Our Very Own Dystopia

I don't like talking too much on the blog about things I'm working on. You know... the books that might never see the light of day. I also don't really like getting political here. But the parallels between the book I've been querying and current events are making me twitchy.

You see, Memory Keeper was written over a year ago. It takes place in a world that has been ravaged by war, where people die between twenty and twenty-five, which makes reproducing early and often a necessity if there's any hope to keep the human race alive. So... bad stuff happens in the name of saving the world. Really bad stuff. Women (girls) become little more than broodmares, and when push comes to shove, after a certain age, it's far more important to save the baby than save the mother.

The thing is politicians are making me wonder if we are going to have a world like this before an apocalypse makes it "necessary." Things that are happening now:

• Wisconsin representative Tom Pridemore is against divorce in all cases including abuse and thinks women who are abused should try to remember the good times and why they got married.
• Wisconsin senator Glenn Grothman is sponsoring a bill that would list single parenthood as a factor in child abuse and neglect. 
• Rush Limbaugh calls women who use birth control sluts (I'll let you google this one since there's so much online about it.
• Georgia representative Terry England thinks women should have to carry dead and dying fetuses to term... like cows and pigs. 
• Personhood amendments like the one being pushed in Ohio seek to give equal (and greater) rights to a zygote over the person carrying it. 
• Some states are trying to require ultrasounds prior to abortions (in some cases pushing for required transvaginal ultrasounds--essentially requiring doctors by law to rape patients). What one doctor has to say about it.

There are more things. This is all over the news and the internet, and the hits keep coming.

But we don't live in a post-apocalyptic world where we're struggling to keep humanity alive--we live now. The idea that laws are being pushed that would essentially turn women into livestock is terrifying. What's next? Stonings? Burning at the stake? Scarlet letters? We are supposed to move forward with the times, not back. Women need to take a united stand for our rights, or soon enough the government could take them all away.

We're on a path to our very own dystopia. I hope we don't have to travel very far down that road before people stand up collectively and fight back. May we work together to stop this before ending it requires a revolution.

On John Carter, Marketing, and Dropping the Ball

Last weekend, the husband and I took the kids to see John Carter. With its huge budget and marketing costs, studio executives are expecting the movie to lose $200 million. (I won't get into the fact that the numbers don't add up but, yeah, it's looking like a big loss for Disney.) Now, granted, it's only been out a couple weeks, but with Hunger Games coming out this weekend, I don't think John Carter is going to have a long life at theaters.

Which is sad because it's not a bad movie. For an afternoon of popcorn and fun with the kids, you could do a lot worse. Yes, the acting could have been better (and they could have made Taylor Kitsch hit a dialect coach so he actually sounded southern), but it was fun. And FAR better than episodes 1-3 of Star Wars. (Sorry, I'm a fan of the series as a whole, but those three films almost destroyed my love for 4-6.)

What I want to know is...

What the hell was Disney thinking?

First, that budget... $250,000,000? There were no huge stars in John Carter, so unlike a lot of sci-fi adventure movies, the cast cost was minimal. Taylor Kitsch isn't a horrible actor, but even comparing it to the 2009 re-boot of Star Trek which had Chris Pine, Chris Hemsworth, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Eric Bana, and Leonard Nimoy. No, none of them individually was pulling down huge numbers at that time, but together? That's a big chunk of change. Like John Carter, it was a special effects heavy movie, but its budget was only $150 million. Why did they spend that much money on John Carter? Special effects rarely sell movie tickets.

Plus, John Carter had strikes against it going in.

