Hark the Heraldry

Long before there were business cards or resumes people would make themselves known to each other via heraldry by displaying (usually on a shield) a family coat of arms. The practice, which may predate the Roman Empire, was both a way to show off one's pedigree and provide an instant form of identification -- something the probably came in handy on the battlefield. In the confusion being able to read with one glance the coat of arms on someone's shield may have kept more than one confused warrior from accidentally slaughtering an ally.

Over time the coat of arms became synonymous with power, wealth and privilege, something to separate the entitled from the indiscriminately bred. It moved from the warrior's shield to the seals used for wax imprints and crests embossed on letters and documents. Sara Ferguson even had her family coat of arms embroidered on her wedding dress when she married Prince Andrew. Today heraldry is often misused by people who think that because they have a historic-sounding surname they might actually be the ninth cousin of the Duke of Wellington twice removed (btw, his surname wasn't Wellington. Wellington came from the name of a town in Somerset.)

I like to play with heraldry in fiction; for the Darkyn series I employed several variations of it, from jardin colors to family crests. For the new trilogy I'm also putting it to work, so I'm back to researching the symbols and arrangements to see what I can use for my needs. Today I designed the above Ahnclann coat of arms (and not for any particular reason other than I just wanted to test the generator) by using the free online Java version of Coat of Arms Design Studio. I liked this generator because it had a lot of design options yet was simple to use.

There are also product sites online which will let you design your own coat of arms and then (for various fees) will print it on T-shirts, coffee mugs and pretty much anything else you want. I took the online designer tools at MakeYourCoatofArms.com for a spin and made up a fictitious coat of arms and motto for my surname, which then made me curious as to what the real/historic Kelly coat of arms might look like. I ran an image search, and Yahoo brought up this impressive conglomeration ("God is my strong tower" seems to be the family motto. Or maybe it was "Gone Off to Our Ivory Tower" and someone tweaked it.)

There are some great heraldry research sites online that provide an amazing amount of details. I found this real Quelly coat of arms at Eddie Geoghegan'sCoats of Arms from Ireland and around the World site, which is not just valuable for all the free heraldry info he offers; he also provides for free images of the coat of arms for more than 8,000 surnames, as well as an excellent crash course in the customs and practie of heraldry. Even if you don't need a real coat of arms, just looking through the collection can give you some excellent ideas on what to use when designing your own.

Beautiful, Beastly Books

I've been collecting books for a while now, and have spent many happy years chasing down numerous out of print titles by my favorite authors in order to build complete collections of their work. I think it's interesting to see how a writer develops and builds and changes over the years -- something you can only follow by reading all their books in order -- plus looking for and finding the titles can be like a lifelong treasure hunt.

I have scored some major finds, like an excellent copy of Penny McMorris's Crazy Quilts, the holy grail of quilters who love crazies because only 5,000 copies were printed, and a first edition of Byron's complete works (which I found in a junk shop for a couple bucks.) I've also inherited some books cherished by family collectors who came before me, too. My grandmother left to my mother a set of Mark Twain's novels, all signed by the author, and Mom decided to split them up among all her kids. I asked for and got A Conneticut Yankee and his Joan of Arc books, which were the ones I most wanted.

There are a few titles that I'd still like to add to my personal library someday. One is Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus, a massive work of art that uses nonsense language and fantastic art to define and explore, well, no one is still quite sure (you look at this page from it and tell me what you think.) I know it's nothing but made up gibberish, but I've always wanted to see it anyway. The problem with this one is I know where I can get a copy, but I'm not yet willing to pay the beastly asking price, which is usually around $500.00. This book is also the reason I still make the rounds of thrift stores and junk shops; I have a feeling that's where I'm going to find my copy someday.

There are online sites like The Rare Bookroom that provide digital versions of books that have been scanned to make them available to everyone, which I think is great for rare/ancient first editions of books that the public at large might otherwise never be able to see. It may also be the only way we can preserve for future generations books like delicate illuminated medieval manuscripts, which will slowly but surely be destroyed by the ravages of time.

Is there a rare or hard-to-find book out there somewhere that you covet for your collection? Where do you look for hidden book treasures? Let us know in comments.

Off to Do Lots of Stuff

I'm going to give myself the day off to regroup, write, and catch up on things. So that your stop here was not entirely wasted, I thought you might like to check out something strange and beautiful that I discovered this week:



This is a photo of a Jabuticaba tree, a native of South America, which bears fruit on its trunk. I'd never seen or even heard of this tree before I started poking around Kuriositas.com for some info on a chapel made from a lightning-struck tree (that's another story) and found this post about it.

I know, it doesn't have anything to do with writing. Or maybe it does. Either way, I love strange fruit.

Image credit: ign11

Bad News, Worry and Death

Bad News sits on the counter in the kitchen watching me make coffee for my guy. "I'm going to be dumped on you again today."

"You're dumped on me practically every day." I hand her the package of coffee filters, which I can never separate on my own. "Just don't make me cry. We're out of Kleenex and I don't have time to go shopping."

Bad News frowns. "There's a box that fell behind the work table upstairs when you were doing the taxes last week."

I yawn. "Thanks."

Death looks up from the obituaries he's reading. "Hey, want to play Who's Next?"

Worry, who is poking around in the fridge checking expiration dates, looks around the door. "It's not me."

"It's never you," I assure her.

Death stretches and scratches between his second and third ribs. "I'm hungry. Are there any Toaster Tarts left?"

"Those things are very bad for you," Bad News says, and searches through her innumerable pockets. "I've got the scientific study to prove it." She takes out a wad of papers and shuffles through them. "Here we go. Four out of five rats who were fed Toaster Tarts every day over a two year period developed cancer."

"Excellent." Death heads for the pantry.

"I bet for two years they were really happy rats, though." Worry makes a face. "Sorry, forgot myself." In a solemn voice she intones, "Everyone in this family who has ever eaten a Toaster Tart is probably going to develop cancer and die."

