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Showing posts from 2017

If you're bored of a novel, it's because it lacks conflict.

I've come to find myself repeating one concept over and over. We talk about it every week at writing group. It comes up all the time on critiquing websites. I even have to tell myself from time to time. Based on the results, I'm starting to think this may be the secret ingredient: When writers are bored of their own stories, it's almost always due to a lack of conflict or tension. There may be some. In fact, there's usually some. But in brainstorming, and editing, and critiquing, and discussing, problem-solving always comes back to this. There needs to be enough to propel a whole scene. What really doesn't work, I've found, is "this scene has to be there so we understand x." There lies the path to characters going through the motions. Dialogue that informs us of something, but has no oomph; scenes that are pretty and realistic, but seem to drag; low-level tension that lacks the sizzle you expect. I'll bet you've read scenes like that, and

Recent Reads: Storm Front (Dresden Files)

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I'm like the last person on the planet to read the Dresden Files, and within a few pages it's obvious why. There are very few books that make me actively irritated if I get interrupted. I started this one on an airplane, planning to read it while I was out of town... but I finished it before I managed to get out of town. I may have a particular soft spot for the roguish, lonely, haunted-past, tall skinny male leads. The Doctor. Sherlock. Constantine. I definitely have a type, and Harry Dresden fits it. With his messy history of magical-rulebreaking for self-defense, he's got all sorts of problems following him around, not the least of which is a wizard council that's just itching to find the slightest provocation to have him executed. Add this to the fact that the character is a total powerhouse of bad-ass magic, restrained by his sense of ethics and, well, being a gentleman. I think Harry Desden might have been tailor-made to melt my heart. Plot-wise, I haven't

Moonlight Masquerade

The prompt for this one was... 'He's always following me. Even if I don't see him I know he's there- I look out the window and he's on the other side of the road, he's trailing behind me in the forest, he's going through my bins. One night I woke up to see him standing in the corner of my room'. I don't usually write in first person or in present tense, but I find flash fiction is a good place to practice. --- I crouch on the rooftop, watching as two men follow a tipsy girl into an alley. It’s foolish of her to be walking home alone to begin with; taking shortcuts like this is even worse. Maybe tonight’s scare will teach her to be more careful. The men close in on her. One draws a knife just as she glances over her shoulder, and she lets out a squeal. They lunge. And I descend on them like a wildcat at its prey. I land on the first one’s shoulders, bowling him to the ground. His friend—the one with the knife—turns and raises to slash. I

Setting Inspiration: Blackwater Rafting

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One of my most memorable experiences was Blackwater Rafting in the glowworm caves in New Zealand. The word "rafting" is a bit misleading, because it's actually tubing, and at a rather relaxed pace. The awesome part comes from the fact that it's on the underground river, through a cave, with glow worms lighting up the ceiling overhead. Some of the tours cross bridges over the river, so you can see each other occasionally. One of my early Setting Inspirations was from another part of the same cave network , if you want to check that out. All right, that photo above isn't from the blackwater rafting. It's a photo of the caves I got from google. There are that many glowworms, but as most of the tour was in pitch blackness, I don't have any photos of them. All the photos came from the tour guide, who had a waterproof camera. Before we launched, we had to don wet suits, helmets, and go over procedure. One of the important steps we had to do was to link

Things I Learned From Vet: Clinical Practice Is Not For Me

Considering my recent major career change, I suppose some explanation is in order. Turns out, when you're an animal doctor, you have to see sick animals all the time. Who'd have thought? The animals aren't too much of a problem, though. Sure, instead of unconditionally loving every dog I see, I now think about why they'd make a terrible patient (too fat / fearful / no manners / land shark / awful veins / cancer factory), and I think of potential pets in terms of life span, but if all I had to do was treat pets in a vacuum with no client contact, I'd be quite content. Clients suck. They either make me angry or sad. If they're reasonable people who love their pets, then I just end up heartbroken that their pet is dying. The rest of the time, it's arguing about money, facepalming at the lack of compliance with my instructions, re-explaining concepts twenty times, and giving advice I know will be ignored. For example, my favorite appointments used to be

Big News!