1. Timing. WHY would the studio put it out only two weeks before one of the most anticipated movies of the year? Honestly, Hunger Games doesn't even need much of a marketing budget. Love of that book and word of mouth will drive ticket sales. (Unless the movie sucks, in which case...) John Carter should have either been moved up a couple weeks or pushed back until the lull right before the summer blockbusters. (I'm pretty sure that's the reason Mirror, Mirror was pushed back from March 16 to March 30. It might not get a lot of screens, but at least it won't be shoved out by Hunger Games.)
2. Marketing. Supposedly the studio spent $100 million on marketing. Other than seeing the preview a couple times at the movies, I hardly ever saw it. Not on TV, not anywhere, and I watch a lot of TV that would hit the target demographic. You know where else I didn't see much of anything about it? At Disney World--over New Year's. This is the biggest budget movie Disney probably has coming out this year and there was no push AT FREAKING DISNEY WORLD. WTFBBQ? Where is the Twitter push? Where is the facebook page? Where is the viral marketing that's so important these days? (I've heard more on Twitter about the Star Trek sequel than I have about John Carter.)
3. Cast. Don't get me wrong, I like Taylor Kitsch just fine. He's easy on the eyes and not a bad actor. But John Carter didn't have any leads that by their name alone would draw a crowd. Look at Star Trek again. Hell, look at Hunger Games. With the budget John Carter had, there should have been a star *somewhere.* (The only names I recognized from the cast list were faces hidden behind CGI.)
4. Story. Star Trek had the push of the original movies and the TV series. Hunger Games has a huge push from the books. But the books John Carter is based on are old (published in 1917). Most people (even sci-fi fans) have never heard of these books. That's problem number one. There's no push from a fan-base. Plus, the books are based on antiquated ideas about Mars. Truly, I was able to get past that to enjoy the film, but without some discussion of it beforehand by the people involved, it was more than a lot of people could swallow (especially those in the sci-fi world). 

I really hope all the predictions are wrong and the movie ends up making money, but it started at a horrible disadvantage. And the studio didn't allow enough time for word-of-mouth to spread before the film would be shoved aside by others with more buzz. If John Carter fails, it's not because it's a horrible movie (which it really isn't). It's because Disney dropped the ball.


*Note: Star Trek and Hunger Games were chosen for comparison because they were the first films I thought of. However, last year's Thor also had a budget of $150 million and included stars (and minor stars) in Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Chris Hemsworth, and Natalie Portman as well as fairly equivalent levels of special effects with regards to Asgard and Jotunheim along with the Frost Giants themselves.

Time for Change

Publishing is a strange business. For a while, publishers will snap up a genre because it's hot. And then they get too many and they're done. This happened with vampires, and werewolves, and dystopians, and... You get the point.

Agents warn authors all the time not to chase trends, and I don't think most people doo. I think it's more an issue of the idea coming too late to catch the wave. Take one of my current WiPs. I'd had the first seeds of this idea germinating for over a decade (yes, it was a slow-starter) before the plot and characters finally came together. Once it did, I wrote the entire manuscript in a month. 

The only problem is that it's a genre that already had its trend time. (Like... right now. The saying that the when the books start coming out, it's too late for your manuscript? Yeah. That.) However, there are a lot of people who are still interested in the story. I just had to do something to make it stand out.

So... I took a good, hard look at the manuscript and said "What if?" (again--since that's how most stories start). Now, I didn't want to mess with the heart of the story because it still spoke to me. And... I loved the characters. But what I could change was the world-building, and the more I looked at it, the more I loved the idea of the changes. 

As soon as they were settled in my brain, I dove into the revisions. One of the ways I know something really works for me is how quickly and easily it comes together. Even more than the original version, this story--with its new societies--works for me. 

So how did I work around the "trend" issue? I mashed genres. This manuscript is the first in a trilogy, and conveniently enough, there are three very different societies in the world. Each of the installments will focus mainly on one of the three until all are covered, and I can't wait to start on the next one. I hope beyond hope to share these stories with you because I think it's a tale worth telling... and hopefully worth reading :) 

Die, Damn You, Die... Again

I'm in the midst of doing some revisions to a manuscript. On the one hand, I'm remembering just how much I love this story and how in the main character's head I was when writing (this is the book I drafted last year in 31 days). This was major in-the-zone writing and I love it. I think the revisions are making it better too. But... I hate re-killing characters I love.

An explanation first. Those 31 days last year? I spent most of them crying as I wrote this manuscript. It's a very emotional story for me and so many scenes tore me up to write. But I was a sobbing idiot on the days that I had to kill a couple characters. Yes, I know GRRM--if he were ever to read this--would be laughing at me right now, but I think I understand where the difference lies between his perspective and Rowling's. (https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-P_pCHQCYvkE/To3M6oNp6fI/AAAAAAAADFg/q9OUVE65Z8I/jk_martin.jpg)

You see, I kill characters all the time in my adult stuff. I even kill characters I like a lot. And when I do it there, it doesn't really bother me. (The adult story that affected me the most remains unfinished because it was so depressing for me to write. Not tear-jerking, just depressing, and no one even died on the page--only in the past.) But when it comes to my young adult work, killing characters sucks something out of me.

