I’m happy to report that Book 1 & 2 of the new trilogy have both been delivered to my new editor at Berkley.  On time.  The books are not bad, by the standards of my first drafts.  But still, I’m already thinking of improvements, connections, and deeper layerings to add to them, when they come back from my editor.  Now onto the updates.

1) Three-Chapter Critique from Yours Truly

On the 13th of June my Crit for Water critique goes up for auction here.  If you need three chapters looked at, by all means bid.  It’s an excellent cause and I am a terrific critiquer.  (You didn’t expect me to say anything else on the eve of the auction, did you? )

And Mary Baader Kaley at Not an Editor was kind enough to interview me about my approach to critiquing.  But basically, I’m a good fit for you if you really need your work looked at by a pair of fresh eyes and you actually want to know what’s not working.  I will tell you what’s working for me too, but I assume that you, like me, are more interested in what can be improved than what cannot be.

2) Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Face

I participated in a multi-author fun vid a while ago.  And here’s the result of it.

Each author does her own recording.  I recorded myself with the Photo Booth app on my MacBook–and immediately realized what TV/movie folks are constantly talking about lighting and makeup.  My first go around I looked a combination of malnourished and zombielike.  So I threw on everything in my make-up bag–very liberally, since we are not dealing with high-def cameras here–and then pushed a really strong lamp right into my face.  You see me sitting on a couch, what you don’t see–and which made Sr. Kidlet lose his @#$% laughing–was all the chairs and stools and everything that held my laptop and my lighting at the correct height and angles!

So this time I looked alive and well-fed, but because I almost never, ever see myself in motion, I realized, for the first time in my life, after watching the footage, that I have a come-hither face.  What to do?

I recorded for a third time, this time with my dress on backward.  Yep, that’s what you see in the video, that very prim neckline, that’s actually the back of my house dress.  The front is not exactly plunging, but I figured, if I already have a come-hither face, then I’d best keep everything else covered.  :-)

3) Now For Something Slightly More Intellectual

I had the great pleasure to be interviewed by Ms. Courtney Verronneau, a sociology student at the University of Oregon, for her final thesis on gender relations in romance novels.  She asked some wonderfully thought-provoking questions, which required me to actually organize my thoughts.  I post the interview here with her permission.

1. Together with her profession, her more collected and self-assured personality, and her quiet confidence, Bryony is quite different from other heroines in romance novels.  Why did you decide to create her character and how would you compare her to other heroines in yours and other authors books?

The origin of NOT QUITE A HUSBAND lies in the 2006 film adaptation of THE PAINTED VEIL.  I’d never read the original book, so I went into the movie not knowing the story.  When I came out, I felt I’d been hit by a truck.  <BEGINNING SPOILER>  I couldn’t believe the hero died!  </END SPOILER>  It was gut-wrenching.

Almost immediately I know I’d have to write a similar story of reconciliation, but give the leads the happy ending they deserve, rather than only a fleeting happy moment.  But I never want to just rewrite another story; it has to be different enough.  And one of the easiest things to do in terms of finding new angles to approach a story is to flip the genders.

In THE PAINTED VEIL, the hero is a bacteriologist, serious and bookish.  So in my book, Bryony is a physician, serious and if not bookish, rather unapproachable.

I’ve heard a saying that in movies, if you want to have a memorable female lead, write the part for a man then find a woman to play it.  And ALIEN, with Sigourney Weaver, is often given as an example, a part originally written for a man.  By this, I interpret the meaning not as men are more memorable than women, but that Hollywood is such a male-driven, male-dominated industry that roles for women are often relegated to those of girlfriends and mothers etc., and that a full-fledged female character, who is not a supporting character in someone else’s story, but a hero of her own, is awfully hard to come by.  (We are excluding rom coms here, of course.)

So if Bryony is different from other characters, both my own and many other romance heroines, that maybe part of it.  That she had her origin in a male character and does not possess any desire to please–one of the most prominent feminine characteristics in fiction and possibly in life.  That she will thoroughly cut someone out of her life if s/he has disappointed her.  That she finds it so difficult, if not impossible, to forgive any transgressions.

