Spacefreighters Lounge

Pippa's Journal - Inaugural Post

2012-02-01T03:00:00.010-07:00

Hello! *waves* As the new girl onboard I thought I'd better introduce myself before progressing to more insane ramblings. So hi, my name is Pippa Jay - author, blogger and self-proclaimed goddess of angst. I'm extremely honoured to be joining the Spacefreighters Lounge.

What else can I tell you? I'm a UK author with a US publisher, which makes life a little interesting. I fell into writing sfr by mistake - I'd always thought of myself as a straight scifi author but my characters decided otherwise and now I don't seem able to write anything in speculative fiction without a dash of romance. I can't say I'm sorry about that in the least. For twelve years I worked as an Analytical Chemist in the Metals and Minerals industry, but I've been a stay-at-home mum for the last decade. I started writing Keir in 2009 as a way to save my sanity, although my husband views my literary endeavours as proof that I completely lost it, lol!

Action!

So, in July 2011 I signed a contract with Lyrical Press Inc for my sfr novel Keir, which now has a release date of 7th May--less than 100 days from now! To say I'm excited is an understatement of epic proportions. :) I've already got dates and places lined up for the virtual book tour which will run from the 1st May (Beltane) until the 14th, and you can find the itinerary on my blog here. There's also several guest posts scheduled by visiting authors, and a couple of blog hops including a day of sfr related posts and events over at Backward Momentum for the 14th February which will be well-worth a visit!

In the meantime, I'm trying to get a scifi short finished and self-published on Amazon, have a scifi novella and an sfr short story out on submission, and I'm trying to hammer out the flaws in my sequel to Keir ready for submission. However, an sfr novella that grabbed my muse over Christmas - Tethered - is proving a constant distraction, especially after the blurb for it won the SFR Brigade Pitch contest last month. :) I also have a free scifi short - The Bones of the Sea - up on Smashwords.com. It was an experiment, both in terms of writing a short story, something I've had difficulty confining myself to, and as a self-publishing project. At the time I'd yet to know my first contract would be coming my way.

Bookshelf

I've just finished reading the third book that I set as part of my SFR Reading Challenge 2012 but have yet to review it. I've been posting the reviews here as I go. So far I'd heartily recommend Nebula's Music by Aubrie Dionne (a fellow Lyrical author) which is scifi with romantic elements. Also a stunning sfr read is Ambasadora by Heidi Ruby Miller. Heidi has a second book set in the same universe coming out later this month, so I'll be adding that one to my TBR pile. :)

Ping Pong

At Laurie on subject of prophecy. Considering the number of Armageddon predictions that seem to have cropped up over the last few years, I worry that at some stage mankind might seek to make them self-fulfilling. I don't believe in the ability to predict the future completely, because surely the knowledge would alter the certainty. However I do believe in the ability to foresee a vague shape of the future, whether by individuals or as a global consciousness. I believe in premonitions because I've had them myself. 'Interesting' is a word I find myself using a lot, and I agree times are interesting. A disturbing thought since "May you live in interesting times" is apparently a Chinese curse!

Living With World-Changing Prophecy

2012-01-30T03:00:00.006-07:00

Mission Success
Laurie's Journal

Something's coming. Something BIG!

Or not.

Lately I've been living a sort of immersion scenario while I work on my third novel and reflect on the current uneasiness in our culture surrounding an upcoming date on our calendar.

Let me explain...

Living With World-Changing Prophecy

2012

We're living in a time where our world has gone edgy with expectation.

Many cultures of the past--the Mayan, the Hopi, the Chinese, and others--have all hinted that on one particular date in the future something big is going to happen. Many researchers agree they are all pointing to the same date--December 21, 2012.

12-21-12

Eleven months from now.

No one really knows exactly what will happen, only that an ancient calendar comes to an abrupt end on that particular date.

Some forecast doom and gloom in the eerily prophetic Mayan calendar--a calendar that has supposedly marked every major astronomical event for eons. Its terminus has been put forth by some to correlate to an energy surge from alignment with the galactic rift, a polar shift, intense solar flares, impact by a stray comet or errant asteroid, a direct hit from a gamma ray burst, an overdue supervolcanic eruption, shut down of the ocean conveyor and the inevitable instant ice age, or the mysterious planet X that's supposedly going to swoop in from the edges of our solar system, gallop through the orbital planes of the inner planets to collide with Earth.

Some believe it will be a change for better, for enlightenment, for the next step in human evolution.

And then there's the school of thought that nothing is going to happen at all. It's just going to be another date on the calendar.

After all, how can an ancient society predict what's going to happen in the future--long after their civilization has ceased to exist? How can they know?

There's actually a precedence for that, according to some researchers. They're studying a sudden spike in global consciousness the morning of September 11, 2001, hours before the events of that day actually occurred. They claim random event generators can predict catastrophes that are yet to happen. [Read more.] Are they quacks, or is there really a way to tap into a global consciousness and "see" events that are yet to happen? Are some people wired to tune in to the future?

Was Nostradamus a prophet who predicted the rise of Hitler and other upheavals in history, or merely a very clever creator of enignatic words with symbolism that could be interpreted or twisted in any way to mean anything a person chooses?

The Great Prophecy of Draxis

In my third novel, Draxis, the people of this fictional society are living with a prehistoric prophecy that might be coming true. And just like the theories surrounding 2012, many are jittery and fearful. They aren't sure if the change that's foretold will result in annihilation, or glorious evolution...or if anything will happen at all.

The Great Prophecy was written by a philosopher-visionary named Hamaden Sarcassius sometime around 9,000 BC by our time scale, the text carefully preserved for over twelve thousand years.

Who Sarcassius really was is lost to the centuries. Heck, maybe he was a mad. Or maybe he had ulterior motives for penning his prophecy. Or maybe--just maybe--he had the gift of vision and sent a dire warning to his race across a great expanse of time that something was coming--something the Draxians needed to prepare for.

The events of the Great Prophecy center around a person identified only as "the Flame," who according to the scripts will make a single decision that will destroy or "turn" their world.

The novel opens as the one who many believe may be "the Flame" wakes up on Draxis after being abducted, drugged and hurled through space and time to be thrust into this maelstrom of fear and fanaticism spurred by her arrival.

The parallels between the Draxian empire and our present day culture are easily drawn. Two societies living with the fear, apprehension, skepticism and denial surrounding a world-changing prophecy and the potential Armageddon it portends. Or doesn't.

No one on Draxis really knows what the words of Sarcassius mean.

And no one on Earth really knows what the end of the Mayan calendar indicates.

We live in interesting times.

Write what you know.

Announcements!

2012-01-28T11:59:00.002-07:00

We have two big announcements to make.

First, Pippa Jay has joined us as a regular contributor. She's been guest blogging with us lately, and we're so pleased to have her join our Spacefreighters crew! Welcome, Pippa!

And second, we've just hit a major milestone. 35,000 hits!!! We'll be putting our heads together to plot a fun event for our 50,000 hit, which we're estimating will happen sometime in the May-June time frame. Check back for news.

Guest Blogger Pippa Jay: A Newbie's Guide to Surviving First Edits

2012-01-25T03:00:00.003-07:00

I'd like to welcome guest blogger Pippa Jay, who will soon be a new author with Keir, a SFR coming from Lyrical Press. Today, Pippa shares some valuable insights into surviving a first round of edits, always a humbling experience in the path to becoming published.

~*~

A Newbie’s Guide to Surviving That First Ever Set of Edits

1. Whatever happens, DON’T PANIC! Take a deep breath. Look them over. If necessary, walk away. Have a coffee/tea/beverage of your choice. When you’re ready, go back and look through them again.Read through carefully. If it’s too daunting, start with a few of the simpler fixes. Ridding yourself of a few pages of tracking changes with nothing more than a few odd errors in punctuation, word choice, grammar etc. can make it seem less overwhelming.

2. Your editor is NOT your enemy. On the contrary, they could be your greatest ally. If you’re struggling with the changes/rewrites, they will often brainstorm or offer further suggestions and encouragement. Or if you’ve made a big change and you aren’t sure if you’ve gone too far/far enough, get their advice. Don’t be afraid to ask them for help. And if you don’t think you’re going to make the deadline, let them know as soon as possible.

3. Don’t let the suggested changes get you down. They are generally exactly that - suggestions. What your editor feels will really improve your work and make it more marketable. They have the advantage of coming in fresh to your work and can spot any plot holes, inconsistencies or errors that could have been missed by beta readers. But writing is very subjective, so discuss any issues you have with your editor.

4. Do not rant at your editor. It’s rude, unprofessional and could earn you the reputation of being a difficult author that no one will want to work with. They are just doing their job. If you feel the need to let off steam, do so to your BFF, crit partner, spouse etc. Don’t blow your writing career on the first book.

5. Don’t be afraid to argue your point. If you really feel that strongly about something, or you feel it’s essential, then say so. Your editor and publisher are experts in their field, but only you really know your characters and your story. One comment that came out in my edits was that it seemed odd my female MC had had so few relationships in her lifetime. My answer - she’s just not that kind of girl!

6. But do be prepared to compromise. With this being my first experience of the whole process, I’ve probably accepted a lot more of the changes than I would in future (although hopefully I’ve also learned to make fewer mistakes too!). Try to be objective when looking at the changes and don’t take them as a personal attack.

7. Stay offline. Unless you’re talking things over about your MS or doing some research. It’s just too much of a distraction.

8. You will feel better at the end. It’s a cathartic experience, but afterward I felt the story was much stronger. To be honest, even after all the work I put into my MS there were still things that niggled me about it when I submitted it. I don’t feel that now. My editor may have kicked my behind from one end of my book to the other, but I appreciate the effort she put into it and the support she gave me throughout.

9. Don’t think that’s the end! Chances are that you will spend at least a couple of weeks batting the MS between you and your editor until the copy edits are done and you’re both happy.

If anyone has anything else to add, please do so in the comments. Some of these are things I wish I’d been told before my first set of edits arrived, and others are from things I’ve heard in the publishing world that should or shouldn’t be done. If you thought getting your book contracted was the end of it, you’ve a shock coming. Just remember to breathe. J

Outcast. Cursed. Dying. Is Keir beyond redemption?

For Keirlan de Corizi--the legendary 'Blue Demon' of Adalucien--death seems the only escape from a world where his discolored skin marks him as an oddity and condemns him to life as a pariah. But salvation comes in an unexpected guise: Tarquin Secker, a young woman who can travel the stars with a wave of her hand.

But Quin has secrets of her own. She's spent eternity searching through space and time with a strange band of companions at her back. Defying her friends' counsel, Quin risks her apparent immortality to save Keir. She offers him sanctuary and a new life on her home world, Lyagnius.

When Keir mistakenly unleashes his dormant alien powers and earns instant exile from Quin's home world, will she risk everything to stand by him again?

A stay-at-home mum of three who spent twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metal and Minerals laboratory, Pippa Jay bases her stories on a lifetime addiction to science-fiction books and films. Somewhere along the line a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. She spends the odd free moments between torturing her characters trying to learn guitar, indulging in freestyle street dance and drinking high-caffeine coffee. Although happily settled in historical Colchester in the UK with her husband of 18 years, she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head. Keir is her first full-length novel, a science-fiction romance being released 7th May 2012 through Lyrical Press Inc.

Mission Success: Laurie's Journal

2012-01-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

OMG, I've Evolved!

For years I've wondered about people who were so in to their cats. Granted, cats are cool, but IMFHO (In My Former Humble Opinion) [heh heh Not what you thought that stood for?] dogs left cats in their stardust as family pets. But even then I wasn't living a totally cat-less life. We had an assortment of barn cats to keep down the rodent population in the outbuildings (and thus, the rattlesnakes) and my DH had two cat companions where he was deployed at a military base about 400 miles away (who regarded me as an occasional guest in their home).

But I wouldn't have a cat in my house (I vehemently declared). Or more to the point, I wouldn't have a litter box in my house.

Then my DH retired, came home from deployment and brought his two calico kitties with him. Hello! Can you say lifestyle change. I learned how to live with litter boxes. Fast.

I started to begrudgingly agree that, okay, yeah, it was kind of cool to have a couple of feline residents join the household. Took me awhile to adjust to the bright green eyes staring down from the top of the refrigerator when I got the milk out in the morning, or furry beasties sprawling out across my bed like they owned the joint...but I adapted.

Then our female barn cat--aptly named Momcat--had a litter of seven kittens. She's black, the tomcat is black, five of the kittens were black, and the last two? The most gorgeous little lilac-point kittens I'd ever seen. Where they came by their receptive and decidedly Siamese coloring was baffling, but one thing was clear--these little guys weren't going to survive the barn cat environs. Their light coloring meant the coyotes would zero in on them like they were ringing the dinner bell.

So once the babies hit eight weeks old, they were relocated to the house, too. I was now a non-cat person with four cats in my house. Okay, time to concede a point. By that point I was no longer a non-cat person.

We've since found a wonderful home for the male lilac-point, and are now a happy household of two humans, three cats and one desperately outnumbered mini-longhaired dachshund (who the kitten has adopted as her bestest friend in the whoooole world). Yeah. I'm a willow, I can bend.

Off the topic (but desperately grasping at a chance to somehow relate this to our general spacey theme), of our three house cats, two carry decidedly SFR inspired names. Serenity--no explanation necessary--and Saybin, the kitten, a namesake for a character in my novel, P2PC, is in keeping with the S theme in cat names. (The third is named Sugar.)

The point of my rambling? Sometimes change is good. Sometimes we get things in our heads that we're dead set against when a little change might do us (or our manuscripts) good. Sometimes we have to be willing to see things in a different light and make some revisions in our thinking that we never thought we'd make. Change can be a catalyst for growth. I'm not real big on change, but learning to adapt has been a good thing--both in life and in my writing career.

Update on My Progress

This spring I have two major goals--to get The Outer Planets and Draxis to market draft stage before July. The Outer Planets isn't that far away from being ready to shop, but Draxis needs a major overhaul. The good news is the story is complete and I have a good handle on what needs to be revised, streamlined and trimmed. It's a very exciting prospect that I might be going to RWA Nationals with three...count'em three...marketable manuscripts (*heavy breathing*). Or...dare I say it?...even a sale before I arrive. (*hyperventilates*)

Meanwhile, I'm awaiting some news on a submission of my first novel, P2PC, with great anticipation.

Ping Pong

Donna posted an excellent blog on the controversy surrounding SOPA--the Stop Online Piracy Act--which smashed headlong into a resistant front in recent weeks, which included a blackout of Wikipedia, Google dressing it's icon in black, and many who formerly supported the bill as a way to address the unfair theft of authors' royalties via online piracy sites pulling their support. Most had to concede that although the bill had great intentions, it went way, way too far. Locking down the free exchange of information on the internet would certainly not be a benefit for anyone.

Sharon is wrapped up in preparation for release of her Tor novel, Ghost Planet. Only 312 more days to her debut launch according to our countdown clock! Woohoo!

Happenings in the Lounge

Author Pippa Jay will be guest blogging this week about surviving the first round of edits, a stumbling block and reality check for many new authors. We're looking forward to hosting her!

We'll be reaching a major milestone for Spacefreighters Lounge in the next few weeks. Stop back for more news.

THE DARK SIDE OF FREE FLOW

2012-01-20T11:58:00.007-07:00

As readers and writers of science fiction, we are more familiar than most with the double-edged sword of technology. Every bright, shiny new toy casts a dark shadow, because humans invented it and, most of all, humans play with it.

So, we love our instant access to information through the Internet, the answers to every question at our fingertips through Wikipedia and Google, the chance to connect with friends and family through Facebook, to catch up on missed episodes of our favorite shows through Hulu or davidletterman.com. Ooooh, shiny!

But to all of this there is a dark side: websites like megaupload.com, for example, that steal content from legitimate copyright owners—authors like you and me, moviemakers, television producers, musicians—copy it and make it available to others for a fee without paying anything to the people whose sweat went into creating that content. U.S. prosecutors just shut down the site and arrested four of megaupload’s criminal masterminds in New Zealand, charging them with copyright infringement, racketeering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. According to news reports, several of megaupload’s “sister” sites were also involved in distribution of child pornography and terrorism videos.

The organization behind megaupload is said to have defrauded copyright holders of some $500 million in legitimate earnings. It is only one of hundreds of such sites stealing from content producers every day—every minute—on the Internet. Prosecutors have limited weapons with which to fight them. (Note that megaupload was charged with old-school racketeering, and only because they used U.S.-based servers for some of their work.)

Those of you lucky enough to have published books online have almost no recourse at all against piracy of your work. Anyone, anytime can take a downloaded file, upload it to a “file-sharing” site, and your work is available free to anyone else who wants it. Of course, copyright law prevents such a thing, BUT THERE ARE NO SANCTIONS FOR ANYONE WHO DOES IT. You can spend hours out of every day chasing these thieves down and “asking” them to remove your work from their sites. They may or may not do it, depending on how they feel. All those hours of blood, sweat and tears that it took you to produce your work, and you get nothing for it.

That’s why many of us in the publishing world greeted introduction of legislation in Congress to put a stop to online piracy with hope. The Stop Online Piracy Act in the House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act in the Senate were the first attempts to craft some sort of response to the rampant rip-offs taking place all over the Internet. Much of the media attention to the bills focused on the threat of piracy to the movie and music industries, and, indeed, the bills had the support of the Motion Picture Association and the smaller Creative America nonprofit association of industry workers.

But the legislation was just as important to those of us who hope to gain from the revolution represented by digital publishing. Without some sort of real handle on piracy, epublishing—either by an online house or self-publishing—will never be truly equivalent to traditional publishing. After all, there is little danger that some burglar will pull up to a warehouse and steal 20 percent of your inventory of paperbacks before they are sold. Or hit your publisher’s accountant in the head and take 30 percent of your earnings. But there is every possibility that an online thief will upload your book and take a huge chunk of your potential earnings from you. And the better your book is, the more potential there is for theft.

Our hope for some help from this legislation was short-lived, however. Howls of “censorship!” from some of the cyber-industries' biggest dogs put an instant stop to the efforts of Congress to do something about online piracy. Google and Wikipedia led the way with protests last week, but most online big names chimed in, claiming SOPA and PIPA would clap the Internet in the irons of censorship. Really? I had no idea Google and Wikipedia relied so much on pirated information. Maybe, naively, I thought most of what I was reading (and using) was uploaded with permission by the authors themselves. Maybe I’ll go back to using the freakin’ library.

Or maybe the people who run Google and Wikipedia could take a look at this problem and become part of the solution. If SOPA and PIPA go too far, as they say, then they should take a hand in crafting new legislation that gets rid of the bad guys, while preserving aspects of information sharing that are legitimately useful. (I still know how to use a card catalog, but—do they even still have card catalogs?)

Because we have to get rid of the bad guys. Congress has now canceled its vote on the bills, SOPA has been withdrawn, but Congressional leaders still seem open to examining the issue. With everyone working on it, perhaps we can come up with something sensible.

As the parent of any toddler knows, too much freedom is just as bad as none at all. And as I believe Thomas Hobbes once said, a life without a social contract is “nasty, brutish and short”. Living on the dark side is no way to live.

Information for this posting drawn from an article by Eric Engleman and Laura Litvan, Bloomberg.com

Donna’s Journal

What can I say? It’s January, it’s cold and dark, and progress is slow. This quote says it all:

Write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.
--Agatha Christie

Cheers, Donna

Laurie's Journal: Mission Success

2012-01-16T03:00:00.231-07:00

Over the holidays, I haven't had big chunks of time to write, but I did devote some head time to a short story idea. It seems a lot of my peers have been writing shorts, where my ideas always seem to morph into 100,000 plus word novels. This will be a real test to see if I can tell a story in one tenth the word count, about 10-15K.

Meanwhile, I have one glowing iron in the fire with the submission of a full manuscript of P2PC to a publisher. Hopefully I'll have more news on that front soon.