You know how I love writing and do pretty much nothing else with my spare time? Maybe you didn't know that. I'll bring you up to speed: if I'm not writing, I'm reading about writing, or in a chat room with other writers, or critiquing someone's writing, or watching lectures on writing, or just generally... talking and thinking about writing. The best days at work are when I have a big space without appointments so I can get some progress done on my draft while I'm there. It didn't take long for me to figure out that I want to eventually be a writer. My criteria for this started far-off, and gradually shrank... "I'll quit my job when I'm making more money from writing than from vet." "I'll quit when I've sold at least a couple books and have a steady income." "I'll switch to writing when I've sold a solid 3 books, so I know the first two aren't flukes." "I'll quit my job after I pu

The Dead Rest In Tepid Waters

This was for another informal contest, where the prompt was to write about someone summoning something from a ritual. Most of the other entries involved gruesome horror, evils, and darkness, so I wanted to write something more unusual. --- Jotharu scurried across the marble tile with his head bowed and a forbidden book clutched under one arm. The vast, silent hall seemed as dormant as ever, but the ethereal alarms would already be alerting the other Protectors. He stopped at the central fountain. Gray marble columns supported a glass-domed roof overhead, and the gurgle and tumble of water bounced through the open space. Water was key. Jotharu glanced over his shoulder before shifting the book forward and lifting the cover. It creaked with age and dust. He imagined his sister’s voice admonishing him: the other Protectors would know. They’d sense his defiance the instant he tugged on the ether. Contacting the Other Side was a crime that could cost him his life. “Life,” what life? Endless

PSA: Your pets don't need grain-free diets.

More than half of my clients proudly tell me they've switched their pets' food to "grain-free." This is often in conjunction with a bit of puzzlement at how the pet's allergic skin or intestinal issues haven't resolved yet. Even my mother's vet told her to try grain-free for their little dog's weepy eyes. Guess what? It didn't help. Because it doesn't help. Because it doesn't matter. There's no science-based evidence that grain has effects on pets. It's a big fad in humans, and anyone with Coeliac disease will tell you how aggravating it is that healthy people cling to it as this trendy superfood type deal (though it's also made gluten-free products much more mainstream and available, so that's a plus). So already, the benefits of grain-free are largely exaggerated even in humans. In pets? Nada. In the grand tradition of vet students, I slightly threw out all but the most essential of my notes, so I no longer have specif

Setting Inspiration: Versailles

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Touring the grounds and palace of Versailles sparked all sorts of ideas for stories and settings. My husband and I visited Paris early on in our relationship (during the trip, he went from boyfriend to fiancee :D). Let me tell you something--I really underestimated how cold France is during March. Our visit to Versailles was quite the adventure. For starters, we had to take the metro farther outside the city than we'd ever been, which involved upgrading our train passes (a confusing and expensive ordeal). The ride itself was long and allowed a view of Paris rolling past us. Heart of the city and out through the suburbs. And a bunch of French highschoolers getting on and off from our cabin. Versailles itself is divided into two parts--the mansion, and the grounds. Getting the tickets for each was another confusing and expensive ordeal, with the longest queue you've ever seen. It turns out we really shouldn't have gone in March. Half the place was closed off, the res

Dappled in Light and Shadow

This was written for an informal contest with the following prompt: "BURN AFTER READING" was all the book said. The spine was a match striker, the outside contained a single match. I decided to try for a Lovecraftian style, heavily influenced by The Nameless City . --- Sand shifted in currents through the ruined city. Even with my scarf and gloves, grit found its way into my mouth and the folds of my skin as I lumbered over uneven hills. Some dunes piled into high banks against the crumbling buildings, almost swallowing them, while others spread so thin I could see the cobbled road beneath them. And always, even under the intense midday sun, I stopped at every flash of shadow and held my breath. It had been well over a decade since the Horrors ravaged this city and moved on, but I couldn’t help imagining their long, spindly arms reaching around this corner, or their yawning mouths and pit-like eyes peering from beneath that outcrop. It had been drilled into me: cities

Hey, what happened to July?