2.  A common theme I have run into in romance novels is the heroine loving the hero since childhood and the hero finally returning her love in adulthood.  But “Not Quite A husband” reversed these roles, having the heroine be the focus of the hero’s admiration since he was a small boy.  Furthermore, Leo is not portrayed as stereotypical or hyper-masculine: in the story we read of his physical distress, gauntness, and exhaustion after traveling and malaria, and find him dependent on Bryony during his sickness and the uprising in Chakdarra. What about Leo to you makes him stand out from other romantic heros and how, if at all, does he contribute to a new definition of masculinity?

I have always felt hyper-masculinity to be strange.  I wonder if its recent resurgence–or perhaps it never went anywhere, since we did have a whole lot of it in the Old Skool romances–is a subconscious reaction to the man-children we see so often in popular culture.  I mean, look at the comedies of the past decade, they are all about immature men who are forty-year-old adolescents.  But hyper-masculinity, if you to mean mad-alphaness, my-way-or-the-highway-ness, is as cartoonish and repellent as 40yo adolescents.  And if your definition of hyper-masculinity is physical, like the Black Dagger Brotherhood heroes who are of a jaw-dropping size and have shoes bigger than my garbage can, ur, I guess they are just unrealistic in a historical era.  Plus, all men get sick, at some point, don’t they?  :-)

As for Leo, he has that one thing I feel that separates real men both from adolescents and from cave men alphas: he is secure in himself.  And because he is, he does not need to force his will on anyone else.  And because he is, he learns from his mistakes–once he sees those mistakes.  He does not get defensive or angry when it is pointed out that he’d done something wrong; instead, he repents and makes amends.

So it is a character issue, masculinity, and not so much physicality or mannerism.

(BTW, I hold my heroines to the exact same standard.  They have to eat crow if they did something wrong and show changes in behavior before I deem them to be again trustworthy.  Some readers have felt that Camden in my book PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS is an unforgiving bastard.  But the issue for me has always been, has Gigi realized yet she did something fundamentally wrong, or is she still only sorry that she got caught and lost him?)

3. On page 118 of the book, when Leo is reflecting on their failed marriage he thinks to himself that he believed he could break through “The Castle” by making love to Bryony, but that “instead she banished him altogether. They grew further and further apart. And their marriage dissolved like a pearl in vinegar.”  At face value it seems that their marriage fell apart because they weren’t having sex.  Do you believe this was the main reason the marriage didn’t work, or was is it a side effect of a larger issue?

It is very much not the cause, but the effect of the secret that was eating away at their marriage from inside out.  They had plenty of good sex–lol, with her dreaming through part of it–so it’s not an issue of frigidity, but an issue of trust.  She could not trust him.  She could not forgive him.  She could not stand him, in a way, even as she desperately wanted him and desperately wanted everything to be right again.

4. Many feminists like Andrew Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon view sex as the ultimate form of male domination over women, while feminist Camille Paglia argues that female sexuality as the source of our power. How much do the themes of domination and power affect sex? Do you think Bryony’s sexuality makes her powerful?  And do you believe there is more to self-empowerment then just female sexuality, if so, what about Bryony and other romance novel heroines makes them powerful?

Um, whatever happened to sex just being mutually enjoyable?  :-)

I definitely think of the entire female reproductive system as an asset, both because men can’t get enough of it and because it is just biologically useful.  Where else are you going to turn if you want a baby?  If not your own womb, then someone else’s.  :-)  But all this talk about empowerment via sexuality, I’m not sure how to interpret it.

Chairman Mao had a saying, “Political power comes from economic power.”  Which is quite astute, if you think about it.  I think, in observing the world, I can say sexual power comes from economic/political power.  Certainly women find rich/powerful men more attractive because of it.  And throughout most of history, those women who practiced their sexual powers most assiduously were often not after sex, but economic/political power.

While I am a flinty-eyed realist, I very much believe that sexual power is not a long-lived power.  Because  sexual power is dependent upon infatuation, and infatuation is a short-lived state.  Which is fine is you are just using a man as a stepping stone to a man even higher up the foodchain.  For there to be a happy long-term relationship, there has to be more substance.

Bryony has that substance–even though she is emotionally stunted, in a way, she brings to the table a great competence. She makes a difference in people’s lives.  She is admirable.