"We're not rats." I go over to the table and move Death's scythe to a safer spot next to the wall. "Come on, you guys, it's getting late. Let's do this."

Worry and Bad News come over to sit at Death's right and left side. Worry pokes a new little mystery lump on my left wrist but pulls her hand away before I smack her. Bad News hides a smile. Death opens a pack of Toaster Tarts and offers them around before he starts munching.

No one ever wants to start, so I do. "I have one orthodontist and two dentist appointments," I tell them as I check the planner. "PT on Friday, and nine and ten days respectively to finish two colliding deadlines for different publishers. Housework, laundry, dishes, decluttering the hall closet if possible, and the girls want to go to the art show this weekend so I need to get things done early. As always I'll try to accommodate you but you know how it goes. Family first, work second, whatever else third."

"You ever wonder why they call them deadlines?" Death asks no one in particular. "They're not deceased. They don't kill anyone. Usually. I really have nothing at all to do with them. Why didn't they call them last-day-to-turn-in-your-work-before-we-fire-your-asslines?"

We all look at Death.

"Right." He hunches his shoulders a little. "This week looks good for you, me-wise. You know, barring acts of God, runaway tractor-trailers and the undetected cerebral aneurysm going pop. And as usual I can't guarantee I won't drop in on your Dad or Mom, that sick friend in the hospital, anyone you know over forty . . . "

"Got it." I glance at Bad News. "You?"

"Counting the weekend, that conversation you have to have with your mother, and the stack of mail you haven't read yet, that makes . . . " She thinks for a minute. "Four incoming deliveries. No, five."

"Five?"

She sulks a little. "Okay, four." Before I can say anything, she adds, "And one more but that turns out to be a blessing in disguise."

"Yipee." My head is starting to hurt. "Next?"

"My turn." Worry starts rubbing her hands together. "That pain in your right foot could be a fracture. Or a tumor. You're a month late getting your mammogram. You're going to get breast cancer and die. The milk your guy used last night expired two days ago. Botulism. The date on the egg carton is too blurry to read. Salmonella. That possum in the neighbor's shed is probably rabid--"

I hold up a hand to stem the flood. "Do you have any new business?"

She ducks her head and mutters something under her breath.

"Excuse me?"

"The dogs could kill you." As Death chuckles, she glares at him. "Well, they could!"

"They're Shelties," Death chides. "What are they going to do, lick her to death?"

"There was that article online about people who've gotten sick from touching their pets and kissing them and sleeping with them and stuff," Worry says, indignant now. "Some of them even died."

"Pitiful. Truly pitiful." Death slowly shakes his head. "If the dogs were a valid concern, I could have iced her decades ago."

"I don't sleep with the pets, I don't kiss them on the mouth, and I wash my hands after I handle them," I tell Worry. "You know that."

"One time you might forget." She looks exasperated. "Oh, all right. I guess I don't have new business. Unless you eat those Toaster Tarts, in which case--" she sees the look on my face and sighs. "Okay, okay. That's all I've got."

"Thank you." I sit back and start sorting out priorities. "Bad News, I need to focus on work in the mornings, so I'd appreciate it if you'd hold off deliveries until the afternoons. Worry, you and I will do our usual one hour in the morning meditation sessions." I face Death. "I think you and I spent enough time together last week."

He shrugs.

"That should wrap it up." I stand, hesitate, and then pick up a Toaster Tart and take a bite.

Worry gives me a warm smile and takes one for herself. "You're such a good sport."

"Sure, I am." I hate Toaster Tarts. "Anyone want to help me wake up the teenager?"

Bad News coughs, Worry chokes and Death pales right before they all vanish.

I take another bite of the Toaster Tart. "Wimps."

(Dedicated to my Uncle Frank, who decided to go on to the next place. He wasn't afraid, and he didn't want tears or grief, so I wrote this as a tribute for him. Safe journey, Uncle. We love you and miss you.)

Diana Norman

We've lost another gifted author this past week; Diana Norman, who also wrote as Ariana Franklin, passed away last Thursday after a serious illness.

After reading Ms. Norman's novel City of Shadows I hunted down everything she had in print. Her Mistress of the Art of Death is one of only two audio books I keep permanently in my car because I never get tired of hearing the story.

I also deeply admired the lady's gift for story, and a few years ago had the chance to discuss some questions about it with author Rosina Lippi right before she interviewed Ms. Norman. Rosina has just reposted it over on her blog here as a memorial.

Safe journey, Diana.

Multiversing

I caught part of a radio interview on NPR the other day where a physicist was talking about the possibility of parallel universes, how matter can only arrange itself in a certain number of ways and why this virtually guarantees multiple versions of the same matter (thus if I'm writing this post in my universe, there are other PBWs in other universes who are doing the same or similar things.) Later, when I checked NPR's web site I saw the interview was really promo for his latest book (and you can listen the broadcast, read a condensed version of the concept and the first chapter of the physicist's book here.)

I'm a bit reluctant to buy into this theory. No offense to the quantum-minded, but parallel universes are the sort of thing you think about the first time you get stoned, or all the time when you're suffering from incurable narcissism. I think one human race is beyond plenty. Although if this theory is true, my multiverse selves had better remember to pick up the puppy's heart worm medication today. While we're at it, we should defrost that chicken for dinner, baste the sides of block #4 for the quilt in progress and fix that blind in the dining room.

Multiversing in writing, on the other hand, is fun to play with and use as a worldbuilding tool. The most common example of fiction multiversing is alternate history stories, where a writer takes a significant time period or historic figure(s) and changes what happened just enough to generate a new version. What would have happened if the dinosaurs hadn't become extinct? Harry Harrison told us one interesting version in his West of Eden novel trilogy.

I've frequently employed multiversing on many figures from history and legend to create or conglomerate new characters (just about every protagonist in the Darkyn novels was based on one or more real people; William Harvey even played himself in my AH short story A Matter of Consultation.) This is when the writer's paranoid conspiracy theorist side comes in handy; you can take a historic event that happened and suggest an alternative reason behind it. In my multiverse the Knights Templar were rounded up and subjected to torture and execution not because they were too rich and powerful, but because they weren't human anymore.