I swear I didn't forget to blog, I just had the death plague for a while. And then had an inpatient that needed overnight monitoring, and the whole not-getting-any-sleep thing had a butterfly effect on the rest of the week. I'm bad at blogging, particularly the "thinking of things to blog about" part. In order to keep things fresh, I'm going to add in some new subjects. I might start doing some "critique" posts, since that's something I both love and spend a lot of time doing (which may or may not require sacrificial lambs to give me work to chew). More certainly, however, I'll start posting flash fiction regularly. I'm accumulating a lot of entries from informal and formal contests alike, often with bizarre prompts, so that should be fun. You can expect the first flash story next week!

Odd Surgeries You Didn't Realize We Can Do In Pets

Medical technology gets more newfangled every day, and some of the things we can do in human medicine is getting close to Star Trek. But something people tend to forget is that most things that can be done in humans, can also be done in animals. They usually aren't , but that's not because we can't ! However, here are some of the more common advanced or interesting surgeries we tend to do on pets... 1. Rewire salivary glands to act as tear ducts. If the tear ducts don't work, the eyes get all dried out and then they stop working, too. Surgeons can work their magic to re-plumb the tiny ducts from the salivaries up into the eyes instead of the mouth. Then the pet cries when it eats. Not kidding. 2. Plant chemotherapy beads or gel inside their brain. I mention this one because I actually had a patient go through brain surgery. The neurosurgeon did a bunch of CT scans to pinpoint the tumor, then they went in through an area a bit above and between the eyes. I believe

Realistic... But Not Too Realistic

As a reader, I always was, and still am, fairly oblivious to the behind-the-scenes magic tricks authors use. Even now that I've seen the ropes and gears, I can get swept up and forget about them. That's the magic of reading, really. You know it's not real, but you believe in it anyway. Or rather, you suspend your disbelief, as they say. Learning the craft of writing is essentially learning how to maintain that suspension of disbelief for the reader. You can have a dragon division to the airforce or make stars explode or give someone the ability to phase through walls, yet it feels like it could be real--like those people might be out there somewhere, battling with those decisions and living with those consequences. There's a big bag of tricks we use in writing, in how information is delivered, which things we direct attention to, even the nuts and bolts of line breaks and scene breaks. In the end, I'd say it all comes down to keeping the reader gripped. However,

Recent Reads: On Writing

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Stephen King's On Writing is widely touted as not only an excellent resource, but a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the writer's life and thought process. I think there is some good writing advice, but I mainly enjoyed it as an interesting nonfiction read about his life and how he came to be where he is now. I know a lot of literary folks like to sneer down at Stephen King's proletarian writing style, but hey, us proles love it. I read On Writing super fast, faster than I'd read anything in years. I read a few other things in between, and the next book I found myself ripping through was 'Salem's Lot. I told my coworker, "I haven't gone through a book this quickly since... Well, since the other Stephen King book I read." I find his voice conversational and entertaining, his characters full and lovable, and his settings delightfully close to home. Sneer all you want, but he's still a good storyteller. For those who've only read his

On Assuming The Reader's Ethics

Recently I was reading a book that made me pause and think about societal norms of right and wrong. The situation in the story was that character 1 was very upset that character 2 (their bodyguard) had spied on them without their consent. Character 2 had placed a video bug in the interest of better protecting his charge. Character 1 was pissed, and it wasn't explored beyond "he's mad that I spied on him." This made me realize... I didn't have sympathy for character 1, because I felt character 2 was in the right. The author seems to have assumed the reader would be on-board, and so the "just cuz" explanation would suffice. Assuming that isn't necessarily wrong; I don't think an author needs to go out of their way to explain why someone would be upset over theft, slavery, or murder. But more ambiguous ideals, where there's no physical harm or infringement of rights, are more culturally determined. As an example, if character 3 was presented