Yesterday, Spacefreighters Lounge sponsored author Jenna McCormick in the last stop on a blog tour to celebrate the release of her Kensington novel, NO LIMITS in both print and digital versions. Her post explained how her success is a good thing for all SFR writers and authors, A Win For Us All. And it's so true. And I'm thrilled to report that NO LIMITS has become a Canadian bestseller, rising all the way to #22 on the erotica list at last report. It's exciting and awesome news for the SFR community.

Pitch Tournament

This past week, I hosted a new sort of competition on the SFR Brigade main blog. It was a Pitch Tournament. What's that? Eighteen authors entered 24 blurbs in a fun competition to receive comments and readers feedback on the effectiveness of their SFR pitches or blurbs. Readers voted for their three favorites in each of three initial heats with seven finalists advanced into a championship round--two from two heats and three from a third that had a voting tie.

The pitches were open to any Science Fiction Romance work--whether published, manuscript or WIP, of any length. As host, I couldn't enter, but I did learn a lot from reading the entries and seeing how voters responded.

The event was a resounding success with over a hundred comments, almost 700 votes and over 2,150 visitors to the blog. The eventual top three winners--in order of votes received--was Tethered (WIP) by Pippa Jay, The Warlord's Comeuppance by Gail Koger, and Knight Medieval (Time Travel/SFR) by Kaye Manro. If you'd like to see the pitches, stop by SFR Brigade and click on the links on the upper right sidebar.

The winner, Pippa Jay, is scheduled to be a guest blogger here on Spacefreighters Lounge on Wednesday, so be sure to stop back and read what she's learned on her journey to publication. Her first novel, KEIR, will be available this spring from Lyrical Press.

Cover Scouting

Thinking forward to the day I'm actually published, I've started devoting more thought to cover art. I've been keeping my radar tuned for covers that really appeal to me, and stumbled on a few that I would have loved to snag for my my work. But alas. Best I can do is share them with you.

P2PC is the story of Sair, a man on the run from a galactic superpower that's out to recover him as owned property. He negotiates passage with a private female space courier and his choice ends up being a very wrong one--or a very right one. Specter is no ordinary cargo ship, and her captain is headed straight into the vortex of hell. His heart is telling him it's a hell he should chance to stay with her...but he carries secrets even her mindprobe can't uncover. Secrets that may tear them apart and leave Sair in her path of destruction.

If I had to chose a cover that already existed, I'd love to have Zoe Archer's COLLISION COURSE.

The physical attributes, dress and expressions of the characters--wary, guarded-- are close to perfect, along with the wonderful space ambiance of the ships in the foreground.

I love how at one glance it says SFR. There's no mistaking this novel as Urban Fantasy or any other genre. And there's a certain grittiness there in between the lines of the technology that fits the story to a "T." (By the way, I'm currently reading COLLISION COURSE and so far it's been one impressive read. Last I checked it was only $1.99 on Amazon.)

Draxis is the story of a contemporary female hurled through space and time and thrust into an alien civilization that is, in truth, not so alien. Draxis is a planet with technology that's both far more advanced than Earth, but in other ways far behind it. Laws and religion have molded a unique society with traditions and taboos that are at odds with their technological capability. And Katrina, the heroine, may be the key to their future, or lack of one, if a 12,000 year old prophecy is to be believed.

The cover of IN HER NAME: EMPIRE by Michael Hicks is enough to make me salivate. The color, the drama, the suggestion of mystery, tradition and history--it's all there. Simply dazzling. (In exchange for "borrowing" Mr. Hicks gorgeous cover, the least I can do is mention that the Kindle version of IN HER NAME is currently available for free on Amazon.)

I haven't yet found a cover that would easily represent The Outer Planets. There aren't that many Near Future SF or SFRs on the market. The cover I had commissioned (while on the verge of self-publishing) is attractive and captures the soul of the story, but I've been told it suggests an erotica story, which it clearly is not. Putting Mitch--the hero--in uniform might be a simple fix.

This story takes place on a planetary research vessel bound for Jupiter and Saturn circa 2040. The heroine, hiding behind a new identity and altered features, brings a dark secret on board only to face the one man from her past who could blow her cover--and take back her heart. But she's not the only crew member aboard who carries a dangerous secret.

Maybe you've seen a cover that might work for The Outer Planets? Let me know.

My Most Admired Writer

As a writer, I'm often asked who I most admire as a writer. I surprise people when I name Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of those who inspire me. The typical response is, "He wasn't a writer." Wasn't he?

True, his writing was defined by his speeches, letters and sermons rather than bestselling books, but does that disqualify him? A writer evokes powerful thoughts, feelings and emotions through their prose, by arranging words in such a way that anyone who hears or reads them has a mental or emotional response. The words transcend politics and religious beliefs--even if you happen to be at polar opposites with the individual--and speak directly to the heart. See if you agree that this work qualifies:

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that...The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." Strength To Love, 1963

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy...Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth...Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars." Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." I Have A Dream, 1963

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tired into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”

“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”

Hope you enjoy your MLK, Jr. holiday.

NO LIMITS with Guest Author Jenna McCormick

2012-01-15T03:00:00.003-07:00

Spacefreighters Lounge is very happy to host guest blogger Jenna McCormick today for the last stop on her NO LIMITS Blog Tour. NO LIMITS is an exciting new SFR/erotica novel published by Kensington and available in print and digital formats.

Congratulations on your exciting new release, Jenna, and welcome to Spacefreighters Lounge!

A Win for All of Us
Jenna McCormick

Thanks so much to Laurie Green for hosting me! I’m a big believer in teamwork. Though I’m an introvert by nature, I believe success depends not just on the hard work of one person but having a great network of people who can pump you up when you’re about to drop and cheer you on when you succeed.

When I first sold No Limits, to Kensington last February, my thoughts went something like, holy Terellian Tuesday, Batman! They bought my freaking nano (National Novel writing month) book! And then I had to get right down to work rewriting that book, because it was, after all a nano book. Characters dissolved into the veil, and other’s changed in all but name. And when I finally had thirty seconds to think about something other than gutting the book, I thought, this is wicked awesome for the sci fi romance community.

Having another SFR novel out there is bigger than having just my book published. It’s a well-executed strike in favor of SFR readers worldwide who are looking for a new book to read. It’s hope for that struggling SFR writer who sees the announcement that my futuristic erotic romance was bought by Kensington and pushes through the doubt to finish her own novel. And it’s even a bridge to maybe induct a few more readers who wouldn’t necessarily pick up an SFR, but maybe, just maybe, enjoys the heck out of it and then starts looking for more like it. Which leads to more sales of SFR books already out there, which leads to more contracts offered to SFR writers and on and on it goes.

Okay, so I’m an idealistic sap, but those were my thoughts. I’m excited— no ecstatic—when I hear about another SFR sale, no matter who the publisher because it truly is a win for us all. It’s why I’m going all out for this blog tour and pushing this book like an Intergalactic Pimp. So I can sell another and so I can read a bunch more. Spread the word, SFR is the wave of the future and we should celebrate every victory together!

No Limits
Jenna McCormick
Now Available for Kindle, Nook, and wherever books are sold.

All Genevieve Luzon wants is to be loved by one man, a seemingly impossible task in New-New York City at the start of the twenty second century. Sure, she can buy sex as easily as order a pizza on a Friday night, but finding a forever kind of love among her self-centered peers is no easy feat for the unemployed off-world vacation coordinator. When an old friend offers her the position of secret shopper to test out the male prostitutes, Gen can’t think of a good reason to refuse. Hell, if she can’t find Mr. Right, she might as well try on a sampler of Mr. Right Nows.

Yet the perks of her new position don’t compare to the strange attraction she has, not for one of the prostitutes, but a candle that seems to warm places of her she never knew existed. When a man appears out of the flame, Gen is sure she's found the one. Rhys is an empath, made a slave by the Illustra Corporation and he’s everything Gen could ever want. Except available. Because Rhys is on a mission. One that might claim his life. He must try to free his people, consequences be damned. Now, Gen must choose between turning her back on the only man she’s ever loved and the monumental task he has set for himself. Should she risk her life fighting a war hidden from polite society against those who wish to control us all?

Is love really worth fighting for?

_____________________________________

I’ll give away one ebook copy of no limits (Kindle, Nook) to a random commenter. And join me for the No Limits Blog Tour and a chance to win a KINDLE FIRE!

~~~ * ~~~

JOHN CARTER: A HERO IN PULP FICTION OR CGI

2012-01-13T12:39:00.006-07:00

This past week for the fare of a mere $0.99, I took a trip back in time. I came across a title in the Amazon Kindle store and pounced on it with delight, and soon I was back in the halcyon days of dime novels, when science fiction was still in its infancy, its heroes and heroines, its villains and landscapes and tropes still being shaped by its earliest authors.

The title was The Adventures of John Carter of Mars, a collection of five of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Barsoom” novels. The first of these, A Princess of Mars, appeared in novel form for the first time in 1917 (it had been serialized in magazine form starting in 1911) and serves as the basis for the upcoming Disney film JOHN CARTER, due out in March.

In John Carter we find the prototype for hundreds of action heroes to follow—from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers of the 1930’s serials, to Jim Kirk and Han Solo in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, to AVATAR’s Jake Sully—with a few interesting additions: Carter is immortal (a fact he never understands, or explains), and the battle-weary survivor of the American Civil War. He arrives on Mars through a form of astral projection occasioned by his first apparent “death”, and returns to Earth the same way. And though Burroughs’s matter-of-fact, all-action, all-the-time style allows for very little angst on the part of his hero, Carter’s aversion to war does play a part in the story.

Like Burroughs’s better-known hero, Tarzan, Carter is a lover, as well as a fighter, and not for nothing is the first book in the series entitled A Princess of Mars. In the course of his adventures, Carter falls in love with, and later marries (!), the princess of the title, Dejah Thoris of Helium. So we can place Burroughs squarely in the science fiction romance camp: the lovers meet within the first few chapters, the romance takes equal precedence with the SF and . . . well, I’m not sure about the ending yet.

Burroughs and his Barsoom series occupies a place in the history of SF between the steam-driven fantasy of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and the darker post-WWI, pre-WWII Golden Age of editors Hugo Gernsback and John Campbell. In that fantastic place, our nearest planetary neighbor harbors a world of bygone wonders, monstrous violence and the very human characteristics of greed, lust for power and dominance over the natural world (themes that Burroughs also explored in his Tarzan series). It is a place of marvelous, almost innocent, imagination.

John Carter of Mars has appeared many times in comic form, beginning almost as soon as the novels appeared. The Disney organization first approached Burroughs about bringing Carter to the screen in 1937 as an animated feature. If that project had gone forward, it would have been the earliest animated full-length feature ever. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES must have seemed like a better bet for family fare, and it got the nod instead.

Now, finally, we’ll get a chance to see the Green Men of Mars, the faithful Woola, the “incomparable” Dejah Thoris and all the decaying glory of Mars onscreen as part of JOHN CARTER. “Friday Night Lights” bad boy Taylor Kitsch plays the title role, with Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, Willem Dafoe as Thark leader Tars Tarkas and supporting players Mark Strong, Thomas Hayden Church and Samantha Morton. Using a combination of live action, motion capture and CGI, director Andrew Stanton (FINDING NEMO, WALL-E) promises a faithful recreation of the rousing SFR action-adventure he enjoyed so much as a boy. (Stanton and his co-writers on the project, Michael Chabon and Mark Andrews, reportedly all still had drawings they’d made as boys of John Carter and scenes from the books.)

The action scenes of the movie were filmed in the deserts of Utah around Moab, Lake Powell and the Delta salt flats near Hanksville. The actors playing the 12-foot-tall Tharks suffered 100+-degree heat in motion-capture suits to lend authenticity to the scenes, and the desert itself gave a stark realism to the Red Planet’s dying world. In a strange twist, the film crew came upon the apparently abandoned Mars Society Desert Research Station while filming. It appears the Society found the location a suitable stand-in for Mars for its purposes as well.

Disney has high hopes for JOHN CARTER. After all, there were eleven books in the original Barsoom series. Tarzan was a gold mine; can John Carter be any less a sturdy screen hero? Well, that depends. A lot. We’re not nearly as innocent as we used to be; our heroes and our villains tend to be a lot more complicated than Burroughs’s originals. There is still a place for epic battles between good and evil—LORD OF THE RINGS and AVATAR proved that—but the quality of the film must be absolutely first-rate, and there can be no sense of irony to it. (That doesn’t mean it must be without humor, but it must believe in itself.)

The other obstacle here is that too few audience members will have any knowledge of the originals, or any chance to truly enjoy them. Tolkien has always had a devoted following—and gained even more with the movies. His language is dense, but within the scope of modern adult readers. Since his themes are more adult, this is not a problem. Burroughs’s language is at once more archaic and less “weighty”, his themes more appropriate to his audience of young boys and magazine readers—just the kind of modern readers who would find his books impenetrable now. It’s really too bad; my ten-year-old grandson would love the stories, but he won’t have the skills to read them for many years to come. (At his age I was reading Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe and Alice in Wonderland, but don’t get me started on modern education.)

Still, I wish all involved the best of luck with JOHN CARTER. At the very least I can always stand to see more of Taylor Kitsch! In the meantime, I’m enjoying my time on Barsoom, courtesy of Mr. Burroughs, imagining myself as the Incomparable Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars!

Cheers, Donna

Laurie's Journal

2012-01-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm in the heart of The Great 2012 SFR Pitch Tournament at present (check it out!), so this will be a short post to update my Mission Success Journal.

It's a brave New Year--Happy 2012!--so let's explore a brave new future.

Today on the Anderson TV talk show, the guest was a dog owner who cloned her beloved pet. For $50,000! One of the guests commented that $50,000 would go a long way to helping shelter animals--the statistics are that one is euthanized every second. The clone owner responded that she totally supported helping shelter animals, but this was something personal that she needed to do.

I can totally understand both sides of the argument.

A beloved pet is something you want to hold on to forever, and the death of a friend is tragic and deeply heart-rending for many people. If this were the future and cloning were much more affordable--say $1000 to $1500--I would definitely have cloned Chaco, the beautiful Black Lab that shared our lives for some 16 years. Or Scarlet. Or Schona. Both mini-longhaired Dachshunds. And Silver would definitely be a candidate for cloning, though he's still with us. (Silver is a former Appaloosa show horse we've owned for 26 years.) In a related article, check out the story of the successful cloning of a champion barrel racer called For the Love of a Horse.

But yet there are so many unwanted animals who need good homes and caring people. We adopted Kiva--a lovely yellow Lab--after losing Chaco, and she was very close to being put to sleep before we were alerted to her situation. We also have Jazz, a lovable border collie we adopted from the pound some eleven years ago.

So yes, I could certainly argue a point for both sides of this issue.

These are the sorts of moral dilemmas we'll face as we enter the brave new world of cloning. And we're just talking about pets and livestock here. What happens if/when we ever start cloning people?

Cloning of humans is an area I explored in two of my SFRs. One is a novel you've probably heard mentioned a time or two, last years' Golden Heart finalist--The Outer Planets. In this story I delve into the family complications between an original and a clone who are at odds with each other over a betrayal that left them estranged and alienated. During the course of the story, the original begins to understand his clone's actions through his own experiences by falling into a similar romantic trap. It was a fascinating dynamic to explore especially when it came to getting inside my character's heads and hearts. It would be a bit like disowning yourself, wouldn't it?

The second story is a short WIP where the implications of cloning raises its mind-boggling head in the context of a romance and the confusion, moral dilemmas and heartbreak it raises.

What are your thoughts on cloning animals? How about cloning people? Have you given it any head time or introduced cloning into one of your works of fiction? Even if you're dead-set morally against it, would you still explore the implications in a story?

TIME TRAVEL NO CHALLENGE FOR KING

2012-01-06T12:17:00.005-07:00

Since H.G. Wells built his famous Time Machine, time travel has been a staple of science fiction and SFR. The heroes and heroines of countless novels, television shows and movies good and bad have used any number of devices, from tunnels and portals of all kinds, to slingshots around the sun, Guardians of Forever, discs placed in library players, and machines and conveyances of every description to propel themselves to another time and place.

The rules governing these trips through time have been as varied as the means of transportation. Every author or screenwriter has a different grasp on the slippery eel of time travel and a different way around the paradoxes that threaten to derail every attempt to manipulate the past. And as difficult as it is to think through the ramifications of movement through time, time travel just seems an irresistible draw to SF/SFR writers.

Now even Stephen King has entered the fray with his latest novel, sending his hero back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 11/22/63. Not surprisingly, King has come up with an intriguing set of parameters for his time travel: the portal (found by accident in the back room of a diner soon to be replaced by an L.L. Bean outlet) opens up on the same location at the same hour of the morning of September 9, 1958. If his hero, Jake Epping, takes the same actions every time through the portal, the same actions will follow—the same conversations, the same people crossing his path, etc. But if he changes his actions, other reactions follow, in a chain which has far-reaching consequences, not all of which can be predicted. Every time he leaves the past to return to 2011, the changes remain in place, but if he goes through the portal to 1958 again, things reset to zero. That is, it is as if he had never been there the first time.

If he makes money and puts it in a bank account the first time through, or buys a car or makes a friend, those things are all gone if he goes back to 2011 and returns again to 1958 the next day. (He can spend as much “time” as he wants in the past; when he returns to 2011, only two minutes will have passed.) If he saves a life in 1958 and goes back to 2011, that person will live only as long as he doesn’t return to 1958. Once he returns to the past, everything is reset; he will have to save that life all over again.

And there’s another complication—the past itself seems to be setting up roadblocks, making it difficult for Jake to do what he has set about to do. Minor obstacles—cars breaking down, power outages—interfere with the test cases he’s set up to prove he can actually change the past. Then major problems begin appearing as he gets more serious about his task—run-ins with the bookie he’s been using to make money to finance his stay, the draw of community and connection at the school where he works, love with the librarian at that school, a horrific suicide attack by the librarian’s ex-husband.

Many times Jake is tempted to give up on his quest to murder Lee Harvey Oswald and alter the course of history, a quest he’s undertaking not so much for himself, but out of a sense of obligation to the dying man who began it all, the owner of the diner. The more he learns about Oswald, the more he wonders whether he has it in him to kill this pitiable creature. And yet he realizes how much is at stake.

As usual, King brings his gripping story-telling skills and marvelous characterization to this tale. He has us from the first sentence and doesn’t let go, with that wonderful, deceptively rambling voice of his giving Jake life and letting us see 1958 from his eyes. King chose wisely in making Jake around 35. Until he lives it, Kennedy and Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis (which happens while Jake is stalking Oswald), is all just a history lesson, and a vague one at that. He explains to someone that he’s just an English teacher; he doesn’t understand the politics. He, like the rest of us, learns the hard way when he walks into a bar on a night in October and sees that “everyone was watching the man I had come to save. He was pale and grave. There were dark circles under his eyes.”

That’s just the way I remember it, too, Steve. I was only nine, but even I didn’t miss the implications of that speech.

I can’t tell you how the book ends. Haven’t gotten that far. (And wouldn’t anyway—everyone hates a spoiler.) I just know that the thing that’s usually enough to give even James T. Kirk a headache is no more than another notch in the handle of the best gunslinger in the writing biz. Time travel? Yeah, that one’s easy for Stephen King. Just like all the rest.

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Actions I've taken as a writer. Where am I? What am I doing?

January 15 is the deadline for the Washington Romance Writers 2012 Marlene Awards contest. This year’s Paranormal category finals judge will be Heather Osborn of Samhain Publishing. I’ll be entering both my manuscripts, Unchained Memory and Trouble in Mind in this one, in hopes of snagging a final and the attention of this editor at the well-respected e-publishing firm. I’ve never had much luck with the Marlene before, but I’ll put it down to the contest coming early in the season. Now I’ll be submitting two well-traveled and polished manuscripts, so maybe I’ll have a better chance. If you’re interested in giving me some competition (spitsnarl!) the link is www.wrwdc.com .

Cheers, Donna

To Space With the TechNerd Brigade!

2011-12-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

How about a little hope for the New Year?

The effort to keep the U.S. competitive in space may be showing new life thanks to a friendly race between multi-millionaire tech geeks. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is the latest to join the private space technology scramble, bankrolling the design and construction of the widest airplane ever built to carry a new commercial spaceship high into the atmosphere. From there the ship would blast off into orbit using a booster rocket, a method that saves fuel (and money) over conventional rocket launches. The spaceship could hold as many as six people.

Allen is working with aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan on the project. Space Exploration Technologies, a company owned by Paypal’s Elon Musk, will provide the space capsule and booster rocket for the venture, called Stratolaunch. Together the airplane-and-booster system represent “a radical change” in how people can get to space and it will “keep America in the forefront of space exploration,” Allen said.

Allen and Musk are not the only cyberspace tycoons with an interest in space exploration. One of Allen’s chief competitors is Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc., founder of the private space company Blue Origin. Blue Origin received $3.7 million in NASA funds to develop a rocket to carry astronauts. However, its initial flight test ended in failure last August.

What is fascinating is that Allen freely admits he is following a childhood dream:
“When I was growing up, America’s space program was the symbol of aspiration . . . For me, the fascination with space never ended. I never stopped dreaming what might be possible.”

For those attracted to difficult technical challenges, space is the ultimate challenge, he said. “It’s also the ultimate adventure. We all grew up devouring science fiction and watching Mercury and Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle. And now we are able to be involved in moving things to the next level.”

For a writer, what is truly wonderful about that statement is that Allen so easily equates the dream with the reality, science fiction with science fact. If you can dream it, you can make it happen. If you have the will.

Of course, ceding the domain of space to private enterprise has its drawbacks, and science fiction has envisioned that future, too. The Space Merchants, by Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, the ALIEN movies and other examples too numerous to mention have warned us of the dangers of letting profit drive the exploration of space. But these men seem at least as motivated by a sense of wonder as by the lure of any possible riches to be made out there. They are willing to go where our government is so far unwilling or unable to go.

So, good luck, fellas. You’ve found a much better way to spend your money than collecting cars and villas. May you live long and prosper and get us where we all want so much to go.

[Information for this post based on an article by Donna Blankenship and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press; photo courtesy Stratolaunch Systems.]

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Actions we've taken as writers. Where are we? What are we doing?
Those of you who are involved in trying to sell the written word in any way are well aware of the state of disarray in which the publishing industry currently finds itself. Agent Elaine English, speaking to the December meeting of the Virginia Romance Writers, suggested that this may have been the most disruptive year in publishing since Gutenberg.

English, who owns and operates her own agency in Washington, D.C., explained that with the rise of digital publishing, the legitimizing of self-publishing, the decline in traditional print book sales and the scramble for profits, no one in the industry is quite sure what to do. No one wants to make the wrong move, but at the same time, no one wants to be left behind. The result is a kind of paralysis in some quarters and furious change in others.

A few things do seem to be clear, according to English: the so-called “legacy” publishers are increasingly conservative, leaving new writers or slow sellers out in the cold. On the other hand, new opportunities with digital publishers or self-publishing are rising for those writers as e-publication in all its permutations becomes more respectable. Self-pubbing is no longer the dirty word it once was. However, anyone going that route had better be very savvy of the production, promotion and sales work required to make a go of it.

Those seeking publication with established digital presses should be aware that the contractual process is more complicated than it used to be, with both more rights and longer terms being sought than just a few years ago. English, who is also an attorney familiar with publishing law, suggested hiring an experienced attorney to review your contracts, even if you don’t have an agent working for you full time.

English spoke to the largest gathering of writers ever for a VRW Christmas luncheon. At one point she commented that she admired us for our perseverance in the face of all these obstacles, wondering, “Why do you keep doing this?” Most of us could only shake our heads. As Harlan Ellison once put it, we write because we can’t not write. It’s a curse.

Or a blessing.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa

And Happy New Year—I’ll be back in 2012!

Donna

Holiday Wishes

2011-12-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

From the whole crew at Spacefreighters Lounge

Laurie's Journal: Celebrating Traditions

2011-12-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

It's the week before Christmas--a time of traditions and celebrations.
One of the annual traditions in the SFR galaxy is the annual SFR Holiday Blitz, a book giveaway which was just held last week across several different blogs. Spacefreighters Lounge was proud to host two SFR novels, QUEENIE'S BRIGADE by Heather Massey and STARLANDER'S MYTH by Melisse Aires. We were also happy to add a bonus offering of a $10 Amazon e-Gift Card based on responses. As of this writing, we haven't heard from the winners, so be sure to check the post below.

It could be you!

Other traditions include Christmas parties, family get-togethers, gift shopping and, of course, holiday treats. Here in New Mexico we have many traditional foods that are unique to our state or the Southwest. There are bicochitos (Bees co cheat toes) holiday cookies, fresh made tamales (toe mall lays), and posole (poe so lay) a spicy corn stew usually made with pork.

Another tradition for the holidays--or really any time of year--are Frito pies. Yes, that's Frito as in the crispy corn ship made by the Frito Lay Company. No one is sure of the true origin of Frito pies, but local lore says it was invented in the 1960s by Teresa Hernández, who worked at the F. W. Woolworth's lunch counter on the plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At that time, Frito pies were actually made inside the Frito bags, which were sliced lengthwise and the ingredients poured in. Modern Frito pies are usually made in a bowl.

I asked one of my coworkers, Annette, for her authentic Frito pie recipe, and she was happy to write it down for me.

ANNETTE'S SANTA FE FRITO PIE RECIPE

To make red chili and beef mixture, you'll need:
1/2 to 1 pound ground beef (or turkey)
chopped onions (optional)
garlic powder
Either frozen red chili or chili powder
2 dashes soy sauce (optional)
Salt and pepper (to taste)

Brown the ground beef with onions, garlic, salt and pepper. Once ground beef is browned, add two dashes of soy sauce (if desired), and 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour and cook for about two minutes. Blend chili (or chili powder and water) in blender. Combine red chili mixture with ground beef mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, until it reaches desired thickness.

To make Frito Pies
Red chili and ground beef mixture (above)
Fritos
Pinto Beans
Lettuce (chopped)
Tomatoes (chopped)
Onions (chopped)
American cheese (grated)

Spoon canned or fresh cooked pinto beans in small to medium size bowls, fill each with Fritos and pour red chili ground beef mixture (from above) over the Frito chips. Top with cheese, chopped lettuce, onions and tomatoes. Dig in and enjoy!

We wish you a very happy holiday, good times with family and friends, and the celebration of your own special traditions.