If you're not interested in multiversing an era, civilization, historic event or any other expansive story element, you can still try it out on a smaller scale. In Dreamveil I used recombinant DNA to create a new character from two that already existed, which allowed me to build an alternative persona and a different timeline. I asked myself What would happen to him if I changed this, and took away this, and added this? until I had a new construct (who still retained many of the traits of the original.)

Characters who grow up or live in the same setting can have multiversal attitudes. The same town is very different through the eyes of a privileged boy and a poor girl, or two characters of different ethnicity or background. Two babies accidentally switched at birth who grow up in contrasting circumstances is a popular theme; so is identical twins who are separated at birth and raised in dissimilar situations. Even reincarnation can be used as a multiversing character device; Robert Silverberg probably did the best job I've ever read with pre-programmed reincarnation in To Live Again.

When employing multiversing as a worldbuilding or character tool remember to think about what stays the same as well as what might change. No matter what universe we inhabit, some of our traits will likely remain the same. Picasso might not be a painter in all of his multiverses, but creativity probably plays a significant role in the lives of his other selves. Opinions on the validity of congenital personality traits differ, but I think certain things like horrible shyness and eternal optimism can be genetic as well as learned behaviors.

Use multiversing as an opportunity to explore the role gender plays in our lives, our attitudes, and what we're able to accomplish. In another universe, how would a King Victor have influenced the Victorian era? If James Austen had written Pride & Prejudice, would Mr. Darcy and Lizzie still end up together? Would Charlotte Lindbergh have been the first woman to fly across the Atlantic?

Now I and my infinite number of multiverse selves have to log off and get to work on the day's schedule. Somehow I have the feeling none of the other PBWs finished the laundry over the weekend, either . . . .

Related links:

Some interesting FAQs about alternate history from AlternateHistory.com

i09's A Brief History of Alternate History Fiction

Alexandra Lupu's softpedia article Our Personality - Is It Genetically Inherited or Determined by The Environmental Factors?

Image credit: David Hughes

Ways to Save Ten

Ten Things to Help Writers Save $$$

Attend Local/Regional Events Versus National Conferences: Here are two examples of actual lodging and registration costs for attending national conferences: RWA National: $1175.00; Romantic Times: cost $965.00 (and these figures do not include airfare or other transportation costs, meals, parking etc., which can run an additional $500.00 - $1000.00.) Skipping national conferences and attending a regional or local event will cost considerably less, such as Lori Foster's Annual Reader & Author Get Together for $332.00 lodging & registration. Author Shiloh Walker (who kindly provided the figures for me) also mentioned that at Lori Foster's event writers are given plenty of time to interact with readers, attend workshops, and have appointments with agents and editors (and my thanks to Shiloh for sharing the financial info and advice.)

Barter for What You Can't Afford Now: Offer to barter for something you need with another writer friend. It can be an even trade, i.e. "You proof my manuscript, and I'll proof yours" or an exchange of specialties, such as a techno-savvy writer making a flash web site for an artistic writer who trades an e-book cover art design. The idea is for you both to end up with something of equal value that you need but can't do yourself and/or afford to buy. Your specialty doesn't have to be writing-related, either -- I once restored an heirloom family quilt for a friend who paid me in some hard-to-find research books I needed.

Brew Your Own Coffee: I know how much writers love coffee and convenience; the first place they go to when they want to write in public is a bookstore coffee shop. But buying that $2-$3 cup of coffee can over time add up to a major expense, as per Barbara Thau's article Savings Experiment: The Perks of Brewing versus Buying Coffee over at Wallet Pop: "A 6-ounce cup of coffee made at home, at about 17 cents a cup per day, adds up to $1.19 a week and $62.05 a year. A 16-ounce grande coffee from Starbucks, at $2.29 per day, adds up to $16.03 per week, and a hefty $835.85 per year -- the price of a mini vacation." Or a new laptop, for that matter.

Buy Used Instead of New Books: Most authors frown on this because we make our living off new book sales, but for half of my life I couldn't afford any new books so I'm not one of them. Buying from used book stores is simply common sense when money is tight, as is checking out library book sales, thrift stores, junk shops and garage sales. Make up a list of books you're looking for and keep it in your wallet for unexpected finds. You can also hunt for used books online; one place I still use to find out-of-print titles is Alibris.com, and they almost always have what I need in a range of prices. I've never had a single problem with condition of the books I've bought or their sellers, and I can't say that about any of the bigger online chain booksellers.

Cancel or Swap Trade Mag Subscriptions: There are a limited number of writing and Publishing magazines out there, and I think Publishers Weekly is the most expensive (according to their web site, they're currently charging $249.99 per year for US subscribers, $299.99 for Canada and $399.99 for international. The digital edition is only slightly better at $180.00 per year, but the site doesn't specify if this is US-only or global, so don't hold me to that price.) The quality of the content of the trades in general has gone down to the point that they are utterly useless to me, so I've cancelled all my subscriptions, and this saves me a couple hundred dollars a year. I know how hard it is to let go of them, though, and it's not necessary to give them up entirely if you form a monthly issue swap with some writer friends. This is when everyone agrees on a list of mags they want, and each of you subscribe to one of them. After you're finished reading each issue of the mag you've subscribed to, you pass it along to the next person in the group, who do the same with theirs, and repeat until everyone in the group gets a chance to read the mag, which then returns to the person who subscribed to it. If you live close to a bunch of other writers, you can also use an issue swap as a reason to get together (at which point you can discuss the articles and share info.) This works great with a crit group that meets every month, too.