When I'm working on adult stuff, the characters are like my friends. Yes, I'd be heartbroken if my friends died, but I know that I'd pick up the pieces and my life would go on. (Sorry to my friends, but it's true. If nothing else, I'd need to go on for my kids.) But as an adult writing YA, those characters are more like my kids than my friends. And if my kids died, my world would fall apart. Hell, even if my kids' friends died and I had to watch them crumble, it would kill me a little bit inside. So when I have to write the deaths of characters who are so real inside my head that they fell like my own children, it rips my heart out and stomps on it.

I'm at the part in revisions where people start dying. In this world, death is a really common thing, but not the type of death these characters face. I had to "re-kill" one of them today, but that was the easier death. The harder one? The one that really screws with my main character's world? That came a couple chapters later, and the closer I got to it, the less I wanted to work on the book. This death--and the aftermath of it--tear so many things apart that I couldn't stomach the idea of facing it so close on the heels of the last one.

But I have to do it.

So tomorrow, I'm going to pull up my big girl panties and destroy the lives of a group of kids who live inside my head. But tonight I couldn't. Tonight I decided to knit instead.

So, yes, GRRM fans, I guess I'm adorable too. But at the end of the day, I'm okay with that.

Following Directions Is for Sissies

Today's post isn't really about writing. Well... it is in that I had to write something, but it was a letter, not a book. So hopefully you'll bear with me.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll see me talk about my kids (The Boy and Mini-Me) every so often. I freaking love my kids. Not just love them because they’re mine but because they crack me up with their awesomeness.

So, it’s parent-teacher conference time and I’m buried in work and RT is coming… and The Boy’s teacher sends homework for the parents. We’re supposed to write a letter to our kid for conferences. It got pushed to the side and forgotten. Until today. Because, you know, it’s due tomorrow. (Procrastination for the win!)

Last year when I had to do this, I had to read the letter to The Boy at conferences. It made his teacher cry (because I’m all eloquent and stuff). So I sit down and say, “All right, I can do this!” For a minute, I debated trying to go funny and do a rant on homework, but I didn’t think that would go over so well, so I did heartfelt again.

I talked about sharing a love of storytelling and what a great brother he is and how he makes me realize that he’s the kind of person I want to grow up to be.

It was a very honest and true letter. I printed it out… and realized there were instructions on what we were supposed to write about. You know, things like what we’re proud of them for (did that), how far they’ve come (meh), and what their goals should be for the rest of the year (are you kidding me?). At first when I saw the instructions, I’d debated re-doing the letter, but when I saw that last bit, I stuffed the one I’d written into the envelope and put it in his backpack to take to school.

You see, teachers are like editors for our kids. They’re the ones who have to point out all the stuff they do wrong. That’s their job (I know because I did it for a while)—they are supposed to make the kids “better.” My job as a parent isn’t to tell him he needs to work more on capitalization and punctuation. I’m supposed to tell him that he’s a shining star because he busts his butt every day. That he’s gone from being special ed, title one, autistic to being completely mainstreamed and gaining ground on his autism every day and applauding the fact that he reads like a fiend. My job is to tell him how freaking awesome he is.

I’m not his editor. Not about this. I have to harp on him about brushing his hair and his teeth cleaning his room. As far as what he’s done in school though? I get to be his biggest fan.

So I decided to screw the “rules.” Because when he’s beside himself frustrated because things don’t come easy to him like they do to the other kids, The Boy won’t care about me telling him about how important proper grammar is. But if we’re both really lucky, he’ll remember that I think he’s perfect.

That’s homework for parents that I can get behind.

I'm Supposed to Blog, Huh?

I got back Tuesday from a long weekend filled with much extended family togetherness. This means I came home exhausted, with a massive headache, and the first signs of some sort of virus. Sadly, that means my blogging brain is pretty wasted. Hopefully I'll be back next week with something profound, but I've been thinking about kissing scenes a lot lately. So for today, please enjoy one of my more recent favorites.

Uh-Oh... Advice Gone Bad

One of the things writers are often told is "write what you know." It's right up there with using active verbs and BICHOK (butt in chair, hands on keyboard).  But... is it always good advice? What if you know doesn't resonate with your readers. One of the hardest things about writing YA is staying true to the characters while also staying true to the readers... all while often being (*cough* several *cough*) years out of high school. Sure some things are fairly consistent, but a lot changes over time.