~~~*~~~ Happy Holidays From Spacefreighters Lounge ~~~*~~~

SFR Holiday Blitz WINNERS

2011-12-17T22:13:00.001-07:00

ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS!

The following winners of the 2011 SFR Holiday Blitz prizes have been selected using the Random.org randomizer:

JC Jones wins STARLANDER'S MYTH

Bookwyrm 369 wins QUEENIE'S BRIGADE

Jessica Subject wins $10 AMAZON GIFT E-CARD Blitz Bonus

Please email me at Lgreen2162 [at] aol [dot] com with "Blitz Winner" in the subject line so I can pass your preferred format (PDF, ePub, or Mobi) on to the author.

Thanks to everyone who participated this year and made the 2011 SFR Holiday Blitz a success!

SFR Holiday Blitz ~~ BONUS ~~

2011-12-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

We've added a Blitz BONUS!!!

Thanks to your wonderful response to the 2011 SFR Holiday Blitz, Spacefreighters Lounge is adding a bonus offering!

AMAZON GIFT E-CERTIFICATE

Just comment on the original 2011 SFR HOLIDAY BLITZ post--or this one--to be entered for a chance to win an Amazon Gift E-Card of $10.

Special note: If you include "Blitz Bonus" in your comment, you'll be given an extra chance to win the bonus. But hurry! The 2011 SFR Holiday Blitz ends tonight at midnight EST.

~~*~~ Good Luck and Happy Holidays! ~~*~~

The BLITZ is On!

2011-12-11T12:59:00.004-07:00

Yes, it's time again for the annual SFR HOLIDAY BLITZ whence multiple authors and blogs join together to celebrate SFR awesomeness and give away fabulous SFR novels!

Entering is FREE and EASY! Just leave a comment below and you're entered to win.

The contest ends at midnight EST on Friday, December 16th. We'll use Randomizer to choose one winner per novel and announce the winners as soon as they are contacted or no later than Monday, December 19th. You'll have a choice of PDF, Mobi or ePub versions and the contest is open to participants world-wide. The authors will send the digital books to you directly so be sure to include either an email address or contact link so we can reach you before December 19th.

Spacefreighters Lounge is very proud and pleased to offer two fabulous SFR novels this year. Both novels have generated quite a buzz on subspace frequencies the past few months!

QUEENIE'S BRIGADE
by Heather Massey

Captain Michael Drake desperately needs an army to save Earth after a crushing defeat by alien invaders. When his damaged starship docks at a remote prison colony, he discovers Earth's last best hope--an army to replace the one he lost.

But, Queenie, the feral goddess ruling the prison, has other plans for the rugged star ship captain. After imprisoning Drake and seizing his ship, she prepares to lead her blood-thirsty band to freedom before the invaders track them down.

Despite her intentions, Queenie secretly falls for the sexy, hotshot captain. Drake makes it plain he wants to win back Earth with her by his side. But is following her heart worth betraying her people?

~~~ * ~~~

STARLANDER'S MYTH
by Melisse Aires

A steampunk spacewestern romance in the Starlander Frontier series.

Asteroid miner Jack Starlander stumbles upon the illegal sale of a woman and child with unusual abilities. In the ensuing shoot out, two important men die.

Jack, Sophie and her daughter, along with Jack's close neighbors, are forced to flee to safety. Their journey takes them into deadly danger. Sophie is a creature from myth and she recognizes the mythic thread in Starlander's family legend.

Perhaps his family legend can save them.

~~~ * ~~~

Just enter your comment below to enter for one of these wonderful SFR novels, then click one of the links below for another participating blog to see other SFR HOLIDAY BLITZ offerings.

And there's more! Based on responses, we may offer added bonuses, so you could have even more chances to win! Stop back often at Spacefreighters Lounge or "follow" this blog for more announcements during SFR Holiday Blitz Days.