Go Laser instead of Inkjet: When it's time to replace your old inkjet printer, consider buying a laser printer instead. Over the years I've used many types of inkjet and monochrome laser printers, and laser is superior to inkjet in almost every category: they print faster, are designed for high-volume printing (which writers need for manuscripts), last longer and have fewer problems. Even the toner for a laser printer is cheaper (depending on where you shop, about 50%-75% less than inkjet.) Inkjet printers themselves are much cheaper, and therefore less pricey to replace, but with the supplies you end up paying more for using them. According to this article over at SmallBusinessComputing.com "Monochrome laser costs about two-to-three cents per page (about half that is for consumables, the rest for hardware). Color laser printing runs 10 to 15 cents, and a personal inkjet is about double that price."

Recycle Old Manuscripts and Used Printer Paper: Put a box by your computer for old manuscripts and other printed papers you don't need and place them in it with the blank side in the printing position (usually up, but run a test on your printer to be sure.) When you collect a stack, put them in your printer paper tray instead of new paper (and save new paper for formal use like business correpondence, submissions, etc.) By using paper twice you can cut up to 50% of the cost.

Refill Toner Cartridges Instead of Replacing Them: Depending on the type of printer you use, you're probably paying $30.00 - $70.00 every time you need a new toner cartridge. Office Depot sells a bunch of black and color toner refill kits under $20.00, and they often last for up to three uses, which would save you anywhere from $30.00 to $150.00 dollars. If you're not in love with the idea of refilling cartridges, which can get messy, try to buy remanufactured replacements, which are usually 25%-50% cheaper than brand-new.

Replace Your Web Site with a Free Blog: WebPageFX says that the average cost of an informational or small business web site runs from $2,000.00 to $6,000.00 per year. I've paid even more than that, and cutting that expense permanently from my budget was a huge savings. Blogger/Google, which provides the space for PBW and its archives, charges me nothing. Last year they gave me an additional ten pages where I've parked a lot of my author info. I've had no major issues with Blogger since I started using it for my old blog back in 2000. As for those people who say you have to pay in order to draw traffic, PBW is also usually in the top 200 book blogs listed on Technorati, so I'm proof that you can make a free blog just as popular as a pricey web site.

Track Expenses, Evaluate and Weed Out the Unnecessary: If you don't know what you're spending your money on, how can you save any at all? It's like trying to diet without knowing how many calories you're consuming. For fixed expenses you can add up your monthly bills. To track personal expenditures like food, gas and entertainment, get a receipt for every penny you spend, put all the receipts in your wallet, and at the end of the month take them out and add them up. Seeing how much you spend on a monthly basis on non-fixed expenses is usually an eye-opener, especially when you discover you spend more on McDonald's than you do for medical insurance. It will also help you discover areas where you can eliminate wasteful spending or try a cheaper alternative (like brown-bagging your lunch.)

This/That

I know the very first time I bought a book because of a video was after I watched Kinsey Holley's Kiss and Kin book video; that was also the only time a book video interested me enough to make a purchase -- ever. Alas, Kinsey will now have to share her Got-PBW title, because seeing Brent Hartinger's wry and funny book video for his new novel Shadow Walkers convinced me to buy a copy. The author made me laugh, and the story sounds cool, but I'm pretty sure it was the cat who clinched the sale.

Gerard over at The Presurfer shared a link to a new (or, at least, new-to-me) kind of search engine called Qwiki. I tried it out and it shows you images and tells you via a mechanical? voice some brief information about your search topic (why, I don't know. Since it's image-heavy it's obviously not designed for the visually impaired. Are we supposed to be too lazy to read stuff now?) Although the front page claims Qwiki knows millions of things, it didn't know anything about the first five common terms I searched for, so it may be a few mil short of all-knowing. Since it's based on Wikipedia info it's also likely to be quite inaccurate, so caveat emptor.

Last but not least, I've always been interested in recording my dreams, working them into my stories and otherwise exploring the last inviolate refuge of the imagination. I also see a lot of weird stuff when I'm out hunting for freeware on the internet. Did I ever think those two things would someday intersect? No. You can't hack dreams. Well, guess what.

Blast from the Past

I've been hunting down my favorite old music videos to share with my daughter (who has no idea how cool MTV used to be) and in the process I found one I haven't seen in at least twenty years or better:



I know, by today's standards it's pretty dorky, but I loved it. Back when music videos were in their infancy they often told little mini-stories like this. They fascinated me and no doubt influenced me in innumerable ways. The song is still a heartbreaker, too.

What are some of your favorite old (pre-2000) music videos that told stories?

28th of Snowfall, Year of the Vulture

The Fantasy World News Network is an automated generator that uses word replacements to transform our planet's news into headlines from a mirror-universe world, where things like the month of January are called Snowfall and personal computers become valesylvers. The host site also has another headline generator that does the same thing with a SF spin here.

Making up newspaper headlines is fun, and good practice for learning how to condense ideas and make them attractive (like a story premise you might mention in a query letter, or a tagline for your upcoming release.) The trick of writing a great headline is to offer just enough information and provocation to make the reader want to keep reading:

Improve Your Love Life and Lose Weight (Have That Secret Baby!)

The Scroll That Makes You Immortal -- Or Dead -- in 3 Days

Mayan Miscalculation Means New Date for Apocalypse: Tomorrow

If you want to use headlines as a way to create a non-traditional outline of your story, write up one for each scene or chapter that provides a quick overview or general idea of what happens in them, i.e.:

Faceless Vampire First Kidnaps Then Infects World's Fastest Surgeon

Socialite Slashed by Ghost While Sleeping, Spell Breaker to Investigate

First Day of School, Worst Day of Life

Headline-writing is also a great way to explore the unfamiliar territory of copy-writing, which sometimes authors are called upon to proof for their back covers. When you've got space for only a couple of paragraphs, being able to relate your story in a brief but alluring way is a handy skill, especially when the copy you get is less than stellar.

The other great thing about headlines is that they're kind of like writing haiku -- the more often you write them, the better you get. While I was putting together this post and making up headline examples, a tagline I've been trying to think up in more conventional ways finally popped in my head:

It's After Midnight -- Are You Ready to Ride?

