‘The Seven-Percent Solution’ but the math didn’t work (big surprise) and Nicholas Meyer did a better job than I ever will.  My problem would be better illustrated as ‘Hopping Hack’.

            I get one of those inspired inspirations and start out all gangbusters (wonder what that phrase really means?) on a book.  Dialogues, plots, scenes and plot twists all pour off my fingers onto the keyboard to be projected on the computer screen.  But eventually, the high fades and my fingers start to hesitate and my brain slows down (or someone interrupts me).

            There comes a point in capturing the essence of a new project where you just can’t say ‘female lead’, ‘male lead’ and ‘humorous sidekick’ anymore.  You have to stop and figure out what these peoples’ names and back stories are.  Once you have that, you have to give them a place to do whatever it is they’re doing in and then you have to decide if it’s going to be a fictional place or a real place.  If it’s a real place, then you have to stop and do research on wherever you placed them.  If it’s a fictional place, you have to stop and make it up in your head and on paper (well, screen).  And what do they look like?  What age group?  (As I get older, I find it harder to write younger but that means pretty soon all my characters will be in wheelchairs (oh wait, some are) … all my characters will be old and fat and gray just like me.)  What do they do for a living?  I have to figure out all the assorted things that make up a human being for each person.

            Meanwhile, the characters are sitting around twiddling their thumbs (or each others) or they wander off, get into trouble and show up in other stories.  And I’m bogged down in a mire of baby name books and Internet research until … ah ha … the light goes off again as I read a story about a guy who found undeveloped film from 1960’s in his attic left by some previous owner and he took it to the photo shop to see if they could do anything with it and they found pictures of … oh wow, that would make a really great story so I open a new file and start again.

            That’s where the ten percent comes in.  I have folders inside of folders that have the first thirty to fifty pages (I’m on a roll here and am not stopping to do the math) of really great stories in them.  It’s not that the fire goes out; it’s that the fire jumps the river of my thought stream and rekindles somewhere else.  So I end up hopping back and forth between ideas and hacking down the brush with a machete so I don’t end up with a forest fire and burn out before my time.

            I know I have to stop, dig a trench and work on just one project at a time until I finish it or I’m never going to finish anything ever again.  My career will die.  I will die and they’ll find my body buried in an avalanche of paper but finishing a project seems like an overwhelming amount of words (80,000) to find.  And trust me, I know from experience there are long stretches of oh-my-god-this-is-really-boring-writing and why-why-did-I-ever-want-to-be-a-writer out there waiting on me. 

I think I’ll try capturing all the exciting scenes and sex scenes and action scenes first, thinking I’ll go back and fill in the boring stuff later and the more fun stuff I write the less fill in there will be.  But this method produces time warps that tangle and weave, vortexes that let other things enter the story and some really great chapters that fit absolutely nowhere in any book (unless I start a whole new book around them).  I print and cut and paste and edit and sort until the original germ of the idea has died along with my inspiration and energy.  I give up and go play computer games until suddenly my brain sparks and I can see how it all goes together (even the boring stuff) and I race to get it all down before the fire dies.

Looking back on this chapter, I’ve discovered the ten percent is the time I spend writing, the eighty percent is the time I spend worrying about or planning to write (I left ten percent free for non-important stuff like job, kids, chores).  If I could switch the writing percentage with the worrying and planning time, I could fill library shelves with the books (or flash drives with ebooks).  I’ll bet if I go look, I can find an article on the Internet on how to do just that.                      

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Note:  I looked up gangbusters.  Together as one word, it means law enforcement that breaks up organized criminal groups.  But separated as in Gang Busters© it was a radio show, television show and movie about criminal cases.

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