And what makes her powerful in this book is that she is not willing to sweep Leo’s sins under the rug.  That if he wants her love–and access to her body–he has to earn it.  That she values herself too much to be  swayed by just good sex.

(Sorry for the rambling answer.  The question is so big!)

5. Do you think your characters Leo and Bryony challenge traditional gender roles? Why or why not? How do they challenge these roles both inside and outside the relationship?

They do challenge traditional gender roles, if we see traditional gender roles as the female as the nurturer and breeder.  Leo is definitely the nurturer.  And Bryony is no breeder.  :-)

But then traditional gender roles are so limiting, aren’t they?  Life is much more nuanced and complex.  My heroes, who are very secure in their mindset, do not find women with achievements of their own threatening.  They admire these achievements.  They think of their women as individuals, and not just as walking vaginas/ovaries.  This may make them unusual, but such men have existed all throughout history and hopefully today more than ever.

And my heroines are unapologetic about interests they have outside the hearth and the home.  Certainly there were many such women by the end of the 19th century and I’d like to think countless today.  By this I do not mean they repudiate hearth and home–Lord knows I love mine–but just that they are very comfortable with the idea that is not where their identity begins and ends.

And Leo, if you look at him, is very much a man’s man.  He is comfortable taking charge.  He is just as comfortable yielding the control of the situation to someone who knows better–he is not about to stitch his own wound when Bryony can do it so much better.  And yet she cannot persuade him to deviate from a course he believes to be right, i.e., taking part in the defense of the fort at Chakdarra, despite the danger and his injuries.

Never let it be said we don’t live up to our intellectual potential on this blog.  (Actually it could be said, but lol, maybe not today.)

What I don’t know could float supertankers.

Writers are often told, “Write what you know.” Well, as you can see, that would put me in real trouble. Not only have I never been to any of the places or times I’ve set my stories in, but I’ve never committed a fraud or run away from home or fallen in love with a boss.

Or, as is the case in NOT QUITE A HUSBAND, ended a marriage.

Instead, my own rule has always been, Write What I Understand.

There are things I do not understand. Ménage-à-trois is the first thing that comes to mind—or basically any kind of multi-partner arrangement. Not that I don’t understand why people do it, but that I do not get, given my own views and experiences, how that leads to durable contentment for all parties involved. My take on relational happiness is two people focused on and devoted to each other, in faithfulness and equality.

But beyond a few such dead ends, I understand a great many things. Based on what I already know of my own immaturity, impulsiveness, and lack of will power, I can see how people would go beyond where I would pull up to a dead stop. I can see how they would do the unforgivable. I can see how they would make stupid decisions because they either cannot see any other way out or choose to ignore the consequences for the gratifications of the moment.

And then, there is my other rule: Write What I Can Imagine.

Or perhaps, What I Aspire To. My greatest aspiration is to one day achieve true generosity of spirit. It is easier to understand human frailties than to forgive them—all cynics understand human frailties. And it is easier to just understand that I’m a certain way rather than to undertake the effort to be better, to explore my own true potential.

So my books, in a way, are my meditations on this sincere but frequently bumbling aspiration of mine, on true generosity of spirit. Given that I understand how my characters get into such troubles, how do they extricate themselves from it? How do they rise above? How do they deal with their often justifiable hurt and anger? And how do others among them deal with their regret and self-loathing over things that cannot be undone?

I like to believe that my characters find the strength and courage and maturity in themselves to do what they need to do, whether it is to refuse to back down, to sacrifice, or to forgive.

Getting them there is the most difficult and, in the end, most rewarding part of writing. Because it is like getting myself there, however briefly. To bask in the extraordinary grace the human heart is capable of.

What I know is and will always be very limited. But my understand is deeper, and my aspiration has the potential to encompass the whole universe. (Why not dream big, eh? )

That’s why I do not confine myself to writing what I know.

DELICIOUS begins with a quote from M.F.K. Fisher, from her foreword to The Gastronomical Me:

When I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it…and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied.”

