Recently in on genre Category

I'll have news to share soon, but I'm going to wait until I have officially signed contracts in my hands. In the meantime, I'll talk about one of my current projects so at least you know behind the silence is progress.

If you're interested, read on. Otherwise, hie away.

I think a fair number of people have played a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book as kids. I found them frustrating, because there's no real sense that any deliberation behind your decision-making is rewarded. You might make what seems on the surface to be a wise choice ("You examine the puzzle box instead of rashly opening it"), only to die in a freak accident ("It explodes at your touch, taking your life in a fiery explosion"). If you keep your finger tucked in the page presenting the choices and go back to take the other path ("You flippantly flip open the lid"), you usually discover that there's no consistency at all ("Inside lies the dragon-king's heart, still beating" -- although it really ought to explode if you touch it to open it, if mere contact triggers such).

I'm not interested in a world that changes every time I turn my head. I want a world three-dimensional enough that I can explore it from different angles and find each one interesting. The fun part should be in how I interact with the story, not how it twists away from any semblance of cohesion.

Gamebooks help by adding stats: you might have a strength score that you could increase by deciding to lift things, or by starting out as a litter-bearer, and later when it comes time to bust down a locked door or hold onto a dragon's lashing tail, that score determines your success. Instead of arbitrary choices, you have an idea of what you're gaining or losing -- after all, starting off as a noblewoman instead would give you a higher charm score or access to jewels with which to bribe folks, which you might find more appealing than brute force.

It's a pain, though, to keep track of these scores while flipping merrily through the gamebook. Enter: hypertext and some handy scripting to record your scores. And you see creations like Alter Ego (life -- seriously) or Choice of Broadsides (swashbuckling naval adventure).

So all this to say that I'm working on one of my own. Naturally my main focus will be on the writing (definitely a lack in those early Choose Your Own Adventures), but I'll be trying to integrate the interactive element in both a sensical and entertaining manner. It's inspired by Swan Lake is all I'll say for now; I'll try to get a snippet up so you can actually play around with it and see what it's like.

I think I've figured out that for me, fantasy is all about description, and romance is all about dialogue. I had to discard my usual style of going quietly into the character's thoughts and surroundings and work at developing convincing chemistry between the hero and heroine — which I can't justify with just visuals.

My favorite romantic movies are Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, where the couple essentially wanders around a city, just talking. I love how realistic their conversations are: the topics are random, weave in their pasts, escalate into tears... everything you do when you talk with your lover.

So when I write dialogue, it's not about the passionate declarations or snarky remarks (although they both have their place). It's about letting the characters become comfortable around each other, and yet be excited at the same time by finding out till-then unknowns. Learning to deal with each other. Squabbling. Stuff it'd be hard to do with just description, unless they were two mimes.

I think the biggest adjustment I've had to make in writing romance is building in that first moment of physical desire. My romantic fantasy stories have generally set characters together without even a preliminary kiss. The relationship happened because it fit the story, not the other way around.

One guy I dated confessed that he asked me out because he caught sight of me brushing my hair. Something about seeing me in that pose that struck him. (He phrased it in a very gentlemanly manner, but I gather he found it erotic.)

I got involved with another guy after I'd had one too many Long Islands (okay, so just one of those may be one too much), tried to dance, and stumbled. An acquaintance caught me, my hands slid down his chest, and ever after I saw him as someone who was actively attractive to me, even when I was sober. Suddenly I was aware of him physically, although I'd seen him plenty of times before without any reaction. (It was a nice chest.)

These are the sorts of moments I need to try to bring into my romances. They do come out of the blue, but at the same time, they can't be completely jarring. In other words, the reader has to expect it, but not the character.

There are times I think I'm doomed as a romance writer, because the love stories that hit me the hardest tend to be ones that don't end happily. I just reread "Sorrel's Heart" by Susan Palwick, and I doubt many people would classify it as romance. But it was as a love story that it struck me.

In a world where people are divided into normals and freaks with twisted bodies, two freaks meet: Sorrel, a girl with a heart that's attached on the outside of her body, and Quartz, a man who enjoys inflicting pain. Sorrel's condition is literal and figurative; she feels emotions more intensely, because her heart is so exposed.

They begin as practical companions and end up as lovers. There's no elegant courtship, but I never doubted the intensity of their bond. And the story is about how Sorrel's presence in Quartz's life changes him — one of the ultimate ambitions of women in relationships, it seems.

Not an appropriate read for a morose day, but striking and beautiful, despite — because of — the twisted characters.

I think I've finally gotten used to romance terminology. I kept gritting my teeth whenever I heard references to the hero and heroine, and the mandatory HEA dismayed me. And I know these can be problems for other genres, but I've never encountered so many TSTL characters or as much discussion about head-hopping as I have in romance circles — I suspect because both the hero and the heroine's perspectives are important throughout the romance.

It reminds me of when I joined the corporate world and had issues with people talking about how much bandwidth they had to work on projects, or suggesting during a face-to-face meeting that we take a topic offline. I resisted for a while, but the point of language is communication, so if the other people will understand what I mean, why not use the word? I'm not going to say, "the female love interest of the main protagonist, who gets the POV in some chapters."

I finished a short story today, after panicking about having nothing out on submission. It's a bit quirky (there's a factory and a cemetery and a witch), and doesn't have the happily-ever-after ending that most romance readers demand, so I'm going to take my time contemplating where this one should go.