Things I Learned From Vet: Personality Shines Through

"But we feed them the exact same amount!" - One cat is a bowstring and the other is a basketball. Two cats who are littermates, live in the same house, and eat the same food, can still turn out as completely different creatures. Mr Lazy-Bones will plump up no matter what you do, and because of that he'll get all dandruffy because he can't reach his backside to groom it. Mr Anxiety-Face will run around constantly and wind up lean and mean, but maybe also pee all over the house and sneeze a lot, because he's always so worried about everything. Two dogs who are the same breed, go through the same training, and interact with the same people, can still react very differently to new people. Ms Happy-Go-Lucky always runs up and sniffs and wags her tail, and Ms I-Don't-Trust-Anything always hangs back and trembles. You can argue about nature vs nurture, I suppose. The nurture component is still there--it's why Mr Lazy-Bones has access to enough food to turn

Setting Peek: Pull of Gravity - Central Planet Tour

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Thank you for choosing Celestia Imperial TM Tours , the highest-rated luxury starliner in the galaxy! This three-week cruise will dock in orbit around four major Central worlds and stop at three galaxy-renowned astronomical sites, an itinerary sanctioned by the Steward of Culture herself. See below for a brief overview of each destination. Acathor Naturally, our tour begins at the capitol, in the heart of Cluster 1, orbiting Envares Major. We will be docked for two days ( Interstellar Standard Time ) in geosynchronous orbit over Acathor City. Our grand capitol is home of the palace and its ice gardens, Acathor College (including medical, law, arts, and culinary branches), and the Administrative Mercanum, among other notable locations. The city boasts representative temples from every major religion and cuisine from every major culture. There will also be shuttles to the glaciers, the ice falls, and the auroras. Calavor   Next on our itinerary is the sister star, Envare

Husbands As Story Fodder, Part 2

Last week, I talked about how my husband affects my writing day and what contribution he has to my books (which is not very much). But he does indirectly help me a ton in one department: I have a very good template for a happy, healthy, long-term relationship, which I can either apply to develop a convincing romance, or I can break to totally screw over my characters. At present, fanciful daydreams excluded, I have two proper novels I'm working on. One involves a couple that falls in love during the book, and the other involves an already-married couple that's trying to get back to each other. In an effort to avoid the eye-rolling tropes romance can fall into, and to try and make these characters real and lovable, I ask myself, "What would I do if it was Rick?" My rule of thumb for romantic plots is to make the reader (myself, really) fall in love with the characters as they fall in love with each other. So what better way than to include stand-ins for the things

Husbands As Story Fodder, Part 1

I'm sorry for missing my post last week. I'd like to blame it on a scheduling snafoo or some dramatic emergency at work, but the truth is I just plain didn't do it. I didn't feel like writing because my husband flew off to China for work that morning, which is something he does every few months. He'll be gone for one or two weeks, and theoretically the quiet evenings would be the perfect time to get tons of writing done. The reality is that my routine gets so disrupted, I spend the entire time moping, eating junk food, and watching Grey's Anatomy. As cliche as it is, I can't sleep well when he's not here, because the bed is big and empty and we don't watch our shows together at night--and by the end of the week I'm sleep-deprived and running on fumes. This got me thinking about how much my relationship with my husband influences my writing. There's the real-life stuff (how he affects the daily routine, his role in idea-generation and prob

More Stories Should Play Around With Non-Earth Settings

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Sure, Tatooine has two suns, Arrakis is a giant desert full of sandworms and spice mines, and Doctor Who once visited a planet made of diamonds --but characters don't have to be traveling on spaceships to have adventures in non-Earth settings. Sci-fi has always done a pretty good job imagining strange and fantastic worlds, which always makes me happy, yet at the same time I've realized there's some cool real science that could be used to expand sci-fi and fantasy settings a lot more than is often seen. (And as cool as Star Wars can be, it's worth mentioning how silly it is that most of the places are mono-settings: ice planet, swamp planet, city planet...) Now, all of the pictures you see here are from the public domain. I want to show you a few other things, too, but I'm going to send you to the original sources (or at least, the links where I found them). It all started when I stumbled upon this reddit thread discussing plant colors on other (theoretica