I’ve been reading M.F.K. Fisher again lately. And working on NOT QUITE A HUSBAND, in which one of the couple’s biggest problems during their married life–though no one was ever so ungenteel as to bring it up–was the heroine’s reluctance in the bedchamber, a stand-in for all their other problems. And suddenly I thought, what M.F.K. Fisher wrote about hunger for food could be equally well applied to the other driving human hunger. To wit:

When I write about desire, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it…and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied.”

And that is why I write about desire.

I’m not a particularly modest person but I prefer to let people discover my good points over time, rather than loudly and insistently advertise them up front. And I judge others more or less the same way—the braggarts and blow-hards are discounted, while I take time to get to know the more confidently interesting ones who don’t feel the need to tell me right away every last one of their accomplishments in life.

Now square that with a career choice that requires a heavy dose of my loudly and insistently advertising to others just how wonderful my books are. Not only that, but that people should open their wallets and joyfully watch those dollars flow my publisher’s way.

Oy.

So I made a decision a long time ago that it would not be like that. There had to be better ways to self-promote.

One person who does it particularly well is my agent, Kristin Nelson, whose blog Pub Rants is a daily stop for many writers, both aspiring and published, and industry professionals. Kristin is a very nice person and she used to be a professor, so she genuine wants to impart useful information. But she is also an extremely savvy business woman who knows that a widely read, widely respected blog is a perfect venue to promote her authors—and herself.

It’s no secret that when I queried, I queried her exclusively—I wasn’t going to try any other agents until she’d turned me down. Part of it was Miss Snark’s consistent praise of Kristin as a fabulous agent. The other part was months of reading Kristin’s blog and seeing for myself how she adroitly balances helping others and promoting her clients and herself. The woman presents an absolutely stellar image online—every bit of it backed up by her real life demeanor and job performance–and it didn’t take me long before I decided that I wanted to be on her team.

Another person who does a bang-on job is Bettie Sharpe. The serialization of Ember, how brilliant was that? And Bettie might not have originated the pay-it-forward contest, but it was on her blog that I first read one.

So with all these luminous examples before me, what have I learned and how have I implemented my own self-promotion?

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. The Hippocratic Oath of self-promotion: first, do not annoy. Jane of Dear Author scared the living daylight out of me with her sharp-eyed catching of blog comment abusers. Not that I was ever going to do it, but now I don’t even think about it.
2. If at all possible, make sure others benefit from my self-promotion efforts, whether it’s by dissemination of knowledge, entertainment, or what have you.

Here’s the implementation part.

1) I volunteered to be the PAN (Published Author Network) Liaison this year for my local RWA group. Sure it’s work compiling things like everyone’s release schedules for 2008, and will be even more work when I get around later on to compiling an e-mail listing of local booksellers, but it gives me a legitimate excuse to cold call booksellers, introduce myself, and ask such fun things as whether they might want to join the PAN authors for lunch.

2) I queried and received editorial approval to write an article for the Romance Writer’s Report (RWA’s monthly magazine) on how library systems acquire fiction, particularly genre fiction. I am personally fascinated by how it works and I think a lot of other authors might be interested in knowing how their books do or do not make it into libraries. But it’s also a good opportunity to introduce myself to the adult fiction buyer for the my local public library system—not to mention get some questions answered by Super Librarian, whose blog I enjoy very much and whose purchasing dollars I would not mind coming my way.

3) I got up at the crack of dawn to write a double-review for Bettie Sharpe’s Ember and Like a Thief in the Night. Bettie is one of the fiercest writer to come along in a long time, but I did not actually decide to write the review until I’d read LATITN and enjoyed it—I’m one of those crazy people who take their own credibility dead seriously. But once I decided to do it, I made sure I did it properly. I contacted Jane of Dear Author–she has one of the highest trafficked blogs–and attached a giveaway to the review (which Jane graciously doubled)—who doesn’t love free books? It was for Bettie—especially the getting up at the crack of dawn part, so that I could get the review done in time for a high-traffic day and that she would receive the exposure she so richly merited–but I also knew I was publicizing my own name. I mean would you even believe it if I said that I wasn’t aware that such a gesture would harm me none?