There are some people who feel that authors who straddle genres should utilize multiple names. I could see how someone expecting a sensual romance from me wouldn't enjoy this story, or at least suffer disappointment. But on the other hand, if the reader likes my writing style independent of genre, or if this is a reader of both genres, I would definitely want to let her know about this one. I figure I can put sufficient warning on my site, and it's unlikely that exclusive romance readers are going to unwittingly stumble across the magazines I'm considering — a benefit of short story markets as opposed to books, I suppose.

I keep trying to write romantic sf rather than a sf romance. I think it's a consequence of knowing too many astrophysicists. I've stopped watching sf action flicks with them because they invariably get shushed every five minutes for outbursts about the lousy science, or they just howl with laughter the whole way through.

So although I'd never let said physicists within a ten-meter radius of my writing, I feel the need to make the science at least plausible. Else I can hear that laughter in my head. And there are so many dominos once you decide some piece of technology is available: other fields of tech which should be on par, societal changes, and, of course, the plot.

I spent days figuring out some of the futuristic aspects of one story, only to realize that I'd neglected the poor hero and heroine's relationship. As much as I've complained about books where the first glance between the two sets mercury a-risin' and pulses a-racin' having all the subtlety of safes a-fallin' on heads, this approach provides momentum for the characters. Once they've had a whiff of that kind of attraction, they're not going to calmly go through the rest of the story saving the world; they'll need to go rip each other's clothes off at some point. But if I let things happen more gradually, then apparently I am quite capable of letting any chemistry fade away in the urgency of external conflicts. Both require pacing.

So I'll just go rachet up the heat a bit, shall I?

I was talking to a couple of friends who knew about my writing fantasy, but not of my forays into romance. (Except for the fact that there's a romance in every fantasy story I write, of course.) They didn't realize that there were subgenres in romance, and I tried to explain the ones I knew about, only to realize as I stumbled for examples that I don't know very much.

There are foundational works in science fiction and fantasy. Take The Lord of the Rings (which I actually only read a few years ago, ironically because it sounded too cliché to me — of course it did, since it kick-started epic fantasy as we know it today). See Neuromancer for cyberpunk. Chances are that you've at least heard of these, if not read them, if you're acquainted with these genres. But with romance I'm all a-flounder. Are there authors I should know? Books I should own, before I can call myself a romance reader?

As my friends marveled when I tried to explain the breadth of romance sub-genres, essentially any genre can become conjoined with romance if you throw in some sweet lovin'. Thriller + romance = romantic suspense. Urban fantasy + romance = paranormal romance. Historical + romance = (surprise!) historical romance. And my yearnings toward romance were satisfied for the longest time by these edgewise explorations from other genres.

So I went and checked out all the Shana Abes, Connie Brockways, and paperback Loretta Chases that my local library had, because their names rang a bell as I skimmed through the fiction shelves. Alas, there is no separate romance section. But I'll work my way through the alphabet and try to rectify my lack of education. I remember feeling this way when I read my first adult mystery novel. There's a whole world out there with different rules and shiny new things, and I am determined to explore it.

Perhaps this makes me a masculine brute, but I often read romantic fantasy books wishing they were more explicit. It's not just wanting sex. I just enjoy learning details about the bed pleasures of fictional couples I like. Sometimes it's that the author did such a marvelous job in building up the tension between them, and I feel cheated in not getting to witness the culmination of all those sparks flying. In the case of Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, I remember being perplexed at random sex scenes between random characters (who weren't even emotionally attached), when a heartbreakingly beautiful couple in the book never got one (on-screen).

I don't think I'll ever be able to write erotica. I can't get that raw with my words, to the point where the reader is caught up in the physicality of it all. I'm too fond of my metaphors and I think I overemphasize the non-romatic plot. But I'm frank about my sex life in real life, because I think it's a natural intimacy to share with people you're attracted to and care about, and I like to acknowledge it among my characters who feel that way. It's not an insignificant step to take, but it's not (in my stories) earth-shattering. It may not be the best sex they've ever had, and they may not be each other's One True Loves. Just an expected development of a relationship which can manifest itself in a lovely medium of hands and mouths and, well, other parts.

Writers have to gather the most eclectic collection of facts. I've had to research the highest altitude at which one can find butterflies, which trees grow in African deserts, and what Mongolian bowstrings are made of. Thankfully, my google-fu is great. Also, requesting heavy non-fiction tomes through interlibrary loan helps counterbalance the librarians' opinion of all those paperbacks with heaving bosoms on their covers that I also ask for.

A writer once advised me to network, not among others in the publishing industry, but rather students in all disciplines: biology, geology, architecture, and so on. I once emailed an ex-boyfriend because a writer friend of a friend of mine needed to know about atmospheric physics, which he happened to be specializing in. The ex and I didn't leave on the friendliest of terms, but I understood that the need was great.

It still wounds me a little when people assume that writing fantasy means you get to make everything up. No, the world needs to stay consistent, and everything still has implications. Whatever you create, you need to follow through on. Anyone who has studied history understands that consquences cascade; you can't just insert an element in the middle of things and expect everything else to remain unaffected.

I'm a fan of Barbara Hambly because she's the fantasy author who gets this the most out of anyone I've read. Things don't get much more fantastical than in her Darwath series, when the Dark rise out of the ground to hunt humans. Yet she doesn't wave her arms and dismiss it as magic. She gives scientific reasons for what happens — no, don't yawn yet, it's all the more satisfying because it makes sense: everything adds up, and the solution is not some random artifact that just happened to be imbued with the power to fix everything. Or an extra superpower, gained just in the nick of time.

And yes: for me, trying to achieve this all starts with having horsehide bowstrings.