Now it's your turn: what would be a fun headline for what you're working on right now? Let us know in comments.

Related links:

Copyblogger has a post here that defines the different types of headlines and why they hook a reader's attention.

Melissa Donovan's Writing Exercises for Titles and Headlines explains how to write them and gives you some exercises for practice.

Vision and Visibility

Last night I had an epiphany moment while I was re-reading Journaling Without Borders, an article Carrie Todd wrote in the Summer 2010 issue of Art Journaling. I'd gone back to the magazine to study a technique, and then read the rest just for fun. See, I don't save all these magazines for nothing, I do re-read them. It only takes a couple years to work my way through the collection.

Anyway, on one of her journal pages in the issue Carrie had glued a surrealistic circus figure, the word "bizarre" in all caps, and had written a short passage about her own reaction to another article in Rolling Stone about U2's frontman Bono, and the motto he lives by: "Vision over Visibility" (a bit more on that here.) Magazines, especially creative-theme ones, often have that quasi-droste effect: one good article always makes me want to read another.

The motto poses an interesting dilemma for a writer: Which comes first, your vision, or your visibility?

Vision has been a cornerstone of professional writing, or at least it was before visibility became so important. The first time I read an agent talking about the vital importance of a writer's "platform" over the work itself, I knew vision had taken a backseat to visibility. If things keep going in that direction, craft, quality and personal commitment will be joining it. Or at least the old lady storyteller inside me is muttering that under her breath.

Publishing wants visibility over vision. It's the foundation of the business attitude, and it makes a lot of money. We might not like it, but no one can deny that visibility is important to us as well. As professionals we want to sell what we write, and if no one notices what we've published, we don't sell. Every year the market becomes more crowded, and now that no-cost digital self-publishing has successfully eliminated the submission process, I expect the number of titles available will soar right out of the stratosphere.

I think you can have the best of both worlds -- vision and visibility -- if you don't compromise on one for the sake of the other. If you are so exhausted from spending all your time networking and socializing and getting your name out there, you're not going to write well, if at all. Same goes for walling yourself away in your ivory writing tower and spending all your time with the work -- you lose touch with the market, what the competition and the publishers are doing; you fall behind the times.

I'm not in either camp. I believe one can combine vision and visibility and make them work together. You're looking at what I do almost every day to have a professional presence online. It's simply one thing, and I know every other author does a lot more, but sometimes just one thing is enough. PBW has become an integral part of my writing life, one that allows me to be visible and yet do exactly what I want at the same time. Over the years doing just this one thing has not only brought new readers for my books, it's provided me with a global circle of friends and colleagues who share their visions, too.

Just last week I got an e-mail from a writer who is being published for the first time. The story will appear in an anthology that had an open call I listed in one of my sub ops posts last fall. That's visibility. The writer discovered the opportunity here, wrote a story for it, and now is turning pro. That's vision.

It goes both ways, too. A comment one of you left here about a year ago led me to a piece written by an editor I didn't know. It was a terrific piece, and impressed me so much that I printed it out and put it in my editor info file. I keep that file because I never know who I might be working with, and having a little info in advance helps. A few weeks ago when I lost my editor, I pulled my file, re-read that article, did a bit more research and decided to request that editor. Now we're working together. It definitely wouldn't have happened if I hadn't read that article.

Now it's your turn: which do you think is more important, vision or visibility? How are you juggling them, if at all? Let us know in comments.

Elsewhere

Today I am also guest blogging again, this time over at Word Nerd, where I'll be talking about that little line from Frostfire that spooked me so much. My very kind hosts are also giving away this lovely Kyndred gift basket filled with a signed set of all three Kyndred novels, a mug, hot cocoa, teas, and nibblies:



Stop in if you have a chance and say hi.

Story Palettes

My guy and I are midway through renovating the college kid's old room to make it over for his sister. We've moved out most of the furniture and last weekend painted over the light blue walls with our daughter's choice of color. Or, rather, no color, as she chose pure white.

Why white? Her favorite color palette is like the old joke: what's black and white and red all over? Everything the kid owns. Her linens are scarlet and snow white, her room accents are onyx and everything else echoes that stark trio, even her vaguely Asian/Gothpunk wardrobe.

We're not sure where this comes from, as her father likes browns and neutrals, and I'm more into sea and sky colors for living spaces, but we're going along with it. We like to let the kids express themselves as much as possible in their personal spaces, even when we don't find their choices especially appealing. To me her palette resembles the inside of a diner from the fifties (or a Steak & Shake now), and all that red makes the medic in me nervous. Still, I look at it this way: I don't have to live in it. And whenever my guy starts shaking his head I remind him she could have decided on something more exciting for her walls, like traffic accident crimson, or moonless midnight sky.

I began deliberately using color palettes for stories back when I began writing the Darkyn books. Paletting was something I did all the time as a quilter, and I wanted to see how it would work with story. At first I centered on one color for thematic purposes, but as I studied nature, art and architecture for world-building purposes my story palettes began to grow and become more complex. In the visuals section of my novel notebooks I started adding pages of color swatches, first from my own fabric stash and then from raids on magazines, photos I'd taken and chips cut from paint charts.

It seemed inevitable that I would end up creating specific palettes for my characters, too. Jayr's palette (bronze, tangerine and deep amethyst) was one of my favorites, as was Byrne's (indigo, garnet and steel.) I used them in normal details, like wardrobe choices and room decor, but also in physical attributes like Byrne's facial tattoos and how Jayr's hair looks in firelight.

For one of the novels I'm working on now I wanted to use some of the colors of Provence: dusty lavenders, autumn oranges, old ambers, slate blues. My guy had already brought home a stack of paint chip charts from the home improvement store for my daughter to look through (in case she changed her mind about the white), so I went to sort through them and see if I could find some chips that matched the palette in my head. Among them I found this lovely little pamphlet from Olympic Paint's Audubon Collection titled "Brilliance" which featured eight colors that would look completely at home in Provence (and no icky yellow, which surely had to be a sign.)