4) Whenever I can, I write blog pieces that, if not useful or entertaining, at least try to be thoughtful. (Yes, I know it’s a disgrace how I’ve neglected this blog again, especially after I made a New Year’s Resolution to be less neglectful. Shame on me.) With a big line-up of guest-blogging spots in March and April, sometimes my head throbs just wondering how am I going to come up with original content for everyone. But I will, because that is the least I expect from myself.

Does any of it work? Who knows? But given all the publisher support that I’ve received, it is incumbent on me to do as much as I can on my end to promote the debut of Private Arrangements. And I can only do what I feel comfortable doing.

So far, I have enjoyed myself: it’s great fun talking to booksellers and interviewing librarians and promoting Bettie; it’s completely liberating to never participate in blog discussion with an eye toward putting my book out there; and it’s amusing to read over old blog posts and go, lol, I said that?

Tomorrow, mutually beneficial self-promotion continues with the Query Consultation Prize finally up for grabs. (It will be a separate post of its own.)

The Bible says, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

The Chinese say, “Plant squash, harvest squash; plant beans, harvest beans.”

An anonymous sage once said, “Watch your thoughts, for they become words.Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits.Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

All pretty darn good definitions of karma, which is but action and reaction, cause and effect.

God moves in mysterious ways. And so does karma. It’s all a question of timing. The eastern religions take a longer view of things, through multiple lives and cycles of rebirths and re-deaths. See the corrupt fat cat who goes to his grave feared and respected? Don’t worry. In his next life he would be a pincushion. Okay, okay, not a pin cushion, a garden slug. Or that hen in Chicken Run who becomes dinner.

Karma has no hurry. It is ineluctable, but not always timely. Whirling about in our brief, chaotic lives, looking at the mess that surrounds us—that sometimes is us—it’s tempting to throw in the towel and say, I give up, the literary fiction writers have it right, we all live in quiet desperation all the time, I never writ, nor no man ever loved, and certainly no woman ever achieved happiness.

And then there are us dauntless genre writers. We say, bollocks. We know quiet desperation—what writer doesn’t?—but we also know it’s not all there is to life. We know happiness is possible–heck, better than that, doable. We know Justice not only exists, but is inevitable.

Genre fiction is karma on a compressed time frame. In genre fiction, when people make the hard choices, when they sacrifice what’s easy for what’s right, their karma work out all its kinks by the end of 400 pages. It means that when Darth Vader breaks with Darth Sidious and saves Luke, the evil galactic empire is rent asunder and Anakin Skywalker redeemed. It means that Pinocchio gets to be a real boy. And it means that as Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy rise above their pride and prejudice, we close the book with an unshakable belief that they would live a happy life together.

It is not happy endings that we deliver, but a fresh slate, an affirmation of the fundamental balance of the world. We might not see it played out before us, and certainly it’s not often portrayed in the news, but we feel it in our bones, the turning wheel of karma, the retribution and reward just around the corner.

And we write what we know to be true. And we accelerate it.

As I read the elegant examples she gave, my mind turned, not to words, but to something that has occupied a special place in my heart since I first saw it fifteen years ago.

This program, skated to Franz Listz’s Liebestraum (Dream of Love), was and remains one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. From the choreography, to the execution, to the individual qualities the skaters bring to the ice—his strength, presence, and flair, her loveliness, fragility, and seemingly inborn sadness, their unusual chemistry of both intimacy and distance—I lose myself in it every time.

It is a dance of poignant longing and stunning intensity. And yet it is more than a dance, it is a sports program that had won world championships and an Olympic gold medal in its time. The skaters—the great and, alas, no-long-together team of Natalia Mishkutienok and Artur Dmitriev—performed all the risky elements required of elite pairs skaters in their era: side-by-side triple toe loop, side-by-side double axels, one triple twist and two triple throws.

Because mere beauty is not enough to make a competitive program work. You have to deliver the elements too. Falls on the jumps and breaks in unison make the audience groan and ruin the overall effect. In this, I feel, an Olympic-eligible figure skating program is very much like a work of genre fiction.

People read genre fiction with some rather specific expectations. SF is about saving the world. Fantasy is about the quest. Mysteries need to bring the murderer to justice. And romance, in my understanding, has to deliver hope and fulfillment.