Good luck and Happy Holiday Wishes from Spacefreighters Lounge!

~~~ * ~~~

Participating SFR HOLIDAY BLITZ sites:

ALIEN ROMANCES http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/

CONTACT--INFINITE FUTURES http://contactinfinitefutures.wordpress.com/

LOVE ROMANCE PASSION http://www.loveromancepassion.com/

SFR BRIGADE http://sfrcontests.blogspot.com/

SMART GIRLS LOVE SCIFI PARANORMAL ROMANCE http://smartgirlsscifi.wordpress.com/

THE GALAXY EXPRESS http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/

WB32READS http://vvb32reads.blogspot.com/

BEAM ME UP, SANTA: WHY NOT AN SF CHRISTMAS STORY?

2011-12-09T11:42:00.008-07:00

Yes, boys and girls, it’s that time of year again. Time to deck the passageways, string up a few LED lights around the bridge and call it Hanukkahchristmaskwanzaa (or Ursplz if you hail from Terzon III, where the winter solstice comes once every three Earth years). Any excuse to celebrate, I always say.

Actually, I’m a huge fan of the holiday season. I go all out, bingeing on spirit (the nonalcoholic kind, usually) from Thanksgiving until Epiphany, when I’ll reluctantly take down the decorations and store them away for another year. Most years of my childhood, my single mom strove to make things bright, but we did have a few memorably tough holidays. I figure a person can have two responses to bad holiday memories. You can let them sour you forever on Christmas, or you can do what I’ve chosen to do. I’ve decided I’m in control now, so it’s a wonderful life at my house every year. So there.

I do think we are missing something important in the festivities, however. We need a good science fiction Christmas movie. That’s right, think about it. In all the vast library of cinematic SF, there is only one example of a plotline set around Christmas—1964’s SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS. This is a movie widely acknowledged to be among the worst ever made. What a disgrace! Take two of my favorite things, put them together and what do you get? Garbage, that’s what!

Surely we can do better. I did search the Internet Movie Database (I lurrve me some Imdb!!) in hopes of finding out if someone had. My search yielded one other title: EDWARD SCISSORHANDS!! Okay, first of all, does this admittedly excellent Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp really qualify as SF? I suppose it does have some key scenes set at Christmas, but it’s not quite what I had in mind.

I was thinking more along the lines of this alien who crash-lands somewhere in the Arctic Circle. He has skills—telekinesis and control of time and some forms of energy. He adapts to his new environment, gets a sleigh and a herd of reindeer and, uh, improves them. Then he begins to see what a crazy, needy world he’s landed on. How can he help? He taps into a local legend and voila!

I’m thinking maybe J.J. Abrams and Stephen Spielberg might want to collaborate on this one again like they did on SUPER 8. I’m sure we could throw a kid in there somewhere. Maybe an Inuit girl discovers “Santa” testing out the new souped-up sleigh on the ice, and so on. She should have a dog. And a single mom—oooh, there’s the romance connection! Dang, this can’t lose!

See? All you need is a little Hanukkahchristmaskwanzaaursplz spirit and inspiration flows like eggnog! Here’s hoping you find lots of all three under your Christmas tree this season.

Donna’s Journal

Ping Pong

I think your costume is terrific, Laurie (and be brave—go for the peek-a-boo top under the vest!). I’ve seen it all at TREK cons, believe me, and this seems quite classy. I’m not a dress-up type at all, though it’s the first question I’m asked when people learn I used to go to TREK cons. I’d much rather see what others come up with and, like Kaye says, let people remember me for my book rather than my “look”. (Soon enough I’ll be air-brushing my photos, too—they won’t even recognize the “real” me at book signings!)

Cheers, Donna

Dressing for Success...Sci-Fi Romance Style

2011-12-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

LAURIE'S JOURNAL

Let me share something fun I've been up to--putting together a book signing costume. No, I'm sorry to report I have no news on the publishing front yet, but that doesn't stop me from thinking positive and looking to the future.

At last years' RWA book signing event, a peer commented that she wished the SFR/CDSF authors would dress the part, so she could have a clue who is kicking out the spacegoing romance fare among all those hundreds of authors.

Hmmmmm, I thought. Now that would be fun! Come in character...literally. What a great way for the authors in our subgenre to stand out.

Since then, I've devoted a bit of time (a very little bit in between writing, polishing, revising, editing, querying, platform-building and entering contests) to scour the web for parts to a subgenre specific (and somewhat novel specific) costume.

But where in the galaxy do you look for space age garb, ray blasters and like paraphernalia?

eBay (and a little imagination) is my friend!

I found searches using keywords "steampunk" and "futuristic" and occasionally "space pirate" netted the best results in finding the sorts of things I was looking for. What started out as a costume search and acquire mission for my female P2PC pilot--Drea--soon led to stumbling on some apropos items for a Katrina (3rd novel) costume, too. And that naturally expanded into a few costume pieces for Lissa--video reporter and stalked-keeper-of-dangerous-secret extraordinaire from The Outer Planets.

I thought it might be fun to share some of my adventures in costume hunting and the resulting finds with you.

Drea (heroine of P2PC)

Drea is an independent P2PC (Planet to Planet Courier) so a futuristic Fed Ex driver to the stars. (Or so she claims. *devious laugh* ) Pseudo military attire seemed a good bet as a starting point. I still had a pair of black tactical uniform pants from my reserve LEO days (and...OMG!...they still fit! *happy dance*) so I had the beginnings of my P2PC costume gathering dust--and just waiting to be noticed--in my closet. Hello there!

For the top, I found this great steampunk/star pirate vest on one of the steampunk seller sites. It has silver buttons-and-chains closure and some attractive pleating on the front. Way cool! Since it's snug and sleeveless, I paired it with a black long-sleeved t-shirt top. Nice, but the uniform needs something to break up all that black!

I had a couple of thoughts there. Shiny stuff and lots of colorful patches.

Shiny Stuff

I found this sleek cut-out, studded top at Boston Proper with the intent of wearing it to last years' FF&P gathering. That didn't go as planned, so it's now an alternate P2PC top that I think will look great under the vest. (I confess, I chickened out wearing this peekaboo top by itself to the FF&P Gathering. What can I say? Fail! hehe. I think wearing the vest over it might give me the necessary courage to venture out in public en costoom. :D

Patches

I had to get a little inventive here, since patches for entities and planets of registry in the year 3500 don't really exist yet. Here's a passage from the novel that gave me some inspiration:

Sair’s gaze settled on the registration numbers and bright red diamond insignia. Licensed out of the Azures, she carried the registry of preference for half the pirates in the galaxy. He blew out his breath. No kid of Mennelsohn’s would resort to piracy, would he? Zaviar Mennelsohn must have left a fortune to his heirs.

A search for a "red diamond patch" netted this US Army Class A Fifth Infantry Division patch. Perfectamundo!

Then I found this military patch to signify Drea's home planet of LaGuardia, a planet with an insignia of a flame inside a pyramid. Hmm, that sounds like a tough order, yes? I didn't think I'd find anything close.

Oh ye of little faith! Seek and ye shall find. This US Army Class A patch for the 7th Army turned out to be a great representation. Nifty, yes?

Now I needed something to represent Drea's line of work--a P2PC. Maybe something with stars or planets or suggesting space flight. I ended up finding two patches that seemed to fill the bill, and since I discovered a second forgotten long-sleeved black t-shirt in my Summer Clothes box in the garage, I ordered a pair of each.

This is a color error patch for the 1st Space Brigade. Yes, really--such a unit actually exists and they do have a mission in space. I love the colors in this patch and was also happy that the color error makes it unique.

Here's a YouTube introduction of the 1st Space Brigade and an article if you want to know more about what they do:

You Tube Introduction to 1st Space Brigade

Developing Doctrine for the First Space Brigade

I also coveted this US Air Force Far East Gold Wings patch. The wings, sun and stars seem like a good fit for a space courier, que no?

Toss in a few additional patches for color and effect:

I thought these Weyland-Yatani wing patches from Aliens 3 would make a good addition. Maybe as cuffs? What do you think?

I heart these blue dragon patches. Not sure how I'll use them yet, but possibly the pair running up the sleeves? or a single one up the middle of the back?...or just framed on my wall. Do dragons = space? They do in my universe. :) Thy could also represent an Anne McCaffrey tribute of sorts. (RIP *sniff*) I also collect dragons and these are gorgeous. Couldn't pass them up.

Now...

This P2PC captain can't very well go around bare foot, can she? Deck boots were in order. Black with a not-too-tall heel (can't see a star captain tippy-toeing around deck while she's outflying and outsmarting the bad guys attempting to board her ship and seize her...contraband). I wanted the kind of boots that say "A woman's place is on the Flight Deck" more than those pointy heel little numbers befitting a Seven of Nine catsuit. I was thinking something along the lines of a Harley Davidson motorcycle boot? Maybe with a bit of silver bling and buckles to match the vest. Eureka! Another eBay find and oh yes, yes, yes! There they iz. (Can I haz pleez?)

I even found a touch of added bling to go with them. Boot chains with pyramid studs that match the peekabo top above.

Love how the silvery sparklies set off all that black, and you never know when they might come in handy as a weapon of opportunity for the savvy space express pilot, right?

Now I just needed a few finishing touches.

My P2PC pilot definitely totes some righteous personal armament--for self-preservation in the wild and predator-rich space lanes, ya understand--so back to one of the steampunk shops to pick up a grommeted belt with double thigh holster (I decided to only use one thigh holster for the outfit)

(Shadowy steampunk guy is kind of fun to look at, too.)

...and a sweet customized dual-action taza ray blaster to park in the holster.

And what pseudo-military P2PC captain's outfit would be complete without a set of silver Star Dog Tags to complete the ensemble. Shiny!

So there's my P2PC Circa 3500 costume. Space pirates and galactic superpowers, beware!

I'd love to hear what you think? Does it work? Anything missing? Have you ever put together a book-signing or Con-attending SFR costume? What did you include? Would you like to see SFR authors dress the part or do you think authors should dress traditionally and let their books speak for themselves?

A FORGOTTEN SF PIONEER REMEMBERED

2011-12-02T09:52:00.010-07:00

A century before James Cameron took us on a 3D flight far above the jungles of a threatened planet in AVATAR, long before George Lucas dropped us in a starfighter and led us on an attack against the Death Star, before Gene Roddenberry put us on the bridge of the Enterprise in deep space and countless other filmmakers put us aboard starships and space rockets and fantastic vehicles of all descriptions headed for who knows where, before even Fritz Lang envisioned his great silent METROPOLIS, a little-known French magician single-handedly created science fiction filmmaking.

His name was Georges Méliès.

Méliès made well over 500 short films between 1895 and 1912 (some sources put the figure closer to 600+), the best known of which is a fanciful little gem titled A TRIP TO THE MOON (LE VOYAGE DAN LE LUNE) from 1902. Based loosely on elements of both Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and H.G. Well’s First Men on the Moon, this first-ever cinematic leap of imagination is more fantasy than true SF. Still, it does feature a rocket (fired by cannon, just as Verne suggested), vengeful Selenites, courtesy of Wells, and a view of the Earth from the moon that some 67 years later would seem astonishingly prophetic.

The filmmaker also took a trip to the sun in THE IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE (1904), appropriated Verne’s title, if not his story, for a version of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1907) and broke into the horror genre with THE MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN (1906). Along the way he pioneered the special effects that would become standard for all filmmakers and essential for those making SF and horror films—stop action, split-screen, time-lapse, multiple exposure, and dissolves. He even hand painted each frame of his films to achieve the miracle of color. And all of these wonders were accomplished in one of the world’s first actual film studios, a building made entirely of glass like a greenhouse to maximize the light.

Despite his many contributions to the development of film, and particularly his place in the history of science fiction film, Georges Méliès is hardly a household name, even among SF fans. It took not only a movie geek, but a film restoration geek like Martin Scorsese to resurrect Méliès’s reputation with his latest film, the heart-warming family movie HUGO.

Even so, the connection with the early filmmaker takes a while to develop. The story begins with the film’s child hero, Hugo, who lives hand-to-mouth in Paris’ Montparnasse train station, or rather, in the clock tower of the station, where he keeps the clocks wound and in repair. His father, you see, was a watchmaker, and Hugo has inherited Dad’s skills, along with a rusted old automaton, the project Dad was working on when he died, and a notebook, the key to the automaton’s repair. Hugo steals parts for the repair from a toy vender in the station, one Georges Méliès, a bitter old man, who eventually catches him and takes the notebook in compensation. Hugo is devastated, until he finds an ally in the old man’s granddaughter, who helps him solve the related mysteries of the automaton and Méliès himself.

HUGO is touted as a “children’s” film, but only the most thoughtful of children will fully appreciate it. Yes, Hugo is the hero and much of the film follows the boy as he tries to avoid the nasty station policeman and his Doberman, or watches the goings-on among the station shopkeepers. Still, the best parts of the film are the flashbacks to Méliès and his crew making film magic on the set of A TRIP TO THE MOON or setting up a shot through an aquarium for 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. What child will really understand the loss when Méliès is forced to sell his celluloid films to be melted down into shoe heels during WWI? Only film buffs like Scorsese (and me) will mourn that moment.

What is delightful is that the film reflects the rescue that Méliès (and some of his work) found in real life. The approach of the First World War destroyed the success that the filmmaker had enjoyed, and the outbreak of war finished him. He transformed his studio into a theater, then finally closed it. He really did sell toys in the Montparnasse station in Paris for a time. Eventually, however, he received the recognition he deserved, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1931. Shortly thereafter his colleagues in the French film industry arranged a place for him in their retirement community at La Maison du Retrait du Cinema in Orly. He died in 1938, fortunately no longer forgotten.

It is certain that the great majority of people who see HUGO will have no idea who Georges Méliès was. No doubt they will assume the character played by the actor Ben Kingsley in the movie is fictional. But we’re science fiction writers. We should know better. We owe this man a debt, for helping us see, at least a little, and maybe a bit fantastically, the shape of things to come.

Donna’s Journal

Today is the deadline for submitting final manuscripts for the 2012 RWA Golden Heart contest, so hopefully you have all gotten your little darlings down to Houston in good time. I submitted two entries this year and RWA has confirmed receipt so I’m all nice and relaxed today—no chewing of fingernails wondering if things made it in time. How about that—planning really does work! Good luck to all that entered and may the best eight win!

In the meantime, I’m continuing to slog through the dreaded middle passages of Fools Rush In. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Ugh! I even cleaned my office in hopes of making it a more pleasant place to work. No help. *sigh* No doubt when I finish this thing everyone will love it. They’ll want ten more just like it! Aaaggghhh!!!

Cheers, Donna

When Dragons Cry: RIP Anne McCaffrey

2011-11-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

Anne McCaffrey was a huge inspiration to so many writers and authors, this one included. Her Dragonriders of Pern series set my imagination free to create my own stories with characters who lived and loved in amazing places and times.

Galleycat reported on the author's passing earlier today and there's a tribute to the author posted on io9. Anne McCaffrey was 85 years old.

What did Anne McCaffrey mean to you?

Beyond Labels: Who R U?

2011-11-11T12:15:00.003-07:00

Think of the phoenix, rising from the ashes in triumph. Or the chameleon, changing colors to adapt to its environment, while its shape remains the same. Or, if you prefer as many times I do, imagine the penmonkey*, shrieking insults and hurling, um, coconuts from the leafy canopy down upon the prowling leopards of doubt and criticism.

Or, if none of these images work for you, simply remember the advice of the immortal Bruce Lee: “Be like water, my friend.” Fluid, able to move around obstacles, yet a force powerful enough to wear down mountains. Water can be liquid, solid or gaseous, and yet it is always H20. Which leads me, at last, to my point.

If you have been following this blog and its related links for the past couple of weeks, you are familiar with the ongoing question of identity and nomenclature our SFR community has been batting back and forth like players in a game of intellectual badminton. As a community of writers (and readers, too, perhaps), it does matter how we identify ourselves to the publishing “establishment”. It is true, whether we like it or not, that agents, editors and market professionals want to know where we “fit” when we query them or pitch them. So it helps to have a tag that makes sense, just like the tags on Amazon help sell the books once they get out there.

For what it’s worth, my vote is still with science fiction romance, or SFR, for that tag. We’ve spent a lot of time and energy building momentum behind that label, and I still think it works for the broad community of writers that includes everything from alien erotica to hard SF/military space adventure with romantic elements.

But the label we attach to the finished work is far less important than the elements of the story we put together to create it—the characters, the plot, the setting, the pacing, the goal/motivation/conflict, and most of all, the voice we as authors bring to it. All of that work—from the first glimmer of an idea to the final polished draft—is best done without worrying about whether the manuscript will sell better to an SF audience or a romance audience. The writing should be about the writing—following the story, listening to your Muse, allowing yourself to be truly creative.

Obviously there are rules, and even the most creative among us needs to know them. You can’t get away with breaking them until you know them. A Diane Gabaldon, who wins by breaking all the rules, comes along maybe once in a generation, and no one can figure out how she does it. But if you know and practice your craft until you are confident you’ve found your own true, genuine voice, then that voice will be yours whether the story happens to be about a space captain, a werewolf alpha or a cop looking for a second chance.

This point was brought home to me twice this week. In an article in TV GUIDE, I came across an article about the spotty success of television rehashes such as “Charlie’s Angels” (which bombed) vs. “Hawaii Five-O” (which is a huge hit). If you ask me, that’s a no-duh, given that Alex O’Laughlin anchors H50, but the television producers asked to comment said we’ll see more remakes, even if they are somewhat risky, simply because “the brand is more important than the content”. Yeah. I’ll pause while you consider all the implications of that statement.

Then I was reading Angela Knight’s latest Mageverse novel Master of Shadows (a paranormal romance) and saw an ad for her last SFR title Guardian in the back of the book. Like many successful paranormal writers, Angela also writes SFR (Guardian, from 2009, is her fourth), and they sell mostly because her fans will buy anything she writes. (Sherrilyn Kenyon and Gena Showalter are also in this category.) We could say Angela has a “brand”. I prefer to say her fans know her voice—that combination of breakneck pace, hot sex, great action and hissable villains—and hear it no matter whether the story concerns vampires, witches and Dire wolves created by Merlin or heroes from the future protecting the timeline from super-powerful criminals.

So what would I like my “fans” to expect from my books, no matter what they are about? Great characters, a vivid sense of place, hot sex, suspense, the idea that good triumphs over evil. So far, the stories that occur to me have all fit the science fiction romance label. (Though I’ve seen fit to add “suspense” to my own marketing effort, making it “SF suspense romance”.) But you never know. I may come up with a werewolf romance set in Regency England. (Please, God!) I would just hope they'd all have that Donna Frelick voice to them, something identifiable that my fans are looking for.

True, I don't have fans yet. I haven't convinced an agent or an editor that my voice is special. But is it the label that's holding me back? I don't think so. One day the story and the voice and the right stars in the universe will align. Either that or, well, I'll just start tossing those coconuts.

[*Wondering what a penmonkey is? Check out this terrific blog, hosted by author Chuck Wendig, http://terribleminds.com. ]

Remembering Our Veterans

Thank you to my father (now deceased), my father-in-law, my two brothers, my grandson’s father and all the other men and women who served our country on this day we devote to our combat veterans. May you get the genuine recognition you deserve from your country in return.

P.S.
I'll be taking a little break for a close encounter with medical technology and the Thanksgiving holiday, but I'll be back in two weeks. See ya then!

Cheers, Donna

Is that from Earth?

2011-11-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

I cannot seem to get my "Mission Success" stuff all in the same post. Better broken up than not at all, I decided...

I'm currently researching and writing my second book for Tor while awaiting line edits on Ghost Planet. I don't want to say too much about the new one yet, but just as a teaser here is something I came across in my research. This was the only praying mantis video that did not make me squeal or squirm (though possibly that had something to do with the spa music in the background). The other videos featured mantises attacking human photographers, eating other bugs alive, and munching on raw steak.

But isn't he lovely? For the first 30 seconds or so I was convinced he wasn't real.

On an unrelated note, I'm overdue for an update on The Great Google+ Experiment. I'll try for that next week. Tschuss!

In which we continue to expound about character-driven sci-fi...

2011-11-09T10:37:00.001-07:00

Okay, this is officially a trending topic. In addition to the handful of discussions we have going on right here at Spacefreighters, there have been similar discussions and posts going on over at SF Signal and The Galaxy Express.

Last week we had the great quote from Mark Tiedemann (It's Not About the Buttons).

This week we have a panel discussion, You Gotta Have Characters, featuring thoughts from author and The Galaxy Express blogger Heather Massey and five other authors and editors.

http://www.sfsignal.com/

Here are some gems:

Human nature is fairly unchanging and relatively easy to predict. For instance, people were acting like idiots several thousand years ago, and will no doubt continue to do so into the unforeseeable future. This is a good thing, because people doing stupid things is the essence of conflict and drama. Conflict and drama make for good stories.
- Lyda Morehouse

Not everyone is a tripped out science geek; however, all people know something about, well, people--and also relationships. Therefore, character-driven science fiction offers a built-in hook to pique readers' interest in physics, chemistry, biology, etc.
- Heather Massey

If, as I believe, the heart of fiction is character, then the core of science fiction is character and world building. But however marvelous it may be, a world without characters to inhabit it makes for arid reading.
- Helen Lowe

I think that art and life, when you aspire to something greater, require risk. The risk can take many forms. You can risk your life to go to another planet, risk your body by testing a new nanochip, risk your relationships as you insist upon doing the first two despite your partner's concerns. To me, the story comes from the result of taking that risk.
- Lynne Thomas

I once threw a very famous technothriller across the room because it had nothing that could be identified as characters. Ideas, check. Plot, big fat check. But when I looked for characters, as in real human beings living amid the tech and the derring-do, I couldn't find a single one.
- Judith Tarr

The real discoveries and work that's being done right now is weirder than most professional fantasists' imagination, and the quality of science and technology writing is very, very good. Without characters -- the human heart in conflict with itself was the way Faulkner put it, though I heard it from George RR Martin -- I don't think we can bring anything to the table that can't be beaten flat by reality.
- Daniel Abraham

Where the Imagination Goes...

2011-11-08T04:00:00.005-07:00

I love surfing the internet to find new innovations and technology. Here's a fascinating new technology that could lead to self-repairing computers, ships, or instruments. This material could allow computer chips to rewire themselves.