Already details from the story in my head are rearranging themselves around the palette; the colors of a particular sunset, a slinky dress, the walls of an old church, a bricked path. Now I can clearly see the exact colors of my female protagonist's eyes, the carved stone cross she wears and the overalls she puts on when she works in the garden. The story palette is placing certain gems in the hilt of my male protagonist's sword, sifting light through his hair and shading the hide of a horse he rides. When in doubt, all I need do is glance at this palette and let it guide my choices.

Don't limit yourself to fabrics and paint chips for the story palettes you create. You can use photographs, scrapbooking papers, found objects -- if you can print, paint, sketch or glue it on paper, it will work. If you find an image online with colors that you'd like to use in a story palette, feed the URL to DeGraeve.com's Color Palette Generator. Along with html codes it will give you two rows of color swatches which you can print out and use for a palette page.

For those of you who enjoy crafting and/or making art, take the colors from your story palette and create a project with them: a painting of a character or setting, a themed scrapbook or even a digital mock-up of your dream cover art. I've used story palettes to make several quilts, and working with the colors even in something unrelated to my writing helps deepen and broaden my understanding of them. Every color provokes a range of feelings, and spending time with that away from the story can lead to new discoveries that will go right back into the work.

There are all kinds of rules involved in palette-making, and I think you should break each and every one of them. Color, like any other inspiration, is quite personal, and should not be dictated to you by the Thought Police. If you love dark chartreuse paired with electric hot pink and baby blue, go for it. To me the strongest -- and most memorable -- palettes are always the rule-breakers.

24 Days

Most times we don't keep track of all the things we do and changes that happen to us from day to day, and I thought it would be interesting to see how January went for me. Tonight I started compiling a list of things I've noted in my first 2011 personal journal, both good and bad, and so far this month I have:

Missed zero days working
Accomplished zero amount of sewing
Lost an old editor
Gained a new editor
Renovated a bathroom
Packed up and emptied a bedroom
Had a new release
Sent out a new proposal
Drove to an airport I've never been to
Tried two new-to-me foods (dried apricots aren't bad, but pickled ginger will blast out your sinuses)
Handled a mom visit of two days
Received two rejections
Agreed to do three things I never do
Ate four (small) bags of chips that are not on my diet
Okay, and one Lindor white chocolate truffle, too
Painted four watercolors
Had to cope with four-five days of the blues
Lost five pounds
Composed eight poems
Signed and donated ten books to charity
Posted twenty-four entries on PBW
Walked an extra twenty-four miles
Mailed thirty-eight packages
Read forty-one books + one Pulitzer-prize winning play
Answered ninety-seven e-mails
Written three hundred and thirty-six pages of new material
Proofed three-hundred and forty-five galley pages

Now that I read it, the list is scaring me a little. If I handled all that, why do I feel like I haven't done enough to get the new year off to a good headstart? Is this a woman thing, or a menopause thing? I wonder.

I do feel a bit more positive knowing I have juggled quite a bit over the last three weeks, and I still have seven more days to get some other stuff done. So I will focus on the 10K left to write on the schedule, one more read-through of the galley, two more poems I want to write, doing the third of the three things I never do, and reading nine more books. I think I can manage most of that. I also need to move my daughter from one room to the other this week, and make some time for sewing -- I need some sewing time -- by starting on my annual guild project.

How are you guys doing with 2011 so far? Have you stopped to think about what you've dealt with this month? Does a good start at the beginning of a new year set a tone for the next twelve months? Let us know in comments.

Wish Sites Ten

Ten Sites I'd Like to See on The Internet

AbsolutelyWillNotWrite.com: An online writing community where you can go and hang out to talk about your struggle, pain, writer's block, frustration with the industry, envy of productive writers, mysterious maladies and all the other excellent reasons as to why you can't write. Maybe. We're not sure. Are the planets aligned correctly? We don't feel so good. Come back next Tuesday.

Faceoffbook: A site on which you are not permitted to post any images of yourself or your body parts, which includes any/all Glamor Shots, sex act partials, meaningful personal symbols, short animations from porn movies or Seinfield episodes, pictoral-enhanced famous quotations, celebrities you secretly believe you resemble, participation in drunken revelries or anything that may be introduced as evidence against you in or out of a court of law. If you've used it as an avatar, you won't use it here.

Guildless Authors.org: Created for writers who can't stomach writers' organizations. Site provides no professional advice, never meddles in copyright issues, awards nothing, isn't terrified of Google, doesn't meet once a month, refuses to elect any officers, will not hold workshops or seminars, and could care less about conferences. You don't want to join? Good for you.

Muter.com: For people who don't own mobile phones, hate texting and/or prefer to hold all of their conversations in private without an audience. Welcome! Now, shut up.

NeverPimpAnythingAgain.net: (no description available.)

NotYourKidTube: Do you have a home video that doesn't feature your child performing, singing or otherwise doing something cute, clever or humorous that you intend to exploit so they can appear on Ellen, go into child modeling or acting and make you millions before they mature, lose their childstar appeal and end up suicidal, in therapy, living under a bridge or making a reality show about their various addictions and the many kinds of permanent psychic damage you've inflicted on them? We'd love to see it.

PffftFiction.org: A site that doesn't care who an author is, what they've written or what their latest release is, and flatly refuses to SPAM them twenty times a day asking for book excerpts, bios, guest blogs etc. Why are you bothering us? We haven't heard of you. Go away.

SilentPodcasts: Click on their link to hear nothing, or nothing enhanced by a faint echo of crickets chirping in an enormous empty room.

Unromantic Times.net: The premiere site for the unattached, happily single and not planning on getting involved with anyone ever ever ever. Members may freely communicate without fear of being matched on any level, having to meet, make committments or film a commercial that requires them to fake how happy they are together. Their motto: what's love got to do with it? Uh, nothing.

WorkingWriters.com: Sorry, but we'll have to get back to you after we finish the book.