Ergo, since most genre fiction is driven by factors other than beauty of prose, cadence of language, and powers of imagery and metaphors—as if a figure skating program required only the elements—most genre fiction isn’t known for stylish writing. And what stylish writing we get is from writers who, though they choose to work within the boundaries of the genre and compete on its terms, can’t imagine sending their stories out of the door without having polished their prose until it gleams like the Taj Mahal at dawn.

Meaning, they are doing extra work. Work that may or may not be appreciated by readers who pick up a book mainly for the story—not for splendor of the writing itself. Work that would demand extra time and effort on the writer’s part when s/he already has to contend with the major elements of plot, character, dialogue, pacing, and, if you write romance, character growth and chemistry. Work that doesn’t have a market mandate, given that a breakneck pace or a pair of hotly interacting lovers can sell quite well even when depicted in pedestrian language.

I choose to do that work. Because the stories that touch me most are not only beautiful, but beautifully written. Because I find that lovely writing, when married to an expertly crafted story, adds immeasurably to my enjoyment. Because I want to build the Taj Mahal.

One day.

I did. Everything I wrote—okay, almost everything—was better than that piece of crap. Yet while I crafted one unique, complex, beautiful story after another—bear with me for a sec—that went unloved and undesired by the publishing industry, the author who was single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and all native habitats south of the equator went on appearing on the NYT charts on a semi-annual basis.

I’m not talking about professional jealousy here. That’s a whole different Pandora’s Box. What I often went through during my pre-published years was not so much envy as bafflement and incomprehension. Why was my story rejected for being “slight” when another book published by that house was clearly 40% filler and fluff? Why do debut books that make me yawn or roll my eyes get put on the shelves while mine, my own, my precious darling languished in slush piles all over the 212? Getting published required talent (check), hard work (check), and luck. Where the hell was my luck?

Looking back, all my questions remind me of the Poisoned Arrow Parable. Shortly after the Buddha attained enlightenment, a seeker came to him and asked what we today would call the “Big Questions.” How did the Universe come into being? Does it have a beginning and an end? What happens when we die? So on and so forth.

The Buddha’s answer was—and I love this phrase—thunderous silence. After a while, he spoke of a man who’d been shot by a poisoned arrow. Rather than letting his servants pull out the arrow, the man insisted on first knowing who shot the arrow, who made the arrow, and the provenance of the poison on the arrowhead. In the meanwhile, he died.

I’m sure you see the analogy here. The time I spent pondering the questions that had no answers was time I didn’t spend obsessing over my story, my characters, my techniques. Time I didn’t use to study better writers. In the grander scheme of things, it was time I didn’t spend being happy.

After a while, I stopped comparing my work to the stuff out there that I really didn’t care for. What’s the point of wondering how those books got published? A book got published because somebody somewhere thought money could be made publishing it. And those books, for whatever reasons, passed the test.

Instead, I changed track and began comparing my work to books I loved, books that made me glad that I’m alive, books that renewed my faith in humanity (yeah, the best romances accomplish all that and more). This has its own risks, the chief among which is that at times I don’t know why I still bother to write, when I could never write as well or as beautifully. But then it becomes exactly the challenge, to write that well, to write that beautifully, to craft a story that steal the breath and break—then heal—the heart.

At the moment I’m in equilibrium. But that’s only because I’m so inundated with work I can’t see beyond the next homework, next test, and the next 4000 words I have to finish in the next week. When my publishing career goes into one of those ineluctable lulls or even setbacks, I’m sure the Big Questions will raise their soft, insidious voices and once again demand why I’m not successful as I should be when it’s obvious to even a room full of illiterates that I’m so much better than What’s-Her-Name.

Ah, the crappy nature of life. Even when you have learned your lesson, you must re-learn it again and again. I hope when the time comes, one of you will reach through the screen, grab me by the lapel, and tell me to shut up and write. Write. Write something so freaking marvelous that trees all over the world would lay down their lives for the immortality of my words upon their cellulose fibers. And screw everything else.

Next Tuesday, you’ll just have to see. I’m so tired I’d kick Brad Pitt out of my bed if he wouldn’t leave me alone. There has to got be some higher purpose for me to have sold just as I returned to school fulltime, but so far all I can think is that God loves the sound of me whimpering.