http://www.geekosystem.com/self-rewiring-chips/

I've Got It! A New Acronym for SFR

2011-11-07T04:00:00.152-07:00

Laurie's Journal

I think I've got it!

The whole "Should we Still Call it SFR?" debate seems to be firing up, and we're kicking around a few new labels and acronyms for our subgenre (that may be emerging from subgenre status). The theme most often repeated in our discussions is that it's character-driven SF. Love the description, but it's more than a mouthful to say. So how can we shrink that down? When someone asks us what we write, what do we tell them?

CDSF

Followed by an explanation that stands for Character-Driven Science Fiction: Science Fiction about the characters, or as one eloquent writer recently put it [paraphrased]:

Not about the buttons, but who's pushing them...

And not only that but why are they pushing them? And, perhaps most important of all, for whom?

The interpersonal relationship(s) in our SF are at least as important as the science, technology or sociology. Our characters can be caught up in intergalactic wars, apocalyptic futures, alien confrontations, extra-dimensional adventures or alternative history explorations (to name a few)--with scenarios that can capture and stretch the imagination--but ultimately, the stakes are just as much personal as they are historical. And often the personal stakes conflict with the historical stakes.

And that, my friends, is what makes a great CDSF story.

So what do you think?

Ping Pong

Sharon's post on G+ (and suggestion I try it out) has been a boon for me. I now have almost 200 people in my circles including readers, writers, publishing industry professionals and a dedicated circle just for SFR Brigaders. I absolutely adore Google+!

Donna, let me also answer your question by saying this is a great place for you to start in connecting with thousands or others readers (and writers, which are voracious readers) to see what you think. It's easy to use, gives you much more control than FB and to some degree, Twitter, and I think those are reasons a lot of people are going to move over.

I also found this article which explains why G+ may become the most used social networking platform in the future, The Top Five Ways Google+ Will Take Over the Web.

My Journey

After some real soul-searching, I've decided I'm all in for the Golden Heart. I registered all three manuscripts for the 2012 competition. *hyperventilates* Now the real work begins. Putting together six, as-close-to-perfection-as-possible printed entries of each novel, proofing, tweaking, re-proofing, printing and proofing again, before final preparation to check each and every page is there, in order and is in the correct format. It's an OCD nightmare. And then there's the chore of trying to silence the nagging little voice in my head that says the stars aren't going to align again and it will all be for naught. Well one thing is sure. You can't final if you don't enter. No guts, no glory. Cowabunga!

Discoveries

Readers Rule! The Ultimate Gatekeepers of Publishing and the Rise of the Author
Maybe it's time to put emphasis where emphasis is due. It's the readers who control our destiny. That's the message behind a blog post by Bob Mayers (the Atlantis series). Well worth a read at Write It Forward.

Happenings

Zoom, zoom, zoom
Even closer than the Moon, Moon, Moon!

That's how near asteroid 2005 YU55 will come to Earth this week. (Thanks to Katy Perry for the borrow/mangle of her lyrics.) Another year, another near miss. Is it really happening more often, or were we just blissfully unaware of these close passes in years gone by? History tells us another strike is inevitable, so these rocks that pass so near we can feel the breeze is definitely something to make us sit up and take note.

For an animation of the asteroid's course by NASA, click here.

Great Quotes

No one promised it would be easy...
they just promised it would be worth it.
- Sean Combs

Love that.

2011-11-04T10:59:00.005-06:00

Okay, it really is time to start work on that ark. Pack up your belongings. Head for the hills. Forget buying gold or finding that elusive “safe” investment on Wall Street. Accumulate heirloom seeds. Tools. Simple technologies for moving water and generating power. The end is near.

Yes, folks, in the latest chapter of our chronicle of the end times, confirmation comes from two widely disparate observers. First, from the trenches, we have the wisdom of a veteran of the climate change wars in New Jersey after this week’s freak early snowstorm snapped power lines and plunged the Northeast into darkness. He says we must have made Mother Nature angry (or, ahem, words to that effect). How else to explain last year’s brutal winter, followed by spring floods and the devastating effects of Hurricane Irene?

But if the word of the man in the snowbank isn’t good enough for you, consider the results of a two-year study by physicist and noted global-warming skeptic Richard Muller. Guess what? Muller says. The Earth really is getting warmer, not just in the cities and not just because of unreliable data. As a result of his study, Muller has come over from the Dark Side and joined the vast majority of the scientific community in pointing out that the changes in the Earth’s climate are not only measurable, but comprehensive and accelerating.

As Jerry North, the Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor who headed up a National Academy of Sciences climate science review in 2006 puts it, “After lots of work he found exactly what was already known and accepted in the climate community.” Um, yeah.

Meanwhile, things are just getting hotter here on Planet Earth. New figures for 2010 show the largest jump ever in the world’s production of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. We can thank China and India, with their reliance on coal-burning, and ourselves, too, since the U.S. is also one of the top three producers of the heat-trapping gases. All in all, the factories and vehicles of the world pumped six percent more carbon into the atmosphere in 2010, a “monster” increase that’s unheard of, according to Gregg Marland, professor of geology at Appalachian State University.

And this in a year when the world was in a slowdown economically, when people were supposedly driving less, when factories were idle.

Would it be too much to ask to envision a recovery that does not require that we cannibalize ourselves to feed its growth? Have we truly forgotten how to dream of a future that creates without destroying?

Think fast, all you geologists and climatologists. Think outside the box, all you inventors of whatever branch of science. May you be inspired, whether you work in a lab or a garage or on a computer in your basement. We need ideas.

Time is short.

(Data and quotes taken from “Scientist changes tune, agrees world is warming,” and “Biggest jump ever in warming gases,” by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, THE FREE-LANCE STAR, Fredericksburg, VA, November 1, 2011, November 4, 2011.)

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Okay, okay! The deadline for entering the 2012 RWA Golden Heart contest is November 15 and I have OFFICIALLY ENTERED! I went all out and put in both my finished manuscripts--who knows, maybe the third time will be the charm for Unchained Memory. If not, Trouble in Mind may catch someone's eye. Fingers crossed!

Ping Pong

It has been tremendous fun thinking through all the questions posed by Sharon's recent postings on genre (The Writer's Journey) and the SF/R debate (Who R We Really?)and carrying on a great ongoing discussion with Sharon and others in the comments section. If you've somehow missed out on all that, scroll down and catch up. We'd love to know how you think about all this, too!

Cheers, Donna

Writer's Journey: What category/genre taught me about craft

2011-11-02T00:02:00.001-06:00

Donna's great post on Stephen King, along with a number of recent conversations about SF v. SFR, has got me thinking a lot about category. Because how many of us, really, set out to write our first book with a specific subgenre in mind?

When I started writing Ghost Planet in 2008, I had never read SFR that was actually labeled as such. But I knew what I best liked to read were classics (romantic stories set in the past) or romantic stories with a strong speculative element - sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, etc. Escapism, yes, but escapism with a preference for discovering new worlds, whether historical or fictional. I was and am drawn to the freshness of the conflict between heroine and hero in these unfamiliar settings.

I did not believe I was a romance reader, because I did not shop in the romance section of the store. Some of the most romantic speculative books I've read are shelved in SF/F or general fiction - Outlander and The Time Traveler's Wife, for example (though both of these books break traditional romance rules).

The first version of Ghost Planet (my first novel) was just the kind of book I like to read - the right mix of romantic and speculative. But it was suggested to me that the book did not come down firmly enough on one side or the other, and because of that I needed to revise. I flailed around and tried to understand and apply the advice I'd received. The first major revisions I undertook didn't *feel* right, but I was too inexperienced to recognize and understand that feeling. (This is a good place to point out that this post is not about regrets, because I have none. It's about a learning process.)

After months of rewrites that took the book in ever stranger and stranger directions, I sent it to an agent who was waiting. What I got back was the most in-depth, and frankly, upsetting, critique I'd ever received. It was not upsetting because she was a mean person - she is in fact quite a kind and likable person. It was upsetting because she was right - I felt it deep down - and I knew it meant I had to start over. From scratch. Ghost Planet, by Sharon Lynn Fisher, page 1.

But *nothing* she said in her critique had anything to do with genre. It had to do with what I've come to consider the two most critical elements of mainstream fiction - character development and story tension. Also, in my experience, the two hardest elements to master. (Wow, I remember once upon a time I thought, "As soon as I get to the point I can write well, I'll have it made!" How cute.)

I believed in my story, and I believed in my characters, so I started over. Because I was still haunted by the genre question, I also read a craft book that had been recommended to me (thanks, Donna!), On Writing Romance, by Leigh Michaels.

I'll skip the gory rewrite details and cut right to lessons learned.

I think the feedback I got that the book wasn't enough this or that was the result of people trying to identify ways to improve it, or to explain why they were rejecting. I think this may be an idea that occurred to them while reading it, when really it was something deeper and harder to pinpoint. I sometimes struggle with this myself when I read published books - "why didn't I love it?" And I don't always figure it out. It can be a simple matter of taste. It can also be a sign of a problem. We don't often have enough objectivity about our own work to know which. Until later.

What that craft book and my rewrite process taught me was not that my book wasn't enough one genre or another. My journey was only superficially about learning "how to write romance." What I learned was that if you are going to put a relationship between two people at the core of your story, those two people must be compelling and three-dimensional, and there must be tension and believable conflict between them. This applies to any kind of relationship at the center of any category of story (for a radically different example, consider Of Mice and Men).

It wasn't that the first version of my story didn't have enough romance. It didn't have *effective* romance. I had also fallen short in fleshing out some of the sci-fi elements, but I consider this a secondary issue, because it pretty much resolved itself in the process of tuning up my characters.

I think the takeaway in all this, if there is one, is something Donald Maass addresses in The Fire in Fiction. (Liberal paraphrasing follows…) Authors get too hung up on the selling and marketing of things. What we need to be hung up on is writing. Because the content of a book is what makes it a bestseller, not the label we stick on it.

Agree? Disagree? Do you think about genre when you're writing, or do you just write? As a reader, do you consider category/genre when buying a book?

Satellite Images of Earth

2011-11-01T19:27:00.000-06:00

Where the Imagination Goes...

This is amazing to see. A variety of satellite images of Earth showing air traffic lanes, cities, continents, even internet cables...

It's like looking down on our world from the ISS. Click here.

Who R We Really?--The SF vs. Romance vs. SFR Debate

2011-10-31T16:00:00.000-06:00

SF R Us

There have been several discussions recently on Skiffy Rommer blogs and sites about SF merging into the mainstream and where does that leave SFR? Is SFR really a different species than SF, or will SFR be pulled into the slipstream along with the general genre?

I used to think of SFR as it's own distinct hybrid. Lately, I've been rethinking the whole SF/SFR differential.

What is SFR?

It's character-driven SF with equal parts relational elements and plausible--or at least basic physics with liberal imagination applied--science.

Often the relational elements are interwoven with, affected or influenced by the tech or cultural elements. How does that make it different than Star Trek, Star Wars, Avatar or other popular SF fair? Well....the simple answer is SFR always has to meet the romance rule--a happy resolution to the relationship. Not so in mainstream SF, although SF certainly can have a HEA.

So the question is, is there really a boundary? Have we created an invisible line that doesn't really exist for most readers? Are there fundamental differences between SFR and mainstream SF that relegate it to a different sector of the universe?

I don't think so, Tim.

I think the only difference is the appeal to the audience, and let's face it the SF fan base now has a healthy dose of romance-friendly readers (thank you, Avatar). So maybe we've been wrong. Maybe it's not a whole 'nother animal?

If SF is growing more R-acceptable, then edges of the genre have begun to blurr.

What if we simply erase the theoretical line in the sand?

But...Then What do we Call it?

Does it need a label or have we outgrown the need?

Several years ago, members of the community had a lengthy discussion on The Galaxy Express about what we should call our fave reading and writing matter (you can read the discussions here and again here). At that time, the community was splintered between many nomikers including science fiction romance, speculative romance, futuristic romance, space opera, romantic sci-fi, plain ol' Sci Fi, etc., etc., etc. We made a more or less collective decision to name it, call it, and label it as Science Fiction Romance/Sci-Fi Romance/SFR to consolidate the many tags and help avoid confusion. It made absolute sense at the time.

That was then. This is now.

With the new standing of SF and high tech in modern culture (Have you heard? Geek is the new black), maybe it's time to throw the splinter-group idea to the solar winds.

SFR is SF. The only distinction is the sector of the audience we're targeting.
A subspecies is still part of the collective gene pool, so a subgenre is still a part of the collective genre pool. Right?

I rest my case. :) Do we have any rebuttals?

Laurie's Journal: Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T06:00:00.002-06:00

Laurie's Journal

Happy Halloween! It's the day to celebrate goblins, ghoulies, space aliens and things that go bump in the night.

To get you in the spirit, we posted a couple of fun videos and sidetrips over the weekend for our Spacefreighters Halloween Weekend Creepfest...

[Click here to check out the offerings.]

Ping Back
Donna - I loved reading your tribute to Stephen King. What better Halloween topic for a writer's blog than to showcase the King of Chills.

I was also inspired by some of his work, especially the more SF-related stories, but Cujo still scares the bejeezus out of me.

I have two thank yous to send Sharon's way. First for redesigning our blog banner to fit the entire page. Wow, looks awesome. And second...

Discoveries
Sharon suggested joining Google+ and I'm so glad I did! DL Jackson invited me awhile back and my first reaction was to dig in my heels and say, "OMG, not another social networking site!" But this one really is different!

It loses all the down side of Facebook and lets me control who sees my posts by creating my own "circles" of contacts. Have a picnic shot you only want to share with Family? You can do that. A bit of writerly angst to share with your Brigader pals? Presto! Something you want to share with everyone? You can do that, too, with just a click of your mouse.

There's no need to create a separate author page. And it's so easy to find what you're looking for (which has been a big negative for me with the FB set-up).

Although G+ is still in its fledgling state, I found quite a few contacts already enjoying the benefits. (Over a dozen in the first three minutes. Over 80 as of this writing.) And I've been listening to the buzz. G+ is a boon to SF writers. G+ is the next big thing? Hmm, could be. Will G+ make Facebook obsolete? Ask me again in six months.

Meanwhile, enjoy this humorous commentary from YouTube. (And then jump on the bandwagon and join us!)

And here's another discovery. This is an amazing research tool!

Newseum

Open the web site. Click the circle for any town shown and instantly see the Front Page of the newspaper. I could spend hours reading with this. (Must. Be. Disciplined.) There's also a link to archived articles on a variety of topics (Steve Jobs, 9/11, Libya, etc.)

This one gets added to our side bar.

Great Quotes

Science fiction is not and has never been about the buttons.
It has always been about who pushes them.

--From a SF Signal Post Guest Post by Mark Tiedemann It's Not About the Buttons

I have to thank Sharon for pointing me to that quote, too. For me, it's the perfect summary of what I love about SF/R. And who's pushing those buttons, and why, leaves open a whole universe of ideas and plot twists.

Have a funtastic All Hallow's Eve

Halloween Weekend Creepfest

2011-10-30T17:00:00.001-06:00

On the opposite end of the creepy spectrum, this is simply amazing (and amusing).

Dolphins playing with vortex bubble rings--a naturally-occuring phenomenon in physics.

Halloween Weekend Creepfest

2011-10-30T13:00:00.000-06:00

A Black Widow? A Zombie Star? Hell? In Space? YES!

Don't miss National Geographic's tribute to cosmic creepiness:

Halloween Pictures: Ten Spooky Objects in Outer Space

Halloween Weekend Creepfest

2011-10-30T10:00:00.003-06:00

From National Air and Space Museum Magazine--and giving a whole new meaning to "Fear of Flying"-- here's:

A Tour of Haunted Air Fields

Photo from National Air and Space Magazine article

Halloween Weekend Creepfest

2011-10-29T11:04:00.001-06:00

Have We Been Answered?

Halloween is the perfect time to focus on the unexplained, the creepy, the mysterious, the unknown...

This video always gives me goosebumps. Is it possible the radio message we sent into space has been answered in a very surprising and unanticipated way?

The placement and complexity of the images certainly raises some eerie questions about its origins. Or is it simply the product of ingenious and mischievous Earth-bound pranksters having a bit of fun at our expense?

What do you believe?

2011-10-29T04:00:00.001-06:00

A HALLOWEEN TRIBUTE TO STEPHEN KING

2011-10-28T11:20:00.005-06:00

As we approach All Hallow’s Eve, when the barrier between the land of the living and the realm of the dead thins to a porous shroud, it’s only natural that ghosts and goblins, demons and witches, vampires and werewolves should dominate our dreams. This holiday, above all others, allows our imaginations free reign, in an attempt to conquer our fear of the unknown. By constructing an elaborate world of the supernatural (or by simply describing it, if you prefer), we can manage that fear of the dark that has been with us since childhood.

The darkness that can be found within the human soul is much harder to banish with the use of scary costumes and fake blood. Master storyteller Stephen King has always understood this. It’s the human element that has elevated his work above the easily-dismissed label of “genre fiction” to art that speaks to the heart of his readers. His characters—from the tortured teenager in Carrie, the alternately struggling, guilt-ridden, alcoholic, or grieving writers in The Dark Half, The Tommyknockers, The Shining and Bag of Bones, and the obsessed fan in Misery, to the many kids on the cusp of adulthood (“The Body”, It) and small town sheriff heroes (too many titles to count)—are real people struggling with issues we can all understand.

In the Afterword to his latest bestseller, King says that he writes about “ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.” Yes, I suppose you could call the descent of a forcefield over your town “extraordinary circumstances” (Under The Dome). That King could use this premise as the basis of more than 1000 pages of riveting fiction about how people act under pressure is phenomenal. No monsters with weird, glowing eyes or fangs. Just the people with live with every day, seen at their worst—and best.

Of course, King has evolved over the years. There were more of those “real” monsters in the early days—It is an example—more of the clearly supernatural. Yet even then, the people in those stories stood out—the gang of misfit kids fighting that evil clown, the grieving father finally realizing sometimes it’s best if they don’t come back in Pet Sematary. Guilt. Redemption. Deep stuff for a mere “horror” writer.

In King’s latest bestseller, a collection of short stories entitled Full Dark, No Stars, there are no monsters except the ones we carry with us, hidden beneath the faces we show to our neighbors and friends. In each of the four stories, King shows us just how it should be done, taking a relatively simple premise and extending it to its logical conclusion. Without flinching. How greed destroys a man and two families in rural Nebraska in “1922”. How an unassuming writer of cozy mysteries finds her true self in her reaction to violation and near-murder in “Big Driver”. How envy leads a man to make the deal of a lifetime—and seemingly get away with it—in “Fair Extension”. How a woman comes to recognize the rotten foundation of her partnership in “A Good Marriage”.

Writing at short story length is a challenge for the best writer. You have to build the story quickly, scope out the characters in full in a few words, condense the three acts of the drama to a few short pages. But though he can be wordy at novel length, King shines in a brief character sketch, whether in a novel or a short story. In two paragraphs, he can make you see, hear, smell and know that character intimately. And he is a master of the other elements of the writer’s art at this length. It’s no wonder that short stories like “The Body” (which became STAND BY ME) and “Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption” were so successfully adapted to the big screen.

The world’s greatest “horror” writer has a lot to teach those of us struggling to make a name for ourselves in the rocky territory of “genre fiction”, whether we target the romance audience, the science fiction audience or both. King quite obviously writes character-driven fiction, though his characters most often find themselves in horrific situations. His audience has found him, and it’s much broader than the "slasher" fans who read hardcore horror fiction.

Yes, Stephen King is a phenomenon not likely to be repeated. (Would that I had just one drop of that juice!) But just as he has not allowed himself to be pigeon-holed, neither should we force ourselves into categories that don’t fit us in a false hope of acceptance.

Happy Halloween! Donna

Where the Imagination Goes...

2011-10-27T04:00:00.002-06:00

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a DRAGON!!!!

Yes, it is the fire-breathing kind...though not the beastie of myth and legend.

Dragon, the first privately-owned prototype passenger space capsule built by SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) has arrived in Florida. A December 19th launch is currently planned from Kennedy Space Center for the Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 booster that may soon be delivering astronauts to the International Space Station.

This will be the Falcon 9's third launch--but the second for the Dragon. The capsule will be put into orbit to test its manuevering systems and will dock with the ISS via the assistance of a robot arm, and return to Earth about three weeks later, if all goes well.

The advantage of our space program going private? How about an $800 million price tag for developing the project compared to an estimated $2.4 to $7.2 billion for traditional government contracts, according to the SpaceX Vice President Ken Bowersox (as quoted in the Reuters article below).

One small step for man...one giant leap for private industry in space.

Read more:
Reuters Article
SpaceX Dragon Overview
SpaceX Announces Plans to Launch Fully Reusable Rocket

Adventures in Social Media: Is Google+ a boon for new SF/F authors?

2011-10-26T00:12:00.000-06:00

When Google+ launched, I thought the same thing most of you probably did...NOT ANOTHER ONE! I pay attention in writers workshops. I know how important social media is for author promotion. I have a Twitter account. A Facebook author page. When I'm writing as I should be, they languish. When I'm distracted, they enable. Creating a Google+ profile seemed likely to exacerbate both situations.

But then I read a pair of posts by SF/F author Amy Sundberg on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America blog. (Check her out - she also has a great post on Twitterquette today.)

Amy wrote about benefits/drawbacks of Facebook and Google+ for authors. She suggests a Facebook presence is more critical for established authors. But for new authors - especially SF/F authors - Google+ presents a rare opportunity.

If you are an sf/f writer, being active on Google+ right now is a no brainer, because guess what? Your fans make up a large portion of the current user base. Google+ is known to be particularly popular with the high-tech crowd, many of whom enjoy science fiction and fantasy. So the potential for building your fan base is very good.