International Assistance

Although I have a rule about keeping my charity activities mainly private, and any calls for donations off PBW, I thought this particular situation might make an interesting post for those of you who do get involved in international donations involving books or other reader or writer stuff.

On Monday I'll be shipping a donation for a silent auction at a romance convention in another country, so I have a day to put this together. My main priority is for the books to arrive in good condition, but I'd also like them be easy to store and later show at the auction, and hopefully look attractive enough tempt everyone to bid on them.

Just sending the books in a box means they may be removed and added to another, larger box of donations, which can result in things becoming misplaced or lost in the shuffle. Gift baskets generally don't travel well internationally, and with the new concerns about booby-trapped packages you want your contents to be simple to inspect should customs decide to take a peek (something shrink-wrapped baskets also inhibit.)

For all these reasons I'm going with a sturdy, attractive tote bag. Some authors have bags custom-printed with their cover art or promo, but as a reader I'm more inclined to use a bag that is more universal, like this B&N tote (click on image to see larger version):



I always like to send bookmarks along with book donations, and usually I insert these in the books themselves to prevent them from getting dented or dinged in shipment. Since my e-special Darkyn novella, Master of Shadows, isn't available internationally yet, I'll add in a CD containing a review copy (this I'll put in a jewel case which I'll then bubble-wrap to prevent breakage.)

Food, perishable and fragile items are some other things you should avoid shipping internationally; most countries have restrictions against shipping things like fresh fruit that may carry pests or diseases that could contaminate their crops. But if you're shipping from the U.S. and you're not sure, go to the U.S. postal service's Index of Countries and Localities and check out the destination country.

Here's what they have for Australia, the country my donation is destined for:

Prohibitions (130)

Coins; bank notes; currency notes (paper money); securities of any kind payable to bearer; traveler’s checks; platinum, gold, and silver (except for jewelry items meeting the requirement in “Restrictions” below); precious stones (except when contained in jewelry items meeting the requirement in “Restrictions” below); and other valuable articles are prohibited.

Fruit cartons (used or new).

Goods bearing the name “Anzac.”

Goods produced wholly or partly in prisons or by convict labor.

Perishable infectious biological substances.

Radioactive materials.

Registered philatelic articles with fictitious addresses.

Seditious literature.

Silencers for firearms.

Used bedding.

Restrictions

Jewelry is permitted only when sent as an insured parcel using Priority Mail International service. In addition, Australian Customs regulations prohibit importation of jewelry that is made with ivory or from endangered species, such as snake, elephant, or crocodile, that does not have an accompanying Import/Export Permit in relation to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Meat and other animal products; powdered or concentrated milk; and other dairy products requires permission to import from the Australian quarantine authorities.

Permission of the Australian Director-General of Health is required to import medicines.

Observations

Duty may be levied on catalogs, price lists, circulars, and all advertising introduced into Australia through the mail, regardless of the class of mail used.

Looks like a tote bag and books are okay, unless someone considers vampire fiction seditious literature, which actually wouldn't be a first. But if I were donating something like an antique quilt, it might fall under the "used bedding" restriction, so I'd probably have my shipper contact the appropriate authorities over in Australia to get a ruling or give them prior notice (which usually results in more paperwork to fill out, but for a good cause it's worth it.)

Before you pack your donation, one nice and helpful thing you can do is first arrange it how it should be displayed, take a photo of it and include the picture in your package. That way you can pack it sensibly (i.e. bubble-wrapping delicate things and folding up a tote bag) but the person who receives it has a visual on how you'd like it to be reassembled.

So there you have it. And for those of you who are planning to attend the 2011 Australian Romance Readers Convention in Sydney at the end of March, please do stop by the Silent Auction ARR is holding for the victims of the floods. Among the many things to bid on will be the above tote bag with a signed set of all seven of my Darkyn novels, a CD with a review copy of Master of Shadows, and maybe a few more little surprises.

Max Your Dreams

Pepcid AC is advergaming the new maximum-strength version of their product with Max My Dream*, which takes a brief description of your dream and generates a visual interpretation of it. I tried it several times, and while they were right on the money with my I-can-fly! dream, they didn't really nail me witnessing the Apocalypse via incurable plague or the one where I'm conscious during open-heart surgery. For which I'm pretty grateful, actually.

Visualization of a concept is an important part of writing for me. If I can see a scene in my head, I can write it, and my imagination is already pretty well-stocked with faces, places and things. Painting, sketching and photo-shopping also help when I have an idea I want to turn into a visual reference, particularly with settings and characters (as was the case with creating this watercolor from a StarDoc novel scene for a long letter I sent a friend.) Creating art is a great way to get to know the story element you're depicting and serves as a jog for little details that might otherwise slip your mind while you're at the keyboard.

Mood and style are integral to vivid visualization. For mood, I always go to music because it fires my imagination and sets a tone in my head. Instrumental tunes work best for me because I'm not distracted by a singer's voice or derailed by the lyrics. They also offer a wider range of interpretation; often I can use one piece for several different scenes or books. Poetry is also another mood-setter for me, and I have a collection of poems and poets I'll read specifically to tap into different parts of my emotions.

Style is all about the forest, not the trees, of imagery. One thing I really enjoyed about all the Underworld movies was the intricacy and consistency of the dark, bleak dystopian world of the vampires and the Lycan. Here's a still of Selene, the protagonist from the first two Underworld movies, and even something as simple as the marble balcony has that blackened, neglected look to it. Battlestar Galactica (the new series) was another show that offered incredible styling which suited the storyline and bucked the traditional bright-and-shiny Utopian soft-serve SF television shows generally deliver. Battlestar was gritty, realistic and very, very human, especially with the cast choices.