And what about those things that were unique to your high school experience? What the hell do you do with those? (Personal example first...) I went to a high school that wasn't stereotypically clique-y. The cheerleaders hung out with the band people who hung out with the sports teams who hung out with the nerds who hung out with the choir people--and any combination you can think in there. (For example, I earned letters in band, choir, sports, and academics--and it was a pretty big high school, graduating class of 600+.) Now, I know a lot of schools aren't like that, but in some ways (in others it totally wasn't), I saw it as kind of an ideal situation, so I do use it in my work because I think a lot of people want that, especially if they don't have it. Sure, in the PRT stories, there are still jerks, but they aren't cliques of jerks--they're individuals.

(Now for a not-me example.)

One of my crit partners recently read a YA novel that gave her absolute fits. Mind you, she's in her early 20s, so not all that far removed from her high school years, and she loved the author's previous book. So what was the problem with this book? It dealt with sex... pretty much the book is about sex. Now, my crit partner doesn't have any problems with sex or sex in YA. But the way the female characters in the book acted and talked about sex was the complete opposite of her high school years, and I have to say...mine too.

(Details. I have not read the book, so I'm getting all of this from my crit partner...)

1. The plot of the book pushes these girls to actually talking to each other about sex. Okay, I don't know about you, but at my school, I knew by the next day when my friends had lost their virginity. It wasn't some closely guarded secret. We talked about sex, a lot, and not in worried whispers in the locker room. It was normal conversation fodder (which is not so different from the way my friends and I act now.)
2. Said girls are disturbed by the idea that they like sex. They think liking sex makes them sluts. First off... I have never in my life heard this as even a partial definition for slut. Certainly not when I was in high school. You know who got the "slut" label most often? Virgins with boyfriends. And the only people other girls called sluts were the ones who were known to sleep with anyone... and we knew this because of point #1. They were mainly labeled in a "keep your boyfriend away from ______, she's a slut." This wasn't even slut-shaming, because we didn't care that she had a lot of sex, we only cared that she didn't have it with our boyfriends while we were dating them.
3. Does doing various sex acts (or liking it) make them weird? Again, see point #1. Unless all your friends were virgins (and therefore you were the only one talking about sex in more than theory), this stuff comes out. Sometimes girls would be all "Really?" when someone said they liked something, but it was never honestly thought of as weird. 

Society didn't rule our conversations at school, so what society thought never entered our conversations. What we though mattered. Now maybe the author when to a different kind of school. Hell, it may be the way things are at most high schools, but when there's a decade and a half (along with half a country) separating my crit partner and I, one would think the situations in the book would have resonated with one of us at least a little. I'm not saying the author should have written the book differently, but as a reader, I would wonder if she forced the school and the characters into that box just to suit the plot. And that would bother me.

This Reminds Me Of...

Of the many places authors must find balance, one of the hardest for me deals with reading what I write. You see, an author should be well-versed in what is out already within the genre(s) they write, but they shouldn't read so much of it that it either stifles their own creativity or those other worlds start to invade theirs.

Because I write both YA and adult in an array of spec fic sub-genres, I let myself believe that I was self-moderating my reading in order to toe that line. I tend to switch things up a lot. A YA paranormal, an adult steampunk, a YA dystopian, an adult urban fantasy... It means I read a little of a lot of things, but not a lot of anything. It seemed like a brilliant way to do things. (Note: The book covers used for this post are just a few of the YA books I've read over the past year, and the one in question is not included--because I'm just mean that way.)

Until someone in the know read my manuscript and said (paraphrased) "It feels really similar to _________, but I'm sure you've read that." Uh... no. I hadn't. The book in question was in that spot on my TBR Pile where I'd looked at it, held it in my hands, and then someone (I honestly can't remember if it was a review or a direct comment from a friend) said something that made me think I wouldn't like it. So it was shuffled down the pile to be lost with dozens of other books I haven't made it to yet. I moved on to something newer and shinier in the same genre. 

But when the comparison was made, I dug out the book. And yeah. I never read it, but there are a lot of similarities, both with regard to some characters and some world-building issues. The stories themselves are different, but the parallels are there. Fortunately, parts of it will be addressed in the changes I'm making to my manuscript, but it begs the question of how to find that perfect balance between reading enough and not reading too much. 