Who knew? This was enough of a nudge for me to give it half an hour of what is typically my "wine down" time. You can get a skeleton up even faster than that, but I wanted to launch with at least a little bit of content.

Folks familiar with FB probably will have no trouble setting up a profile. There are some key differences, such as Circles and Hangouts, that I haven't completely grokked.

But I *really* like that they prompt you to categorize your connections as friends, family, acquaintances, and/or people you are "following" (equivalent to "likes" in Facebook). You can create your own categories too, such as "fans." Makes for some pretty robust (and intuitive) control over content sharing.

(boo! click me)

Though I have created a public profile (because I want readers to be able to find me), I can post pictures of my daughter, for example, and check only the box for Family when it prompts me to share. (Or, go to a specific "circle" by clicking the button next to it in the left-hand column, and post to that circle directly.) You can do the same with anything you post. If someone tries to share something you originally shared to a limited group, they get a polite little suggestion from Google to be considerate when sharing it further. Or if you want complete control, you can actually lock the post so no one else can share it.

From my perspective, anyway, this completely gets around the FB need to have an author page in addition to my profile, which has always been clunky and confusing to me. I am not two different people! Okay, maybe that's debatable, but you see my point.

A pretty small difference that is big to ME is the fact you can edit something after posting. No need to delete and repost. Because I have certainly committed some embarrassing grammatical and spelling fouls in FB posts.

It *is* a little quiet over in Google-land right now. I have looked for some of my favorite bands, for example, and none have profiles yet. Most of my friends and writing colleagues don't have profiles. But if Google+ catches on (and/or continued Facebook updates and privacy concerns drive off some of their users), it's only a matter of time. I did find SFR cohort Lisa Paitz Spindler over there, and my paranormal/sf/f author pal Skyler White.

I consider myself still in beta with Google+, so I'll report back in a week or two. Meantime, if you decide to give it a go, consider adding me to your circles and we'll see if we can silence those crickets.

Where the Imagination Goes...

2011-10-25T04:00:00.001-06:00

The Technology of the Small

"Dust" inspired postage-stamped sized satellites carried into space on the Endeavor and may one day travel to Saturn and beyond.

Nano-technology--or microscopic technology--has been a premise in many SFR novels, but what about the techonology of the merely small? Thousands of marble-sized probes could be launched into space by a single rocket and sent to planets, asteroids, comets or other bodies to gather data. Might we one day send one to the nearest star? The nearest known planet outside the Solar System? Into a Black Hole?

What other ideas does the Technology of the Small inspire for you?

2011-10-21T17:36:00.003-06:00

Donna’s Journal

Action! Actions we've taken as writers. Where are we? What are we doing?

I just have time for a quick note this week. (Thank goodness Laurie and Sharon are back full force.) Homework for my online course is still keeping me busy, I spent last weekend out of town and, oh, yeah, I’m still plugging away on the first draft of Fools Rush In.

The deadline for the RWA 2012 Golden Heart submissions is November 15, a mere three weeks away. Believe it or not, the decision to enter the contest is not a given for me this year. I’m thinking hard about it, seeing as how Unchained Memory has had two shots at it already and Trouble in Mind may have hidden problems that could keep it out of the running. Laurie is lobbying heavily for me to go for it (thanks for the vote of confidence, partner!), but we’ll see what she says after she reads the ms. for TIM, which is in her hands as we speak!

Ping Pong
We respond to our co-bloggers . . .

Laurie’s post about the superfast interstellar Internet came at a good time for me—just as I was trying to figure out how my Fools Rush In heroine, Rayna, could send a message from my hero’s ship in deep space to another Rescue agent on the planet she had hoped to reach. I really wanted to have them speak in real time—that would have made for the most dramatic impact—but “real” science wouldn’t let me do it. Oh, for the days of TREK fanfic, when I could have just relied on good ole subspace radio, whatever that was! Even with relays, you’d still be limited by the speed of light, so talking back and forth is pretty much out. I settled on sending message “packets” via photon burst, relayed in the same way the ships are by jumps through stable quantum nodes. You’d have to wait for the replies though. Snail mail for the stars.

This little problem is one of many that is making me realize I’m not quite cut out for space-faring SFR. I do much better when the aliens come to me—that is, when my humans control the field of battle here on Earth and the aliens are on hostile territory, have to bring their tech with them and so on. Life onboard the Shadowhawk is feeling very constrained right now, and I can’t wait to get my protagonists dirtside. They won’t be on Earth, but at least they’ll have a little more elbow room and the dramatic possibilities (aside from battles between ships, of course) will expand correspondingly.

Which brings me to the old question of what label to slap on what we write. That question is intimately tied to the question of who we think will want to read our stuff. And that is at the heart of our “problem” when it comes to selling ourselves to agents, editors and new readers alike. I decided a while back to make a concerted effort to sell to the romance audience, rather than the hardcore science fiction audience. Why? For one thing I, myself, had nearly stopped reading new SF because it lacked any appreciation for character development, never mind anything so Earth-bound as romance. And as soon as I picked up my first “time-travel” romance, I realized I’d been writing romance all along in my TREK fanfic—structurally, emotionally, and in every other way.

Romance is primarily character-driven. Science fiction is primarily idea-driven. As a writer you have to decide if your story is mostly driven by its characters or its ideas. If it’s the former, and those characters happen to be in love, then you’d do better to abide by the rules of the romance genre and work to sell your book to that audience, whether it has aliens in it or not.

I’m not convinced the hardcore SF audience wants character-driven stories at all, no matter what kind of sex those characters are having. The primarily male SF audience wants the technological world-building, the scientific details, the ideas that can make your brain hurt. They want writing that is evocative, but rarely emotional. Those guys would never in a million years agree that Anne McCaffery or Diane Gabaldon belong in a list of science fiction anything.

That said, I think there is an audience out there for character-driven stories—romances—that also have a science fiction element to them. I just think we have a better chance of opening minds among the romance readers—who have already embraced vampires, werewolves, demons, angels, cowboys, the entire male population of Regency England, the guys next door, cops, private eyes, doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs (well, maybe not lawyers)—as heroes. Why not aliens, starship captains, space pirates, alien hunters and so on? Fanfic readers have certainly embraced them for years and remain, I believe, an untapped resource for SFR writers.

At least, I have to believe it’s possible. I’m just not right-brained enough to compete with Vernor Vinge and the boys.

Cheers, Donna

Will the kids be driving landspeeders?

2011-10-20T12:28:00.000-06:00

Quantum levitation. It just SOUNDS cool. All they're missing is a teeny Luke Skywalker action figure.

Read about how this works here.

Where the Imagination Goes...

2011-10-18T04:00:00.000-06:00

Super Fast Interplanetary Internet

Does interplanetary internet sound like science fiction of the future? You might be surprised. Read on.

Right now, the Surrey Satellite Technology is beaming super-fast terrestrial internet into space to control 14 satellites. That's a really exciting idea, but possibilities for the future are even more inspiring.

Vint Cerf, the computer scientist who invented the internet is now applying his expertise to applications in outer space. In a Channel4.com article he said: "It's very early days yet, but...[we believe] that all space-faring nations could use them in order to grow an interplanetary backbone, in order to support both manned and robotic space exploration."

But how is this possible? Unlike Earth to orbiting satellites, planets don't remain in the same proximity, they travel on huge orbits and are at times on opposite sides of the sun so the signals must cover enormous distances. So how can this be achieved?

According to the article "The new interplanetary internet system will relay the signal to spacecraft spread across the solar system in bite-sized chunks, speeding up the time it takes to send data back to earth."

That's exciting enough. But it gets better.

Super fast interstellar internet might one day be used to explore nearby stars. Cerf said, "To do that, we're going to need a network of sensors that literally span the solar system and can pick up this weak signal that's coming back from a robot near Alpha Centauri. It's like everything else: engineering turning science fiction into reality."

Surrey Satellite Technology is already speeding up communications to Mars exploratory missions, and later this year they plan to launch seven new satellites that will be connected to the interplanetary internet system.

Just think of the possibilities in SFR where interspace communications are necessary! Have you used a similar idea in your work?

Read the entire Channel4.com article, dated October 9, 2011

Laurie's Journal

2011-10-16T17:00:00.000-06:00

Mission Success

I've got something very exciting to share with you this week, something I stumbled across by accident on Saturday.

Let me set it up for you.

My third novel is actually an old manuscript that I'm working to extensively revise and update. About five years ago I had a male critique partner compare it to Edgar Rice Burrough's The Princess of Mars. Wow. I was floored!

This weekend we went to see Contagion (good movie and very tense) and the previews included a trailer that looks absolutely amazing. It's called John Carter. I leaned over to David during the previews and said, "OMG, it reminds me of Draxis!" When I got home, I started researching the movie and got all tingly and goosebumpy when I discovered John Carter (of Mars) is actually the 3-D screen adaption of Edgar Rice Burrough's The Princess of Mars.

Holy Phobos, Batman!

Although the premise and world-building of Draxis is quite different (modern day heroine, distant planet), the similarities are, well...tingly and goosebumpy exciting.

Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think.

You can read more about John Carter here and here.

Is it just me? Or does this send a little chill up the spine of all Science Fiction Romance writers and authors out there?

Time to Call a Spade a Spade?

There's been a lot of discussion of late about the direction of SFR. Heather Massey's article If SF is Mainstream, Where's Sci-Fi Romance? In August, NPR's Your Picks; Top 100 SF, Fantasy Books included Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight (#33) and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga (#59) actually a series that began with Shards of Honor/Cordelia's Honor, and Diane Gabaldon's The Outlander Series (#89). All three are widely considered SFR (or SFR blend) by the SFR camp, and there may be many books on that list that also qualify. (I've often argued the case for John Scalzi's Old Man's War series (#74) as being SF with Romantic Elements). So is there really a profound distinction between SF and SFR?

A few years ago there was a big discussion on The Galaxy Express about what we should call our subgenre. Futuristic Romance? Romantic SF? Speculative Romance? The decision at that time was to call a spade a spade. It is what it is--Science Fiction Romance. I admit I was probably one of the more vocal ones supporting that argument. But now...I'm having second thoughts.

There seems to be an oxymoron quality to Science Fiction Romance. Case in point, a discussion with one of my new coworkers.

She: "So I hear you're a writer?"
Me: "Yes, I am."
"What do you write?"
"Science Fiction Romance."
"Oh." Disappointed look. "I don't like those."
"Have you ever read one?"
"Not really sure."
"Have you ever seen the movie Avatar?"
"Oh, many times. Loved it! I love Science Fiction."
"Avatar is Science Fiction Romance."
*lightbulb look* "Oh!"

There seems to be a definite disconnect between Science Fiction (which is perceived as coming into its own as mainstream in recent months) and Science Fiction Romance with readers. Maybe we really should call a spade a spade. Science Fiction Romance is Science Fiction. If the "Romance" part in the subgenre title is turning off readers, even though they love the romantic elements in the story, maybe we should just call it Science Fiction and introduce the romantic element through the blurb? In fact, would we be too cheeky to call it Modern Science Fiction?

Hmm, where does that leave SFR Brigade? Do we go so far as to re-invent the organization and the logo as SF Brigade?

Let me know your thoughts.

Laurie's Link Round-Up

Amazon Expands into SF Publishing
Click to read more about Amazon's 47North imprint's 15-book launch.

Much ado about Margaret Atwood and "Slip Stream SF":

Wall Street Journal's The Future of SF by Tom Shippey

Boston.com Author Examines the Role of Science Fiction by Margaret Atwood

Thought(s) for the Day

(Borrowed from fellow Starcatcher Kimberly Kincaid's Facebook post.)

2011-10-14T09:04:00.004-06:00

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Actions we've taken as writers. Where are we? What are we doing?

The Elements of RWA online course I’m taking, "Weapons for Writers", has been keeping me very busy this week. Course instructors Piper Rome and Mark Pfeiffer have been serving up plenty of great information on research sites and the “warrior” mindset to use in our writing.

The focus this week has been primarily on improvised and commercially-available weapons other than guns or knives (things like batons, for example). This has been pretty familiar territory for me as a long-time martial artist, but it is interesting to discover how your training (or lack of it) tends to skew your writing without your even being aware of it.

As an empty-hand fighter, I don’t usually think of putting a weapon of any kind in my hero/heroine’s hands. Fists are thrown first. If that bad guy gets really tough, then we might grab something and clobber him with it. I do use guns (and a “stunner”) in both Unchained Memory and Trouble in Mind, but only as a threat in one and only because my heroine is an FBI agent in the second. Guess I needed this course, huh?

The course has been a challenge, too, because it’s required a fair amount of “homework”. I had to write a fight scene overnight (ironically, between teaching my karate class on Tuesday night and my tai chi class on Wednesday afternoon). I’m not really used to ripping out my fiction that fast—I’m afraid it was a little rough! Anyway, it’s been fun.

Contest Results

I got word this week from the Colorado Romance Writers that my novel Trouble in Mind had placed third in the Paranormal category in their 2011 Heart of the Rockies contest. I had been tied for third in the scoring going into the final round, which was judged by agent Laura Bradford of the Bradford Agency. This makes two third-place showings for the second novel of my Interstellar Rescue series. Not sure what is holding TIM back, beyond the presence of aliens in the story, which gives a lot of agents and editors pause. I’d like to say I have another story in the pipeline that doesn’t include them, but, alas, more Rescue stories just keep presenting themselves. And as my idol Linda Howard once told me, you just have to follow the story.

So far it’s a lonely road, but maybe someday I’ll find a brave agent or editor who’s willing to walk it with me.

Cheers, Donna

Inspiring Quotes

2011-10-14T04:00:00.001-06:00

"Those who can imagine the future, and show it to others, have far greater influence than those who simply govern the present."

-Combatko (commenter on the PopSci online science magazine Science Fiction Writer Envisions How Smart Algorhythms Could Streamline the US Tax Code.)

3 in a row for Laurie's #3

2011-10-13T21:49:00.002-06:00

Just wanted to take a moment to congratulate co-blogger Laurie Green! After finaling with not 1 but 2 novels for RWA's Golden Heart Award in 2011, she started on the contest circuit with her third novel, PROJECT PYRAMID. PP has just finaled in its third contest!

3. First Coast Romance Writers The Beacon

2. San Francisco Area RWA Heart-to-Heart

1. Land of Enchantment RWA Rebecca (In this one she finaled along with co-blogger Donna Frelick. Congrats, ladies!)

Good luck in the final round!

Where the Imagination Goes...

2011-10-12T04:00:00.001-06:00

The prototype "3-D Printer" can copy virtually anything...in three dimensions. Just think of the applications for space colonies, research stations or exploratory vessels. No need to stock spare parts, you could simply "3-D Print" a new one. (I bet the Apollo 13 astronauts would have loved to have one aboard. Maybe they'd have been able to make their Moon landing.)

Yeah, they call it a 3-D Printer. I call it a Replicator.

50 Amazing Facts About Astronomy

2011-10-10T12:44:00.001-06:00

Since we started a trend last week with Why it Shouldn't Happen in a Galaxy Far, Far Away I thought I'd follow up with a video that's chock full of fascinating astromical facts.

Hmm, I know there's gotta be a story or six in there somewhere. What do you think?

Factoids: Fate of the Shuttles

2011-10-09T08:00:00.001-06:00

In April 2011, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made decisions concerning the fate of our retired shuttle fleet. Here's the plan for our historic orbiters:

Discovery will go to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia
The final landing spot for Atlantis will be Florida’s Kennedy Space Center
Endeavor is off to the California Science Center in Los Angeles

In addition, Enterprise, the test shuttle that never actually flew in space, was awarded to New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. However, plans to display the shuttle in a parking lot near a strip club have raised concerns about the fate of the shuttle (that arguable carries the most recognized name in SF). Read more here.

AMAZING HORROR STORY

2011-10-07T11:37:00.005-06:00

Occasionally—not very often, mind you, but once in a long while—you can find yourself sitting in front of the television set with your mouth hanging open in amazement. Some viewers might even call it shock. Or horror. As in what we were treated to in FX Network’s “American Horror Story” debut this week.

This series, starring Dylan McDermott (“The Practice”, “Dark Blue”) and Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights”) as a psychiatrist and his wife trying to overcome a tragedy in their lives by moving from Boston to a creepy mansion in L.A., is not for everyone. It earns its TV-MA rating with plenty of sex, nudity and bloody violence. The shudder factor is sky-high: baby body parts in jars in a moldering basement; a developmentally-challenged girl who seems to have a connection to the house, who keeps predicting that everyone in it will die horribly; a well-past-her-prime housekeeper that only the psychiatrist sees as a voluptuous seductress; a teenage psych patient who spouts venom in his sessions with the doctor one minute and finds his way to the doctor’s daughter’s room the next.

Of course, the haunted mansion/family with issues schtick is nothing new, and the producers in some way recognize this with the title of their series. Still their willingness to delve into the emotional heart of the characters—which may be where the true horror lies—is what makes this story different.

Fortunately for all of us, the show rests on the shoulders of some spectacular acting talent—not only Emmy winners McDermott and Britton, but also, in her first television role, Jessica Lange. Lange, who we are used to seeing as the heroine, is a decidedly icky next-door neighbor, a transformation she accomplishes not by makeup (she looks every inch the slightly faded Southern belle the woman professes to be), but by nuances of expression and behavior. (Britton’s character, a tough Easterner, hates her on sight.)

The scenes between Britton and Lange are topped only by the ones between Britton and McDermott, as the couple driven apart by a miscarriage and his infidelity over a year ago struggle to find a way back to each other. Predictably, the house isn’t helping. He’s suddenly sleep-walking. She’s having, ahem, hallucinations that may or may not involve him. Then there’s the housekeeper that keeps trying to seduce him. Ewww. Oh, and the teenage daughter who’s involved with the psycho is getting in trouble in school. And did I mention this is just the first episode?

For those who take their paranormal mixed more with action than with psychology, the WB’s “Supernatural” premiered last week. When last we left our heroes, demon-fighting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester and their mentor Bobby were facing off against angel Castiel, who had just promoted himself to, um, God. One can forgive Cas for this flawed thinking, since in all the seasons of this show, we’ve seen Lucifer, Death, all manner of demons, angels and archangels, but we’ve never seen the Big Guy. Even the denizens of Heaven believe He’s taken a powder, leaving them to their own devices. The result was a civil war Above and near-Apocalypse Below, which Cas ended by absorbing souls from Hell and kicking bad angel ass.

Problem is, of course, Cas absorbed some Really Bad Things along with all those souls. End result? He explodes and releases those Really Bad Things into the world. Giving our boys something to do again.

Yeah, I know. This show requires a MAJOR suspension of belief. But the dialogue is snappy and the boys are cute. The angst thing is wearing thin, both for Sam and for Dean, if you ask me, but I’m not 16.

Finally, if you’re looking for “mundane” science fiction as only J.J. Abrams can do it, you’ll be checking out the new season of “Fringe” on Fox. The only problem is you won’t be seeing much of Joshua Jackson, the actor who plays Peter Bishop, as Peter’s character sacrificed himself to build the “bridge” between alternate universes that allowed both to survive at the end of last season. Now it is as if Peter never existed, and no one remembers him. Characters on both sides of the bridge are forced to cooperate with each other on cases, including both Olivia and “Fauxlivia”, who hate each other’s guts. And “our” universe’s version of Lincoln Lee has come to work for the Fringe unit with Olivia and Walter.

The show’s producers aren’t saying when or how Peter will make a reappearance beyond the spooky flashes in reflections and TV’s that have been driving Walter crazy. They do say they are paying Joshua Jackson too much to sit at home on the couch. One would think, too, they wouldn’t want to mess with a formula that has made the show successful—that romantic chemistry between Olivia and Peter and the prickly but loving relationship between Peter and his wildly eccentric father, Walter.

Donna’s Journal

Action! Actions we've taken as writers. Where are we? What are we doing?

I’ve been enjoying an RWA online class called Weapons for Writers organized by Wendy “Piper” Rome and Mark Pfeiffer, designed to give those of us who must put weapons in the hands of our characters some idea of what we might be talking about. Piper is a former attorney and an expert in weapons and self-defense who writes romantic suspense. Mark is a former Navy Chief Petty Officer responsible for shipboard counter-terrorism and was also a high-level competitive rifle shooter.

Believe me I really needed this class. Since I write science fiction suspense romance, much of which takes place on Earth, my characters often have to pick up a gun and use it. But the sum total of my experience with guns was the summer I shot my grandfather’s .22 rifle as a kid. In my house anything with a muzzle also has fur.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Fortunately Piper and Mark have so far been very patient with my questions (“what does 9 mm mean anyway”?) And they have been very welcoming to someone from “outside” strictly defined RS parameters.

When they’re not teaching classes, Piper and Mark hang out at two writers’ forums that may be of interest to anyone doing research on weapons or crime related issues: weapons_info@yahoogroups.com and crimescenewriter@yahoogroups.com .

Cheers, Donna

2011-10-06T04:53:00.000-06:00

There's a line from P2PC:

"Innovation can change the universe."

It certainly changed ours.

Steve Jobs

1955 - 2011

Rest in Peace

Do you write up or down?

2011-10-05T00:30:00.000-06:00

Today I was reading a post on an agency blog (Dystel & Goderich) that so got me going I found myself writing a long comment. My comment kept growing until finally I thought, this really is not a comment, it's a blog post.

The gist of the D&G post was a question (and it refers to ANOTHER post here, so we have a real blog chain going now)...

Is it easier to write when you're happy or sad?

I have been wrestling this issue for months.

I made it to almost 40 "wanting" to be a writer but writing only sporadically. My first real fiction effort (not counting those two doorstops from my 20s) was written during the darkest period of my life. It was therapy for me, as well as inspiration. I wrote it in 6 weeks. (Then spent 2 years unwriting and rewriting it, but that's another story.)

After hyper-analyzing the inside of my own head (because that's what writers do!), I realized that during dark (or even just dull) times writing is an escape for me. It's my own little world I get to control. I make those characters as unhappy as me, and then, because I write romantic stories, I make them blissful.

Reminds me of this great Ray Bradbury quote someone tweeted recently:

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Now that is dark. But there have been times in my life I have felt this keenly. For a lighter take on it, remember when you were a kid and stuck your fingers in your ears and closed your eyes and chanted "La, la, la, I can't hear you"? That is how writing helps me cope when my cope meter is on empty.