I Don't Care, I Love Rom-Coms

I find it's often assumed that, because I so cheerfully critique my favorite things into mangled corpses, I therefore look down on romantic comedies. Friends might engage me in a conversation about how silly and formulaic they are, naturally thinking Mrs. Must-Have-A-Clever-Plot-And-World over here will agree. But I'm actually all, "...I liked that movie". I think this gets into why the romance genre, with a capital R, is so distinct and separate from other genre fiction. You read it (or in my case, watch it) for separate reasons. Regular sci-fi/fantasy--yes, I want to be wowed by how clever and unpredictable and unique everything is. Romance? I just want to be happy and not think about life :( It fills a similar niche to eating cookies. When my husband is off in China for work, and I'm all alone and my brain is exhausted from the day, sometimes all I want out of my fiction is to cheer the main characters on and know they'll get together in the end. (As an

Recent Reads: Three Parts Dead

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Not blogging for a month gave me more time to read, so I actually managed to finish a couple books instead of my usual one per century. The last one I finished was the delightfully clever Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. This is a difficult one to explain. On one hand, it's solid fantasy, with a lot of the usual--magic (Craft), fantasy creatures (gargoyles, vampires, "blacksuits" in service of the city's justice system), and the extraordinary (resurrected gods, ancient skeletal sorcerers, shadow monsters). But it's also an atypical setting--not quite modern, not quite urban fantasy, but definitely not the traditional medieval European. The main characters are lawyers for the firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. The magic is intimately associated with contracts, clauses, and legalese. Characters might smoke cigarettes or do drugs behind bars. The priests are actually technicians, who manage the steam pipes that provide the city's energy with the fire-god

I Return... With Important Updates

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I'm back for more blogging! And great timing, because in March, Blogger added a bunch of new templates. The makeover makes me super happy, because I've been trying to customize a more professional-looking layout for months to little success. Another change is that I'm going to drop from posting approximately twice a week, down to strictly once a week. That should prevent me from running out of stockpiled posts and winding up in a panic when life throws unexpected turns. The African Gray, by the way, is very happy, makes a lot of beep boop noises, has no manners, and we're still trying to fix the feather picking. I scheduled this post for April 2 so it would be taken seriously. I guess that means posts will be on Sundays from now on! Some important information for getting around the blog now: - There is a little list icon on the top left. This is how you can find the archives and tags, my profile information, a contact form, and the list of followers. You can cli

PSA: Spring Break

You may or may not have noticed that I missed the last blog post, which is a grievous sin! I had a bad cold and completely forgot about it. I'm all out of stockpiled posts, but have a lot going on because we adopted an African Grey on very short notice and I still have some big edits to finish up. I'm going to take another month blogging break for the month of March to get myself all caught up. See you in April!

Things I Learned From Vet: Throwing Wrenches

Exciting plots are all about unexpected twists and complications. Just when it seems things are going right, boom, a new problem for the characters to deal with, or a game-changing revelation. Some general writing advice suggests that if you get stuck, throw a wrench in the scene and see what happens. Vet medicine involves plenty of wrenches, too. Maybe it's helped me developed the skill of dealing with the wrenches, but I imagine most jobs do. It sure gives good fodder for creating the wrenches, though. Smooth day? Dog fight or car crash arriving in ten minutes. Classic symptoms? Diagnostic tests negative for the suspected disease. Seen a few guinea pigs and rabbits? How about a sick sugar glider. (Staff: "I didn't even know that was an animal.") All of these can be turned into plot devices: Smooth day? Dog fight or car crash arriving in ten minutes. - Finally solved a plot problem or resolved an argument? Explode something in the room. Classic sympto

Setting Inspiration: Underwater Tunnels

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Today's setting inspiration is brief, but sometimes that's all you need to add some flavor to atmosphere and worldbuilding. This isn't even that clever or original, it's just a thought I had--something that would be nice to include as one element of many. Underwater tunnels. There are two ways I can think of utilizing this. One is the classic underwater city, which I think could go in many directions culturally. We won't talk about the Gungans , but in general this is a relatively common society design in sci-fi. Some of the factors that might influence the society would be whether or not the species is amphibious (or can otherwise breathe underwater), whether the city is meant to be a secret, and what the surface is like. There's a big difference between a community that has solid trade with land-dwelling societies and a unique aquatic industry, versus one that's completely isolated and hidden away from some enemy seeking genocide. My other idea is eq