BitterSuites

These folks are much more patient than I am, that’s for sure. But I admire them greatly. Over 500K dominoes tipped over to represent the seasons. There were a few non-fires, but overall, excellent effort, beautiful planning, and my gods, they have an excellent artist!

How do people find out about these events to attend them anyway? Am I just blind or do they not happen in VA?

So, I’m a teensy bit of a business wonk. Sort of the way Big Ben is a teensy bit of a clock.

I find this stuff fascinating and I hope you will too.

Recently Ramit Sethi had a post on what he calls the D-to-C principle. What it boils down to is the idea that instead of disparaging a decision one should instead take a moment to figure out *why* the person made the decision. This is especially salient when analysing the decisions of people who are more successful than we are. (Be that a better weight-lifter, a multi-billion dollar company, or a pie crust recipe. <– so much the last. It makes no *sense* why I can’t make a pie crust come out right. I’m missing something.)

Go ahead and read it here, I’ll wait.

Are you back? Great. If you watched the video, you know that Ramit challenged his followers to write down three things which they disparage and instead become curious about them.

I’m going to try that. It will hurt.

Fifty Shades of Grey

– Okay, so what makes this so successful? It builds off of a known success. Yeah, that book right below us. That’s what 50 Shades is part of. (It’s fan fiction with find and replace.) Therefore, the author knew that there’d be a ready and willing audience. She’d even had it up on-line and gotten comments on it. Her decision to have her husband’s company publish it was also smart. When 50 Shades came out, the sheer idea that an S&M based porn book for women would go mad was insane. Still, she knew she could sell it to the people who were her natural fan base. The people who encouraged her originally. That’s a smart idea. So, she started small and built. Then, she made a deal with one of the big six when she’d already established her idea was profitable. The movies built on that success.

• So what she did really right was building off of something she knew was successful, but did it with her own twist.
• She established a fan base and sold to them initially.
• Her fan base was chatty and extroverted and sold her book for her.
• She did something that no one else seemed to have the balls to do and tried to take S&M mainstream.

(And I quietly weep for humanity and all of the women who have BAD S&M role models now. Ladies, there’s p*rn on the internet. There’s lots of primers on S&M. Search “safe, sane, and consensual.”)  

Twilight 

– Gulp. Okay, so vampire who gives up his bitey ways. Girl who falls for him and turns out to be part of a prophecy. Overblown teenage angst and… wait a minute. Got it! Twilight is Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fiction. It hits a lot of the Buffy-Angel beats with very little of the depth. But, I am reliably assured that 80% of the population can’t follow the cons on Leverage or the plots on Mission:Impossible. That means they’re probably only reading the top-level of the show anyway. Thus, Bella and Edward scratch the Buffy & Angel itch without the deep commitment. 

• Bella’s flat affect is much like a video game character’s making it easier for people to project themselves onto her.
• The deep, over-powering romance and emotional connections between people appeal to a large audience who are either having or remember their own teenage years and drama-prone and overwhelming.
• She chose one part of the vampire mythos and made it her own.
• She made it a happily ever after instead of killing off a lot of characters. (*Shakes fist at Joss Wheadon*)

None of this means I enjoy the books. I’m not her target. Still, it depresses me when the domestic violence checklist gets filled out and no-one calls the main characters on how creepy it is. (“I watch you when you sleep,” says Angel. “That’s creepy,” says Buffy.) What I need to consider, is can I take the basic building blocks from something familiar and weave them into a story that’s similar enough to be appealing, but original enough to have its own legs. 

Fox News

– *Flames* *Flames creeping up my face* Right. Taking a breath here. I am not Fox’s target market. Straight up, not. I am not conservative. I think Rupert Murdoch is an evil spider and I hate that he has his fingers so deeply in my country’s politics and media. That being said, this is about figuring out their success formula. Fox News sells fear. Fear of the other. Fear of the government. Fear of disease. Fear of violence. And it offers salvation in the conservative parties in the US.

• Fear is an easy sell because human beings are programmed to attend to the dangerous.
• Conservative mindset makes up about 50% of the population. And people get more conservative through exposure.
• People are lazy. They assume that the media fact-checks to they don’t have to. Therefore, they don’t verify Fox-facts. Or if they do, they assume that the other sources are biased and they have access to the real truth through Fox. (<– observational study of the many Fox-lovers in my office.)
• They have researched the best ways to get and keep attention.

(Fair and balanced my assets. Fox is consistently wrong. Persistently racist. And heavily biased towards the conservative mindset. Go watch the BBC for awhile to balance you out if you watch Fox. Seriously. Multiple news streams kids. I read The Wall Street Journal. They’re conservative too. Be aware of your sources. )

That’s about all of that I can stomach tonight. Wow, that got heavier than I thought it would too. Still hate ’em all, but I do understand them a little more because I’ve had to put my thinking down in writing.

Check out “The Dog Prince” at Aurora Wolf

A light fantasy short story featuring a magic wielding lawyer, a matchmaking matriarch, and a unicorn that once was a Mustang.

(Available free until June 2016.)

If that’s not a controversial topic, I don’t know what is!

My friend Julia did this first. Then, Briane followed up with a post about books which influenced him as a writer. I decided to take them both and smoosh them together. Because that’s totally different. *nods firmly*

So, actually, these are the novels I would nominate as the greatest, as in I’d read them over and over.  Ask me again next year because I’m sure that this list will change.

1. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll — To anyone who knows me, or has followed this blog for say… a few months, this is not a surprise. I am an avid Alice collector. I consistently rank it as my favorite book. So, it influences my pocketbook. I think it’s the strength of Alice that appeals to me though. She is a very sensible little girl, who believes in strange things, and even though she is occasionally plagued by emotion, she rallies and overcomes not only a bully but several problems. She isn’t rescued by a prince. She isn’t involved in a love story. She just is a girl who figures out how to survive in a patently insane world. And in the sequel she becomes a queen! Influences: Whimsy, independence, and inner strength.

2. The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells – This is one of my favorite alternate history/ fantasy heist novels. In fact, it is my favorite. I need to get a new copy because I’ve read it so often that the pages are falling out. (Actually, this was a very difficult decision. I knew it was going to be *one* of her books.) Her characters aren’t perfect. And they are unexpected comrades in their quest for revenge. I think the fact that each one of the characters is unique is what makes it stand out for me. The story is complex and weaves together tightly. Influences: Well-rounded characters, human imperfections, and swiftly spiraling story

3. Design for a Great-Day by Alan Dean Foster & Eric Frank Russell – Full snaps if you’ve heard of this one. It is about a hive-mind collective which, well, keeps interstellar war at bay, I suppose. They don’t interfere unless the war is impacting more than the planet its on. But it’s the fact that one of his characters is a toff of a bee with fancy hats that sold me. I love the way that this feeling builds off of the idea of spiritual evolution. It covers broad topics from collective conscious to war to the afterlife in its own unique way. I don’t want to spoil it because it’s also a lot of fun. Influences: Humor, spiritual evolution, and striving for world peace.

4. The Dark is Rising Series by Susan Cooper – I am cheating and taking this full series because although they can be read separately, they are much better taken together. The fact that I chose this series and not The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe may surprise some people. It’s just that I think this series is stronger in its individual parts. I read them all out of order. The third book was recommended to me by my 4th grade teacher and I couldn’t get enough. The idea of The Old Ones, reworked Arthurian Legend, and everyday people took hold and never left. Will Stanton and Bran are going to be with me until the day I die and I happily revisit the series. Influences: Pagan theory, new legends, and a deep love for history.

5. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien – The fact that this has actually been published in a single book means that I don’t have to call this a trilogy. My mother first read this to me when I was two. I wanted to change my name to Eowyn. I roleplayed as the dwarves and thought that Gandalf could save me. Then, we read it together again. Then, I read it myself – more than once. The movies came out and I got my own copies. I have read the appendices. I know trivia I shouldn’t. I even know the difference in Elven languages. Something about it made a strong impression on me. It is sweeping and full of so many details that I can lose myself in that I just love it. Influences: Detailed worldbuilding, a love of languages, and an abiding hatred of spiders. (Shelob. *shudders*)

As a bonus: The book I will *never* read again, and yet recommend to everyone in the world because I think it needs to be read: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. I loathe this book with every fiber of my being, but it is brilliant. I hate it because it creates a rage so deep in my heart that I can’t conceive of picking it up again. Though I did toy with the idea of making it a more gender even situation with surrogates for men *and* women, but yeah. I hate it. Go read it.

P.S. My new book is out:

I wanted to embed this one here, but the creator has asked rather that we send people to this link.

This is a wonderful remix of Mr. Rogers. I have it on my iPod as well as on my YouTube favorites.

My friend Tamela Ritter tagged me on this meme. So, in case you’re interested, here’s 7 things about my writing. (Gosh, who could I ever tag on this… Briane)

1. I do not write from outlines for fiction. — I am a panster and I love it. I found out in high school that writing and outline felt like I had written the entire thing and I lost all passion for the project. That is not to say that I don’t know where the end point is, just that I don’t know how I’m going to get there.

2. I write differently for every story. — I’m sure there’s a basic level of my writing that is there, but each story has a different voice. The assassin boys talk very differently and observe the world differently than the mother who’s looking for a cure to her daughter’s life-threatening illness. And while I tend towards Hemingway — though I despise the man — I am capable of writing more poetically.

3. My biggest challenge is describing locations. — I have very distinct places in my head when I write, but I often forget that the person reading the story has no idea what I’m seeing. I do dialog and banter very well, but I forget to tell people that my characters in the mid-century modern living room as opposed to the French-country farmhouse kitchen. I’m working on it.

4. I cannot resist a challenge. — I do 3-Day Novels and Nanowrimo, and everything in between. I’ve done 25 word stories. I used to crush alphabet challenges. Right now, my biggest challenge is getting things finished in time for my deadlines.

5. I am a hard-core genre writer. — I write horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and the occasional mystery. I don’t stray outside of them, though I may straddle the area between them. (Sci-fi mystery noir for example) I tried to write a story for a lit mag and it just about killed me. Straight up “literary fiction” is not my bailiwick. I would never have started reading it if it weren’t for having friends in the genre. (Fight Club’s literary fiction right?)

6. I cannot spell well. — My vocabulary is spectacular. I just can’t spell things. My best reference is a dictionary that we’ve had in the house-hold since I was a tiny tot. Just to be clear: “surprise” vs. “suprize”. On the other hand I can spell “antidisestablishmentarianism” without looking it up. I would suggest that we spell things the way they sound, but that’s practically un-American these days. This is why I need beta readers.

7. I generally only edit my own work once. — I’ve gotten used to sending things out into the world without editing more than once. It’s not that they’re perfect (they aren’t) but I’ve battered my internal editor into a corner. I could be a perfectionist, but I refuse to let it happen.

So there’s seven things you didn’t ask about, but now you know.