So I am grateful I had my stories and all those imaginary people to help me through those times. But there's a downside. I struggle to focus on writing during happy times because not only do I not need the escape, I don't want to miss out on any of my real life.

With the new contract, writing is no longer therapy or escape, but a business. I am working hard on that transition, and I think the key will be sticking to a regular writing schedule. Meeting regularly with my new writing business partner, Mac Freedom, who helps keep me honest. Shutting out those voices of doubt that creep into every writer's head once they've been at it long enough to realize what a BIG SCARY MYSTERY it is where all this stuff comes from...But I digress.

What's your story? Do you write up or down? (Non-writers can play too! I suspect this applies to ANY creative endeavor.)

Launch Date for GHOST PLANET!

2011-10-04T11:07:00.000-06:00

It's a very big day today on Spacefreighters Lounge!

One of our own, Sharon Lynn Fisher, announces a release date for GHOST PLANET!

Sharon's two time Golden Heart finalist
science fiction romance novel

is coming from Tor on November 1, 2012!

Congratulations, Sharon!

~ * ~

Why it Shouldn't Happen in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

2011-10-03T12:21:00.001-06:00

I've noticed a trend in SFR where the setting is another galaxy. In spite of the poetic Star Wars opener, this disturbs me on many levels. The "fiction" in Science Fiction Romance allows for a universe of ideas and imaginative settings, but there's also that "science" part to consider.

Let me explain why this has become my #1 pet peeve with the subgenre:

Why go there?

The Milky Way Galaxy

Our home galaxy is made up of some 200,000,000,000 stars. That's 200 billion suns. Let me say that again. Two hundred billion. We can be pretty sure a good number of those 200 billion suns have multiple planets and moons and asteroids orbiting them. That's a whole lot of real estate. Why set a story outside those parameters? Does it make it any more exotic? Or alien? I think not. If anything, it only makes it more implausible.

Why? Time. Distance. And Physics.

Let's take it in increments.

Distance from the Earth to our Sun

The average distance between the Earth and the Sun is 93 million miles or roughly 149 million kilometers. Because the distances in space are so enormous, this is a standard of measurement refered to as an AU or International Astronomical Unit. Note that this is the "average" distance. Objects in space do not stay in one place so there is no constant point A to point B distance.

So looking down the street in our immediate solar neighborhood:

Distances within our solar system (the planetary system revolving around our single sun):
Earth to Mars: 0.5 AU or 48,600,000 miles
Earth to Jupiter: 4.2 AU or 390,500,000 miles
Earth to Saturn: 8.4 AU or 793,800,000 miles
Earth to Uranus: 18.4 AU or 1,689,800,000 miles
Earth to Nepture: 30.0 AU or 2,701,400,000 miles
Earth to Pluto: 38.53 AU or 3,573,200,000 miles
Earth to the Kiuper Belt: 5,000 to 100,000 AU or 465,000,000,000 to 9,300,000,000,000 mi.

Whew! Okey-dokey. We're already covering a lot of ground and we've hardly made it off the block. Let's think about a trip to the "next town."

Distance to the Nearest Star

Proxima Centauri, the closest (actually part of a triple sun system called Alpha Centauri), is 39,900,000,000,000 km away or about 26,200,000,000,000 miles. That's about 4.22 light years. We're definitely going to have to pack a lunch.

How Long Would It Take to Get There?

The distance of 4.22 light years means it would take 4.22 years traveling at 186,282 miles per second (mps not mph) to reach it.

Let's get some real space/time perspective on that.

The Galileo probe currently holds the record as the fastest spacecraft to travel through space at 106,000 mph. Using Jupiter's gravity to create a slingshot effect, we might possibly have a spacecraft achieve a velocity of 150,000 mph. (And that's to the nth times slower than 186,000 miles per second.)

Our Voyager I spacecraft, launched in 1977, has been traveling outbound for almost 35 years. It reached Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1980 and flew beyond the orbit of Pluto in 1989. It has now been traveling for almost 35 years and hasn't yet reached the Kuiper Belt or the heliosphere that marks the outer bounds of our own solar system, much less interstellar space--the space between solar systems.

Some scientists believe Voyager 1 (and Voyager 2, which is traveling on a different trajectory) will leave our solar system sometime in 2016. Voyager is traveling at about at about 57,600 kph or 35,790 mph. If it took almost 40 years just to reach the edge of our own solar system, much less cover the space to the closest star, think how vast that distance truly is!

So let's pretend we could develop an ion drive that could approach light speed. Just getting to that speed takes time. In fact, it could take about 4,900 years to accelerate to half the speed of light and another 4,900 years to begin decelerating to normal speed when we reach the halfway point to Proxima Centauri. (It takes a lot of time to slow down, too.) That would be 9,800 years or more time than all of recorded human history to get to the nearest star.

Even if we could instantly accelerate to and from light speed, it would still take well over four years just to reach Proxima Centauri traveling at the rate of 186,282 miles per second.

There are about 26 stars that are considered near our own sun (neighboring towns, relatively speaking). Bernard's Star, at 6 light years distant, is the closest star that is thought to have planets of its own. Procyan B, the farthest of the "near" stars is about 11.5 light years distant. One of the brightest stars, Vega, is about 27 light years away or 6.5 times further than Proxima Centauri.

Whew! And that's only to reach the closest stars. We're nowhere near talking about other galaxies yet.

Distance across the Milky Way Galaxy

Our own galaxy is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km (or about 100,000 light years) across.

Our Sun, which is on one of the arms of our spiral galaxy, takes over 200 million years to circle the Milky Way Galaxy just once.

So, if we could instantly achieve light speed coming and going, it would take over four years just to reach the closest star and 100,000 years (5,000 generations!) to fly across our own galaxy.

And we're supposed to go where?

Distance to the Nearest Galaxy--Hello, Andromeda

The distance to the nearest galaxy, Andromeda (also called Messier 31 or M31), is estimated to be between 2 to 2.2 million light years away.

What? You want mile markers?

2.2 million light years
= 186,000 miles per second (rounded)
x 60 seconds/minute x 60 minutes/hour x 24 hours/day
x 365 days/year
= 12,904,531,200,000,000,000 miles distant

By the time we get there--provided we can even attain that proverbial "instant" light speed--chances are we've evolved into something that isn't even human. After all, how old is the human species--scientifically speaking? And that's assuming there are no mechanical failures or accidents along those 2.2 million years since we're beyond the help of the nearest spacecraft repair shop. In fact, since we're aiming for light generated over 2 million years ago and then adding the time for our trip, the galaxy may not even be there when we arrive over 4 million years after the light was generated. Sobering, yes?

And once we arrive, how do we let anyone know? Even sending messages via light, it will take 2.2 million years to reach the folks back home--who have by then probably also evolved or gone extinct.

Other Implausibles

In addition to the problem of spanning unfathomable time and distance, there's also problems with the fabric of intergalactic space.

Galaxies are connected by a denser plasma than the empty spaces of the universe. Galactic medium is mostly composed of ionized hydrogen. It may be up to 100 times denser than that of intergalactic space. Atoms may not behave the same way in intergalactic space due to the absence of energy in the void.

There could also be mysterious forces at play, such as dark matter and dark energy, that work differently outside the influence of a galaxy. No one is sure if propulsion systems, or matter in general (such as that making up the hull of the spacecraft), would behave in the same way if intergalactic space doesn't have the same physical laws.

Wait, What About Warp Drive?

Clearly, if we're going to jaunt about space, we're going to need some sort of Warp Drive (Star Trek), space bending (Dune), or jump gates (Dock Five series--Linnea Sinclair). Even so, the distances we'd have to bridge within our own galaxy are so incredibly vast, why oh why would we ever need or want to cross eternity to another galaxy? What could there possibly be over there that we don't have right here? (Right here, give or take 50,000 light years, that is.)

So why go there indeed? It seems staying within the bounds of our own galaxy makes the science in the Science Fiction Romance much more within the realm of "suspension of disbelief."

Me? Believe I'll stick around the ol' hometown.

Call for SFR Submissions

2011-10-02T20:51:00.002-06:00

Fellow SFR Brigader Misa Buckley has put out a call for submissions of Science Fiction Romance short stories from 5,000 to 10,000 words with the following premise:

Venus Ascendant is a space station situated in the Andromeda Galaxy. With its open-to-all policy, it attracts beings from all over the universe as a destination for R&R, dangerous liaisons and romantic getaways.

The sentient, empathic AI ensures that whoever comes to Venus Ascendant finds exactly what they want and “rooms” can be anything from luxurious boudoirs to sunset-lit beaches to dark BSDM dungeons.

Submissions are due by the end of December.

For more information, beam over to Misa Buckley's blog.

TERRA NOVA COVERING OLD GROUND

2011-09-30T11:58:00.003-06:00

Well, dear readers, it’s the start of the new television season and that buzz in everyone’s ears is the excitement surrounding Executive Producer Stephen Spielberg’s $20 million dino baby, “Terra Nova”.

I mean, geez, what’s not to like, right? It’s enough to make a science fiction fan drool. It’s got cool CGI cityscapes of a depleted, toxic Earth in the year 2149. It’s got an even cooler, sparkly, techie-looking particle-accelerator time-travel gate that takes its heroes back 85 million years “to set things right” so they can avoid this eco-disastrous future. And, oh, yeah, it’s got awesome CGI dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park to keep things interesting once our heroes get back in prehistoric times.

What it doesn’t have, alas, is an original idea anywhere in sight, or a writer capable of avoiding plot holes big enough to allow a T-Rex to plow through. (I’ll just blame Brannon Braga for that, even if it’s not all his fault.) Spielberg, it seems, was focused on the look of his show to the detriment of some other things. For just a few of the television/SF clichés we’re working with, try these: frontier family, disaffected teen, maverick cop, practically everything from “Lost in Space”, the “others” from “Lost”, all the dinosaur stuff and the ineffective fencing (it's coming, trust me on that one) from Jurassic Park, untrustworthy authority, grizzled commander and, well, I could go on, but you get the picture.

The Earth that sends these colonizers to the past is gasping its last, but somehow can afford to equip the teams with all the modern conveniences. They don’t have to build the least little thing using local resources. They even drive big mohawking vehicles powered by some kind of power cell. Think how much energy it would take to send those babies back in time! Of course, it’s not explained what powers the fuel cells or how they might be recharged. Same goes for the electricity that is in profligate use in the settlers’ compound. Guess maybe they have the whole solar thing figured out. If so, you wonder why the Earth is such a mess.

The only thing that saves the show for me is the presence of the wonderful Jason O’Mara in the role of maverick cop/dad Jim Shannon. He’s much better than his material, lending genuine emotion to his interactions in the family scenes, and providing a thinking woman’s action man as backup to Stephen Lang’s slightly off-kilter Commander Nathaniel Taylor. I’ve been a fan of O’Mara’s since his days on the short-lived “Life on Mars”. One day maybe he’ll get both the role and the attention he deserves. Until then I’ll just have to be content to see him in roles where he has plenty of opportunities to take his shirt off.

For somewhat similar reasons I’m interested to see how the new show “Person of Interest” turns out. Film actor Jim Caviezel (of Jesus of Nazareth fame) is the draw here, starring as a burnt-out Special Ops soldier recruited to intervene and prevent crimes such as murder or kidnapping before they happen. Again, not such a unique idea to think violent crime could be predicted and prevented by eliminating the “criminals” ahead of time. Phillip K. Dick wrote the short story that led to the movie in which Tom Cruise played a cop who becomes a victim of the system (Minority Report).

In this case the “system” is the security monitoring structure set up to scan cameras and communications after 9/11. According to the show’s premise, the network is designed to flag terrorist threats—certain statements, actions, etc. that represent a high security risk to the U.S. government and its citizens. Anything else the system picks up—kidnapping plans, or murder threats, for example, are considered irrelevant and discarded by the computer. The man who developed this elaborate, high-tech system for the government, played with appropriately nerdy elan by “Lost”’s Michael Emerson, can’t sleep at night thinking about all those potential victims. So he quits his government job, drops off the grid and goes looking for an equally disaffected Caviezel to save the people the computer casts off as “irrelevant”.

So the set-up is somewhere between “Quantum Leap” and “The Equalizer”, but with actors of the caliber of Caviezel and Emerson and writing of at least decent quality in the series opener, the show has promise.

Next week I’ll take a look at my returning faves “Fringe” and “Supernatural” and update you on my writing progress in Donna’s Journal.

Final Word on the Banana Man Saga

Colonial Forge High School Principal Karen Spillman tendered her resignation this week, following the controversy over her handling of an incident in which sophomore Bryan Thompson, aka "Banana Man", ran onto the football field at half-time dressed as a banana. Read the full story at http:\\fredericksburg.com

Cheers, Donna

BANANA MAN SLIPS NOOSE

2011-09-27T09:36:00.002-06:00

Virginia teenager Bryan Thompson returned to school at Colonial Forge High School yesterday after serving out five days of his original ten-day suspension for running out onto the football field at half-time dressed as a banana.

Stafford County School Superintendent Randy Bridges overruled CFHS Principal Karen Spillman's disciplinary action for Thompson and several students at the school who had supported him by wearing yellow tee-shirts sporting "Free Banana Man" or "Free Speech" logos. As long as Thompson obeys school rules, the remaining five days of his suspension will be dropped and Spillman's threat of a year-long suspension can be dismissed as an empty one.

The Banana Man's return to school was uneventful, according to reports in the local newspaper, the FREE LANCE STAR. Apparently Thompson has vowed to behave himself, and he has had his 15 minutes of high school fame. I'm sure his mother and the school system's lawyers are all breathing huge sighs of relief.

Cheers, Donna

FREE BANANA MAN!

2011-09-23T12:20:00.005-06:00

Okay, so maybe this subject is not quite the stuff of the stars. Or maybe it’s proof that we’re already living in that Orwellian future we feared and fought so furiously in the Sixties. The fight went out of us long ago, and it takes something stupid like this incident to remind us of how much we’ve lost.

It all started with a banana. Well, not precisely a banana, but a kid in a banana costume. The “costume” consisted of a bright yellow cape with a banana top. High school sophomore Bryan Thompson from a community close to my central Virginia home, thought it would be funny to don the "banana" and run out onto the football field at half-time. The crowd at the home game at Bryan’s school, Colonial Forge High, thought it was funny, too, and since there was no one else on the field at the time—no band performing, no plays being called—one would have thought this a harmless prank.

Apparently CFHS administrators thought differently. At the time, Bryan was briefly detained by a Stafford County sheriff’s deputy, but was not charged and was released to his mother’s custody at the field. The next day, however, CFHS Principal Karen Spillman suspended Bryan for ten days, with a recommendation that he be suspended for the rest of the school year. The charges: Disobedience of an administrator. Disrespectful behavior toward an administrator. Disruption of an activity. Refusal to follow directions of an administrator. Key word here appears to be “administrator”.

Witnesses say no one appeared to chase Bryan off the field and that when apprehended he was calm. He was laughing, however. Guess that constitutes “disrespect”. Also lack of judgment, but then Bryan suffers from high-functioning autism, which has gotten him in some mild trouble before in school, once for having a cell phone in class, once for creating a website that encouraged students to post “silly” pictures of themselves for the entertainment of their peers. Some have suggested his previous “crimes” have made him a three-time loser.

If the reaction to Bryan’s prank seems overdone, consider the school administration’s Draconian response to his schoolmates’ support. Yellow tee-shirts were confiscated from some students who were allegedly whipping them around as “rally flags”. Pep rallies have been banned. Parking passes have been suspended because someone scrawled “free banana man” on his car.

Two police cruisers were called to the school in advance of a feared student protest that never materialized. Bananas have been banned from the school. (Yes, you read that right. Apparently some radical wrote “Free banana man” on the fruit and passed it around.) Students have been commanded to remove yellow tee-shirts that not only refer to Bryan, or banana man, but also to free speech in general. The ACLU is now involved on the side of the students.

All of this could have been avoided if the school administrators had simply called Bryan and his mom into the school office on Monday morning and asked him not to do anything so silly again. Mom would have promised it would not have happened again. Bryan would have apologized and maybe given up the banana costume and within a week, life at Colonial Forge would have been back to normal. No. Instead it has become a Big Freakin’ Deal and one more example of how our lives have been circumscribed and http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifour freedom of expression curtailed.

Cooler heads may prevail and save Bryan a year’s suspension. I hope so. There is little doubt he will serve out his sentence of ten days (a sentence his mother is appealing). After all, he has DISRESPECTED AN ADMINISTRATOR! The weight of mindless bureaucracy is overwhelming in this age of administration, and even YouTube is powerless to lift it. Unless we all stand up as one, we will each be crushed beneath it in turn.

Check out the video of Banana Man's run and the latest news of Bryan's appeal at http:\\fredericksburg.com.

Cheers, Donna

2011-09-16T12:02:00.004-06:00

Donna’s Journal

Action!
Actions we've taken as writers. Where are we? What are we doing?

I have finally come to that moment of truth in my current work in progress, the scene that reveals the true nature of my leading characters: the love scene. Maybe I should put that in all caps: THE LOVE SCENE. Yes, that’s better. I can’t overemphasize the importance of this crucial interaction between the hero and the heroine in defining who they are—not just for the reader, but for the writer in charge of shaping them.

For some reason, my hero and heroine are just not fully formed until I see how they respond together in bed. What they want from each other in that intimate setting is (or should be) a reflection of what they want from each other in the relationship—comfort, security, adventure, trust, freedom, a key for a prison, a cage for a demon, balm for pain, release for anger. And the traits revealed when the characters have their clothes off can be dramatically different from the ones they show when fully dressed. The gruff can be tender, the timid become bold, the weak grow strong and the strong are driven to their knees.

For some of my books, I had the key love scene—the first time the h/h make love—outlined in my mind before I ever began writing the rest of the story. I had the characters and the fantasy of their time together, and in some ways I built the relationship around that. (Is this too much information? Sorry! I did have a plot and all, too.) Sam and Rayna, the hero and heroine of Fools Rush In, my current WIP, were secondary characters in my two previous books. I should have had some idea of who they were. But I didn’t truly know them—their secrets, their needs, the things that brought them to each other--until I got them into bed together at last.

I’m still learning, so I won’t make any revelations here—S#$%&y First Drafts and all that. What I really hope, since I’m forced to work backward here, is that being together doesn’t change them! That is, being together can only change them into the characters we already know (since this is a prequel), and not into someone else. Tricky.

Of course, no book has just one great big LOVE SCENE and done! Well, actually there are plenty like that, but I hate those, and I certainly don’t write them. Ideally, the intimacy of the love scenes should progress as the relationship builds throughout the book until at the end the lovers are as close as they can possibly be, joined body and soul. First encounters are shadowed with secrets withheld, questions unasked, insecurities, lack of trust, even fear. Those internal conflicts which threaten to tear the lovers apart are often hiding in the background in that first scene, and quickly make an appearance as the characters reflect on what has just happened. As their commitment to each other solidifies, that, too, is reflected in more intimacy and openness in the later love scenes.

One other thing, since I seem to be talking rules now. I’m a firm believer in the school of thought that says the love/sex scenes in romance should contribute to the plot. In this case, of course, we’re referring to the emotional plot, but in romance, the emotional plot is equal to any other plot you have going—be that science fiction, suspense, historical or whatever. In my books, you had darn well better not skip the sex scenes or you will miss something significant between the lovers—a revelation, an important concession, an advance or a retreat on the road to commitment, or most often, the opening of a heart. Sex makes people vulnerable, and not just to diseases or pregnancy—that’s why we warn our teenagers not to engage in it frivolously. It’s dangerous. And very dramatic. That’s why it must be used to move the story forward.

And that’s why I use it to find out who my characters truly are.
Cheers, Donna

Mission Success: Laurie's Journal

2011-09-11T20:40:00.002-06:00

We Were All Witnesses

Watching the tenth anniversary coverage of 9/11--the disaster, the recovery, the building of the memorial and rebuilding of the site, there was one quote that really stuck in my mind.

Whether we watched from nearby,

or from very far away,

we were all witnesses.

What happened that day forever changed our country, our perspective, our world, our future and each of us, individually. Every life was impacted in some way—from monumental to minor—but we were all touched by the tragic events of senseless hatred, and by the explosion of compassion and patriotism that followed.

What does not kill us makes us stronger.

Indeed.

Laurie’s Journal

So where am I with my writing?

Struggling.

Two weeks ago I set myself some very ambitious goals, in retrospect probably much too ambitious, to complete my third novel by the end of October. It seemed realistic enough. The novel is 90% complete and although it needs a significant trim (over 40,000 words), I didn't see that as a major roadblock. Since then, I realized my assessment was far too optimistic. It's going to require a lot more work than I anticipated. (Drat!)

So I’ve slipped into mental reconstruction mode and lost a lot of time at the keyboard while I work out where the story needs to go and where it needs to be. I keep reminding myself it's all just part of the process, but sometimes that whiney little inner voice of doubt tries to drown out my confidence by shouting, "Maybe I should just quit." Buck up, soldier. Time to regroup.

That which does not kill our dreams makes them stronger.

An Experiment

I participated in an exercise on a writer's site that was both enlightening and confidence-shaking. This is how it worked:

Participants submitted up to 1,000 words of the opening of a manuscript to a special queue. All submissions were anonymous.

Then critiquers (also anonymous) would act as “editors” perusing a slush pile. They would tell the writer exactly where they stopped reading in a few words.

The anonymous factor worked well for me, because I think it made for some very honest, no-holds-barred feedback. It also resulted in a few cryptic and sometimes amusing comments. I was informed in no uncertain terms that it was completely unacceptable to include a grandfather’s clock in a SF story.

My opening got dinged for a long list of reasons including:

passive verb
too much technology
not enough technology
self-consciously geeky technology (Ha! Love it.)
clunky dialogue
didn’t like character's nickname
not enough backstory
too much backstory
didn't like the last sentence
too much foreshadowing
telekinetics should be spelled telekinesis (two different things)
Too much romance chat for SF (the battle rages on)
and doesn't want to read about character’s relationship problems in SF

So now that all of my writerly faults have been laid bare, let me reclaim my dignity by announcing ten critiquers read all the way to the close. (Hey, that means I just got ten requests. Woot!) It was a great illustration of how subjective each reader’s and/or professional’s reactions can be. Although not all feedback I received was helpful, I learned a lot and it gave me some great insights on what does and doesn’t hook a reader (or an editor) when they begin a story.