Obviously this time, I erred on the wrong side. As soon as I have some breathing room between reviews, I'm going to spend it filling the gaps in my dystopian reading. Because just knowing the premise of the other books out there doesn't tell you the smaller things that matter--the little bits and pieces that might be too close to your manuscript. 

Plus... I didn't hate the book. It wasn't my favorite, but I enjoyed the writing and the romance angles. (I like more action than this particular book had in it. Plus, the fact that no reasons were given for why the society had become so regulated bothered me the whole time. I don't need a lengthy reason, just some hint as to why this is considered so much better or necessary compared to what came before.)

So, since I need more... anyone know of any great dystopians coming out soon so I can grab a galley to review them? :P

Pretty Souls News!

Not a big post this week since I'm hard at work on other stories, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew that Pretty Souls is on sale at Amazon. From now until February 24 (2012 :P), the Kindle version is only 99 cents (77p in the UK, .89 Euros in the rest of Europe)! If you've been waiting for it to be marked down, NOW is the time to get it!

Links:
US: http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Souls-ebook/dp/B004RPZRE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328136550&sr=1-1

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pretty-Souls-ebook/dp/B004RPZRE8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1328136584&sr=8-3

France: http://www.amazon.fr/Pretty-Souls-ebook/dp/B004RPZRE8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328136635&sr=8-2

Germany: http://www.amazon.de/Pretty-Souls-ebook/dp/B004RPZRE8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328136719&sr=1-1

Italy: http://www.amazon.it/Pretty-Souls-ebook/dp/B004RPZRE8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328136774&sr=8-2

Spain: http://www.amazon.es/Pretty-Souls-ebook/dp/B004RPZRE8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328136812&sr=8-2

There might be others too, but those are the ones I'm aware of at this point. If it's on sale where you are (and I haven't listed it) please add it to the comments!

I'll be back next week with a post on reading what you write.

How to Get to Happily Ever After

I was poking around on Facebook the other morning when I ran across this...

(Image removed due to legal concerns. You can find it here: http://www.idlehearts.com/just-like-a-shoe-if-someone/1528/)


The little girl in me loved it. Romance! Prince Charming! Happily Ever After! In a castle! With servants! And animals who fly through the window to make my bed and my clothes and do my hair!

Needless to say, reality cold-cocked me shortly after and I started laughing.

The ideas in that image are great... for fairy tales and romance novels. As someone who makes her living (in part) by selling romance, I get it. We want that. Where things just click and it's perfect and lasts forever with no fights and no messes. It's one of the reason women (and some men) love romance novels (or novels with strong romantic elements). We grew up on happily ever after and we crave it.

The fact of the matter is if real life is a fairy tale, it's more like the stuff going down on the new show Once Upon a Time. (If you aren't watching it, you should give it a chance, it's a great show.) Basically, it strips away all the shiny happy veneer and delves deeper. It's like the fairy tale world's seedy underbelly where happily ever after can happen, but you can bet the world's going to do its best to get in the way.

Aren't they adorable?

Kind of like life. Real romances, the kind that last, have a whole lot of struggle and more than their fair share of pain. My parents just celebrated their 52nd anniversary last week. They didn't make it that long because everything fell into place and the birds sang and the trumpets called and they were carried off to happily ever after on a flight of butterflies and rainbows. They busted their asses for it. They fought (sometimes in front of the kids, or at least loud enough for us to hear it), they had money issues, they had in-law issues, they had "bad" kid issues. The real world stepped in front of them on the happily ever after trail and blocked their path. But instead of running away, they fought that (even when it meant fighting with each other) to get back on the road again.

Over the years, my parents reached an understanding of who they each are and how they work best together. They still fight (dad retiring was a challenge for both of them), but they've had those battles with reality for so long, it's kind of a foregone conclusion they'll win (like the heroes in fairy tales and comic books).

So, yes, I write romance stories where the reader is left with the feeling that everything's going to be great and the couple is going to fly off into the sunset because that's the dream, the ending we all hope for. The thing about romance novels is the characters still struggle and fight, it just all happens before the end of the book. I often wonder if one of the reasons so many marriages end in divorce isn't because people look at the wedding as the real life equivalent of the end of the book. It's not. The end? It's that 'til death do you part deal. If you make it that far and you're still in love... that's your happily ever after.

Wait for your prince/princess, but then be prepared to fight every day to keep them. That's love. That's romance. My parents get it. I wish more people did.

(HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, MOM & DAD!)