Mood and style are not about perfection, btw, unless you're writing a story about the perfect world of pretty people who all live in palaces. My skin is crawling just typing that line. Sure, I've written my fair share of Pretty People -- most under pressure from editors who didn't like the originals -- but the older I get, the less I want them in my books. They're like Barbie dolls, all smiling and staring at you with those creepy blank eyes. No, give me characters with scars and tattoos and bad haircuts and handicaps. Five foot tall heroes. Heroines who will never ever shop at te 5-7-9 store. And make a few of those Dudley Dastardly mustache-twirling butt-ugly antagonists pretty and perfect instead. Would mix things up a bit if the to-die-for guy is actually the homicidal one, yes?

Some other ways to boost your story visualizations:

Create a visualization journal for your project. Divide it into sections for different story elements: characters, settings, time period, theme and detailing are all good, but tailor it to what you want to explore visually. Then start filling it up with images that illustrate in any manner that particular element -- body models, architecture, paintings, sketches, found objects, fabrics or anything that relates directly to and/or enhances your vision. If there are keywords or notes you want to add, write them as captions to the images. Before you begin writing a scene, go through your journal and refresh your imagination as to the specific look you want.

Build a slideshow of images to follow your storyline. Open it with an image that captures the beginning of your story, and then progress from there (to do one for free online with different formats and theme music, check out Slide.com. The music doesn't seem to play anymore, but you can see the slideshow I made of Darkyn cover art over on the stories blog here.)

Take one location from your story and try to find one that is similar to it in your area. Pay a visit with a camera and notebook, and take some snapshots of details that you can use in your story. Write down notes on things you see that you didn't think of, and pay special attention to things like light, sounds, smells, textures as well as how being in that place makes you feel. This is a shot I took one night recently while getting some visuals on what a small country town feels like after the shops close and everyone has gone home for the night. Feels a little spooky, especially when dozens of bats began pouring out of one restaurant's chimney -- one place I don't think I will be in a hurry to make reservations at anytime soon.

For those of you who like book videos and have the technical means and know-how, consider making a visualization video that relates to your story. Readers are always making dream cast videos, why not do one of your own for your story? Hunt down photos of models or actors who are good matches for your characters and intersperse them with pics of your setting or places that fit into your world-building. Try finding one image for each chapter.

Do you writers out there do anything interesting or fun to help with your story visualizations? Let us know in comments.

*Link found over at The Presurfer

Failed at Installation

My guy has a little control board sitting in a box on his work bench. Not an unusual thing; on the equipment he works on these boards are pretty common now. When one burns up or fails, he has to swap them out. It must be under warranty, too, because the board's box has a big yellow Return Information label on the top.

It's the label, not the board, that keeps distracting me. It has a check-off list of seven reasons for the return:

Failed at installation
Failed after storm
Changed board during troubleshooting
No defrost
Too many defrosts
Incomplete defrosts
High utility bills

I wish we writers could return ideas to the muse that way. The checklist wouldn't even have to change that much:

Failed at installation: I never got past page one. Oh, look, cookies.

Failed after temper tantrum: Oops, I just accidentally on purpose killed off all the characters. Next story!

Changed during troubleshooting: While I was editing this I got this idea. It's way better than this one. So I'm going to write that.

No writing: Love the idea, have no clue how to write it. And I'll probably talk about it forever but not one word is actually going to hit the page.

Too much writing: The manuscript is two thousand pages long and that's just chapter one. Do you think I should get trim down the thousand-year war of the orcs and the dragons? Maybe cut it to five hundred?

Incomplete writing: I got to the third chapter and then gave up. Which publisher accepts partials again?

High utility bills: I can't write this, I have to do stuff for my day job before I get fired and they turn off my power again.

Although I hate beginnings, I have no problem starting novels, and I'm also fairly adept at getting through the middles and wrapping up the endings. My biggest problem in the past was never finishing anything. I'd start approaching the end of the story, my energy and enthusiasm would begin to lag and I'd get bored with it.

Boredom sets up a writer to be easily distracted, and more tempted to set aside the WIP to do something else. I used to start sneaking away from the manuscript to work on other stories, and then found myself growing more resentful every time I went back to the old story, until I gave up on it. It's the classic oooh bright and shiny new idea syndrome combined with poor time management. I always put keeping my energy levels high as a priority over finishing my stories -- which is why there are about ten boxes of unfinished manuscripts in my storage closet.

You can't sell 2/3rds of a novel, and that was what motivated me to deal with my problem. I knew I was fighting myself, not the work, so my habits had to change. I made a new rule: never start anything unless I was going to finish it. That spurred me to be a lot more selective about ideas. I also started quickly outlining the new ideas that came along to distract me and then set them aside versus working on them.

I still felt the same dip in energy at the 2/3rd done mark, and a deep sense of resentment over never having enough time to write everything I wanted, so to address that I focused on training myself to write faster. I also forced myself to write through the tiresome, boring draggy final third of the story. As the finished manuscripts began piling up, I saw a gradual change in my attitude. The rush from a new idea began to pale beside the weary satisfaction of having nailed a story from start to finish. I also felt more like a writer, too -- I wasn't just having fun anymore; I was making a real effort. I wasn't playing or dabbling, I was working.

I don't consider any writing to be a failure; you can learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. Occasionally taking a hard look at all your unfinished or unsuccessful ideas and stories to evaluate them for their flaws will arm you with knowledge. You'll identify your weaknesses, and may even bring to light a pattern in your writing process or story habits that is proving counterproductive.

So if you could add something to the muse return information list for a story that didn't work for you, what would be the reason?

Cirque de Escargot

It is tough to tell a fantastic story about, of all things, snails. And do it in four minutes and forty-six seconds? Basically impossible.

Unless you're Philippe Desfretier, Nicolas Dufresne, Sylvain Kauffmann and Martin Laugero.

Bave Circus from DuDuF on Vimeo.

Video found over at Kuriositas.

Off to Blog Elsewhere

Today I am off to guest blog over at Book Addicts, where I'll be giving a brief history of the Darkyn. My delightful hosts are also giving away this Asian fabric tote filled with a signed set of all seven Darkyn novels:



Stop in if you have a chance and say hi.