I also had my shot at the slush pile. My biggest reason for stopping was that a submission was so wordy it took five sentences to say something that should have taken only a few words. (Don't throw tomatoes! I took voice, tone, style and genre into consideration.) My second most frequent reason was a failure to connect with the character/s.

Beginnings

So what does make for a great beginning? I'm going to be investigating that question in the next week. Unfortunately, I missed a timely presentation by the amazing Darynda Jones at my RWA chapter meeting on Saturday, but she was sweet enough to send me the handouts. I also have a few promising web sites to investigate. I hope to post more soon.

APOLLO 18: HOWLING AT THE MOON

2011-09-09T12:11:00.004-06:00

According to history as we know it, there were 17 NASA Apollo missions to the moon, six of which, in the words of John F. Kennedy, “successfully land[ed] a man on the surface of the moon and return[ed] him to earth”. Scientifically, socially, politically and in every way possible, the moon missions were an outstanding success, despite their cost (which in today’s terms would be considered minimal). So why haven’t we been back?

Merely a case of “been there, done that”? The American public does have an appalling lack of attention span. What, more moon rocks? Ho-hum. Rising costs, poor administration, lack of presidential leadership and support, squabbling about priorities within NASA itself, all took their toll until today the U.S. space program is a moonshadow of its former self.

But what if there was a more sinister reason we never went back to the moon? What if the Russians, then we ourselves discovered a secret so terrifying it threatened any future manned exploration of our closest celestial neighbor? That’s the basis of APOLLO 18, a “mockumentary”-style film in theaters now. The premise, that an 18th Apollo mission was sent to the moon under the pretense of a satellite launch, the public, the astronauts and their families told literally nothing about the mission, is built with great seriousness from the opening seconds. Title credits appear on the screen claiming that the film was edited from actual NASA footage just made available through the Freedom of Information Act after so many years, blah, blah, blah. There are no actors’, director’s or any other credits. We are directed to a website, www.lunartruth.com for more details.

We’ve seen this kind of manipulation before, of course. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT was the first major low-budget film to rake in the profits with a hand-held camera, no script and the illusion that this was REAL, guys! (I hated it. The camera work made me sea-sick and I kept yelling at the screen for the protagonists to follow the stream, not to cross it! Idiots!) Last year’s PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films did BLAIR WITCH one better by not even leaving the bedroom for their thrills and chills.

APOLLO 18 spent quite a bit more money to get the effect of the stark lunar surface, the distorted fish-eye camera angles we’re all used to seeing inside the tiny space capsules, and the important stuff when bad things start to happen. The result is both authentic enough to captivate and scary enough to make you jump out of your seat. That much I really enjoyed.

The problem I have with this style of movie-making is the seriousness with which the filmmakers take themselves. They never, never admit to the illusion they are creating. No, no, they say. It’s real. It really happened just this way! See—no credits! No actors! We have a website where we give you the facts!

Well, you know what? Bull! It’s a MOVIE! There was no Apollo 18. Moon rocks are just moon rocks. I’ve touched one, and it didn’t bite. But now thanks to this “reality film”, there will be idiots walking around who will think there were 18 Apollo missions and we stopped going to the moon because there are carnivorous rocks up there. Of course, they are the same ones who think the Blair witch is real and the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films recorded real events.

And the bachelor really picks a wife on TV. Give me The Twilight Zone any day.

NOTE: Donna’s Journal will return next week.

Cheers, Donna

The Burning of Badjuju

2011-09-08T05:17:00.000-06:00

It's time again for the annual tradition here on Spacefreighters Lounge. The Burning of Badjuju. No worries. This isn't an act of violence, it's an celebration of overcoming adversity. But let me explain...

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, there's an annual tradition of burning Zozobra. This ritual flaming of the "Old Man Gloom" effigy represents letting go of all the cares, disappointments and griefs that have accumulated in the past year. For weeks prior to the event, residents converge on the offices of the Santa Fe Reporter to leave artifacts of their troubles. The monstrous puppet is then stuffed with these notes, documents, photos, legal papers, and other representations of aggravation and set ablaze before a crowd of thousands.

Last year, we created our own version of Zozobra for writers coming up with the name "Badjuju" for our version.

Today, we're building our Badjuju to torch this weekend. Help us stuff our "Writer's Old Man Trouble" with your rejection slips, deep-sixed manuscripts, misguided reviews, low contest scores, delusional judge's comments, and other worries and woes so you can watch them go up in a blaze of glory.

For the sake of nostalgia, let's see what some of last years' Badjuju participants tossed into the heap.

From Sharon Lynn Fisher: "That feeling of being left behind when it seems like everyone around you is selling!" Hmm, Sharon has since sold to Tor in a two book deal. Torching Badjuju sure worked for her.

Donna Frelick also had some items to add, among them "Somewhere around 3000 extraneous words from both of my current manuscripts--if I could only figure out which ones!" If I'm right, Donna has more than succeeded in her goal and garnered a few contest finals and wins along the way. Maybe there's something to this Badjuju thing?

We had other items thrown into the pyre by Pauline Baird Jones, Lisa Paitz Spindler, Lisa Lane, Jaleta Clegg, Frances Pauli, and Sandra Stixrude. Read what they had to contribute in last year's event. Then join in the fun.

What would you stuff into Badjuju?

Returning to Another World

2011-09-05T13:29:00.000-06:00

Laurie's Journal

My crazy crunch time at work is finally over, and I can now return from my world of projections, strategic plans and expenditure analyses to spend more time in my favorite place--my writing universe.

*happy, happy dance*

I'm also returning to a planet I left behind four years ago when I shelved a favorite project in favor of two manuscripts I thought might be more marketable. (In hindsight, that was probably a big mistake, but you know the saying about hindsight and visual acuity).

Reopening Katrina's story is like a homecoming of sorts. Sometimes you can go back again...at least in the fictional world...and this realm and its characters will always hold a special place in my heart.

Let me share a little story behind the story.

In the mid-90's I was actively marketing several romance novels and I was getting requests, but as is the challenge in this business, no takers. I eventually got discouraged--extremely discouraged. In 1997, I strayed away from my trusty keyboard and the months became years, and the years soon turned into almost a decade. Meanwhile, I was distracted by a series of other pursuits including a business venture raising Thoroughbreds, a five-year stint as a reserve law enforcement officer, and a hold-down-the-fort battle (and it was a real battle at times) running a small ranch while my husband was on a series of deployments with the military for five years. During this time, my novels lay dormant on my computer, gathering the equivalent of electronic dust, and the yet-to-be-written stories still in my head receded into the dark places in my mind that seldom see the light of day.

Then, on a lonely Halloween night in 2006, I had an epiphany--and a lot of help getting back on track.

David was still on deployment and for some reason (call it karma) I was possessed to sit down and spend my evening watching a Lord of the Rings marathon. Funny thing about that. I detested those movies prior to that night. I found them long, dull and boring. But for some reason this particular night...I "got" them. The underlying themes spoke to me about mythic quests, perilous adventure and tests of the heart. And the themes weren't the only ones talking. The characters of this world--that long forgotten epic in my head--started whispering in my ear, tapping my shoulder and tugging on my shirttails. And they were very insistant.

They said, "If the world is ever going to know our story, you need to tell it...while there's still time."

A stroke of inspiration led me to sit down at my computer the next morning and start pounding away on the keys. Within a few months, I had written 90% of the first draft. All the while, I beat myself up for ever abandoning my writing. My God, I'd lost an entire decade! How could I have become so distracted? Why did I let so much precious time pass?

At RWA this year, a panel of well-known authors was asked if they had their careers to do all over again, what would they do differently. One replied that he'd have started writing much earlier. But Diane Gabaldon said something that really struck a chord with me. She said she wouldn't have had the life experience to write the books she'd written if she'd started earlier. Amen, sister. And *lightbulb!*

Things happens for a reason.

To everything, there is a season. (Turn, turn, turn)

In that moment, I realized I hadn't finished this novel before now because I wasn't prepared to finish it. I no longer resent that decade as lost time. Now I'm grateful for it.

Although two other novels managed to bump this story out of line to be completed first, I've now returned to the world I love so well and the characters that are probably responsible for my second chance at a writing career. I've come home to Draxis, and this time, I'm bringing to the table a very valuable commodity that may have been lacking before--a whole lot of life experience.

Now...*drum roll please*...I have some great news to relate that provided me with a fresh burst of incentive. Draxis (under a working title) just finaled in its first contest! *\o/*

Now you'll have to excuse me because I really need to get back to work. :)

(To be continued...)

APOCALYPSE NOW OR LATER

2011-09-02T12:16:00.007-06:00

A week after our brush with the apocalypse here in central Virginia, I am back at my keyboard with a grateful heart. My house is still standing, despite an earthquake, a major freak thunderstorm and a hurricane. I have electricity and drinkable water and drivable streets. There are a few trees down in my neighborhood, a few neighborhoods just getting the lights back on. But overall, Fredericksburg fared better than Louisa County (at the epicenter of the earthquake), Richmond, Virginia Beach or Cape Hatteras (lashed by winds and rain) and certainly better than dozens of little towns in Vermont (surprised by Irene’s floods).

Being of a Biblical turn of mind here in Virginia, we’re inclined to keep an eye on the horizon for a plague of locusts next, but perhaps things are back to normal, what with a tropical storm headed for the Gulf Coast and the earthquakes back where they belong in Alaska and California. We will definitely be watching the outcome of those acts of Mother Nature with a more heightened sense of sympathy now, though. In the face of the true power of this world—when the earth moves or the wind blows at a hundred miles an hour or the sea rises up and takes the shore—humankind has little more than faith, hope and a limited set of survival skills to rely on.

The question I have, in the midst of all this real destruction, is why one of the most popular sub-sub-genres of SFR and YA is post-apocalyptic fiction. Of course, the story set in a bleak future following the destruction of our current decadent society has been an SF staple from the establishment of the genre. And it certainly must have seemed that the “end of civilization” was near at other times in our history—during the Cold War, for example, with the threat of nuclear war hanging over our heads.

But as T.S. Eliot once said, “This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.” Today, in 2011, it really does seem as if we might be on the way out. In a slow crumble, as the temperatures rise and the ice caps melt and the oceans rage and the earth groans. Do I want to read a novel about it? Not really. Do I want to spend months writing one, putting all my emotions into it, living it day after day until it’s done, then selling it to others for them to enjoy? Hell, no. I actually have a story to tell about the end of the world as we know it, but the thought of living with it while I write it depresses hell out of me. It’s one thing to write to exorcise your demons. It’s quite another to draw a pentagram on the floor, burn a black candle and whisper incantations in the night, thinking you can manage whatever rushes into the room.

Think I’ll stick with torturing, slave-trading aliens, thank you very much. They may not sell, but they’re not nearly as scary.

Donna’s Journal

Discoveries
New authors, cool web sites, great workshops, great online sites!

The biggest obstacle to digital publishing is piracy, by which Internet thieves steal e-book files and offer them free through filesharing sites like rapidshare and megaupload. Now the Curtis Agency and E-Reads have collaborated on a program to find and take down pirated files, a program that will help not only Curtis Agency authors, but others as well.

The system, developed by Muso TNT, sends out “spiders” over the Internet to find unauthorized files, searching by author. The spiders store the files on a password-protected site for later inspection by the author, agent or publisher. If the files are found at an unauthorized site, one click sends the files to a site administrator, who issues a standard Digital Millennium Copyright Act and takedown procedures notice. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifQuick and easy, even if chasing digital pirates is like playing Whack-a-Mole, as one commenter admitted in the back-and-forth that followed the article in E-Reads' blog.

E-Reads describes itself as “a trail-blazing reprinter of out-of-print genre and general fiction and nonfiction by leading authors.” Books are available in ebook and paperback format. The Curtis Agency is a well-known New York literary agency. Read the full article about the anti-piracy system at http://www.ereads.com.

Cheers,Donna

Sound Off: Did Science Fiction Just Become Fantasy?

2011-08-27T22:17:00.000-06:00

It's been a long while since I've written a Sound Off article, but I have these thoughts boiling just under the surface really need to be voiced. So pardon my rant. In advance. As you know I don't do political commentary on this blog. Ever. But this is going to come pretty darn close.

You've probably read my frequent laments on shutting down our shuttle program, laying off thousands of NASA employees and tossing decades of space savvy know-how to the four winds. What country would be so stupid as to give up their advances in the final frontier? Why would we do this when we have no system to replace the shuttle? And why retire the shuttle fleet when we currently have American astronauts serving on the ISS (International Space Station) that we presume would like to see their families and homes again someday.

These questions have been pooh-poohed by those in power who sought to kill the shuttle. "Simple solution," they said. "Our astronauts will just hitch rides to and from the ISS with our friends the Russians on one of their Progress spacefreighters until we have a new manned space program back in place, in ohhh, maybe four or five years. Or maybe a decade if we run into problems re-inventing the wheel. Or maybe never, if our economy continues this meltdown. But *shrug* no one really cares about the space program anyway.

Don't we? Shouldn't we?

Maybe you haven't heard the latest news?

Not a surprise, since most American news networks seem determined to bury it, because...you know...we wouldn't want to make anyone in power look bad for the devastating decisions they've made about our future.

That Russian Progress spacefreighter we were counting on? Yeah. Well, it had an accident. Surprised? Yeah, me too. Surprised and wondering why the news gave more coverage to Somebodyorother's wedding than something as monumental as a catastrophic failure of a spacecraft system we're really counting on. Fortunately, this flight wasn't manned, but Russia wants some time to investigate and re-evaluate after the mishap. Can't really blame them, can we? The USA certainly did the same after the accidents we suffered.

Meanwhile in the meager bits of news we're getting about this situation, the public is being assured the astronauts aboard the ISS have *plenty* of supplies to last them until the next flight which is now delayed until October. The flight which, incidently, is in question of being launched at all.

I wonder what our astronauts are thinking right now as they look down on the beautiful blue world that is Earth. Do they wonder if they're going to make it back home again?

I can tell you what I'm thinking from my perspective here, safe and sound on the good, green Earth. I'm thinking Science Fiction may have just become Fantasy, because I don't have high hopes that after disassembling our current space program that we'll ever get it back as a nation. Gone are those wondrous, heady days of the 1960's when we first met the challenges of space travel, and the 1970's - 2000's when we as a nation, gained cutting-edge knowledge, and expanded our sciences, technologies, and medicines through our space program. And we dared to dream positive dreams about a brave new future.

We can still dream. But like the proverbial castle in the air, we've now burned down the foundation we'd made so much progress in building beneath it.

What about commercial space flight? Well, that's the key word, isn't it? Commercial. While I applaud pioneers like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, I don't see space flight as something that's going to be profit-generating for several generations. I also think they're going to be subjected to the same political whims and budget cuts NASA has suffered. I fear once the novelty wears off, most commercial endeavors are going to go the way of the buffalo. I hope I'm wrong, but that's not what my gut tells me.

Now it's your turn to sound off. What do you think?

SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED

2011-08-26T11:18:00.003-06:00

I get the feeling the universe is trying to tell me something. I just wish to hell I could decipher the message. Run for the hills? Yeah, maybe something like that.

It’s one thing to read about earthquakes in some remote part of the world—Haiti or China or even California. It’s another thing entirely when your own house in seismically somnolent Virginia starts to rock and roll like it did this week. My home in Fredericksburg is about 30 miles from the epicenter of the quake in Mineral, Virginia. At 5.8 on the Richter scale, the tremor was sizable enough to cause an audible rumbling. The house shook, pictures fell off the shelves, the dog began to bark and, well, you saw the news. In the nation’s capital, people rushed into the streets (where the bigger danger was getting run over by a taxi), the White House and the Capitol were evacuated, the Metro slowed to a crawl and general chaos ensued.

Yes, I know, you West Coast folks are laughing your tails off at our reaction. It’s as if God just took a stick and stirred up an anthill to watch the poor things scurry in panic. But, you know, we don’t have earthquakes back here. My daughter, who works at a daycare facility, searched in vain in their Emergency Action Plan for protocol for “earthquakes”. “Nuclear holocaust”, yes, “earthquakes”, no. Same thing for my friends at the local YMCA. Finally someone thought, okay, maybe we should go outside.

For myself, I was in my basement media room watching TV and eating lunch. At first I thought the boys at the Naval Surface Weapons Center some miles away at Dahlgren, Virginia had gotten carried away. We often feel the pounding when they conduct tests. Then I thought, in rapid succession, truck-accident-through-my-door-gas-explosion-oh-my-God-EARTHQUAKE! At that point, my recliner had turned into a vibrating Barcalounger, but the electricity gave nary a flicker, the TV went blithely on and I heard nothing but the rumbling of the ground. About 15 seconds in, the dog barked (so much for animal prediction—maybe they need to be familiar with the pattern first?). About 30 seconds in I thought I should make a move for a doorway or something, but by that time the shaking was tapering off.

When it was over I checked around the house and found a few photos down, one piece of glass that had rested on a windowsill broken. Some of my china had fallen over in the china cabinet, but was miraculously still in one piece. No cracks, no dust, no craziness. I looked outside. No people in the street. Okay, no harm done.

I went to check the news. OH LORDY LORD! IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD! CALL US IF YOU HAVE DAMAGE!! (Yeah, they actually asked the TV audience to spread the panic.) People milling about in the streets of D.C. Millions of dollars of damage (mostly to replace expensive stonework on the National Cathedral). For a minute I thought maybe I should start panicking.

Then I got a grip. Legitimately, some apartments in the D.C. area, some businesses and historic buildings closer to the epicenter did sustain substantial damage, but really, folks. Go to Haiti and see what earthquake damage looks like. This was a very mild quake, exacerbated by the type of soil we have in the East, which shakes like Jell-O for a long distance from the epicenter. This wasn't a release along a major fault, like the New Madrid. (When that went last time--in 1811--the Mississippi flowed backward.) We were lucky. This time.

Now, this hurricane coming up the coast? That’s something to worry about. The last time a big one came through Virginia some homes were without power here in Fredericksburg for two weeks. Trees crashed into roofs and blocked roads, flooding damaged homes and crops, people were killed and injured. We’re battening down the hatches as I write, a state of emergency has already been declared for the eastern part of the state and cities further up the East Coast are girding for Irene, too. Just another economic blow this country doesn’t need in a year that’s already seen too many of them.

So I’ll be holed up this weekend with some candles and bottled water and a stack of books to read while the wind screams and the rain washes over me. I’m just grateful the house is still standing! And as soon as things clear up I may just read the writing on the wall and pack a bag for the distant hills.

Donna's Journal

Some good news in the midst of all this gloom and doom: Trouble in Mind is a finalist in the Paranormal/SFR/Urban Fantasy category of the 2011 Rebecca contest (Land of Enchantment Romance Authors--New Mexico)! Not only that, but since Laurie has been too busy to mention it, she is also a finalist in the Rebecca contest, in the same category, for her SFR novel Project Pyramid! Of course, the judges will just have to flip a coin to determine a final winner!

Cheers, Donna

2011-08-20T08:28:00.000-06:00

Donna’s Journal
Brevity is the Soul of Wit; or
Dog Days Edition II

Time has gotten the better of me this Friday, so I just have a few brief notes to pass on. The good news is that I have returned to work on my WIP Fools Rush In, the third in my Interstellar Rescue series, this one set entirely away from Earth. I discovered the missing element in that story, the piece that, like a misfiring piston, was keeping the engine from starting up. It should have been obvious, but for some reason, it wasn’t.

The story lacked a villain.

Oh, it had generic bad guys and forces that worked against my hero and heroine and all that. Things happened that kept them from their goal (and from each other). There was even a mysterious mastermind behind the dimwitted plotters who are murdered before they can talk. It was like my writer’s intuition had been screaming at me for chapters to invent this guy, and I just wasn’t listening. I was dragging my feet and hemming and hawing and things were going SO SLOWLY, all because I wasn’t paying attention to what my instincts were trying to tell me.

Villainy needs a face. And a name. And his or her own motivation. In short, the villain should be a distinct CHARACTER, not just Evil or The Others or some such. Seems so easy when you put it like that, right? (Well, it IS just a first draft, after all!)

I suspect the plotting will go much faster now that I’ve got my ears on straight.

Although my plan to read my way out of the doldrums seems to be working, I’m not about to give up just yet. My current read is Eloisa James’s delightful A Kiss Before Midnight, the Cinderella story retold as only the very funny queen of historical romance can do it. I thought James’s Regency take on TV’s House was a hoot, but this one is even better. I’ve been laughing out loud for days and falling in love with the hero and heroine at the same time. Wonderful!

Cheers, Donna

2011-08-12T20:40:00.001-06:00

Donna’s Journal
Bookshelf
Books we're reading and mini-reviews . . .

Well, the dog days have hit, it’s a hundred degrees in Virginia, my grandson’s summer visit is over, and I feel like a starship drifting along on impulse. I can barely drag myself to the computer to complete the revisions on my “old” manuscripts in case anyone asks for them, much less fire up my creative spirit to do any new work. We all have these low-energy slumps, and I don’t fret over them. I pick up a book (or two, or seven) and read the results of someone else’s hard work.

The RWA National Conference is always a great source of new reading material (and new authors) and this year’s con was no different. I started with Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, the mother of all Scottish Highlander/time travel/ historical romances, one of the free giveaways at the authors’ opening panel speech in NY. Having read some of the “children” of this very popular subgenre—most notably Karen Marie Moning’s Highlander novels—I was curious about how such a huge trend could have found its start in what another panel at the conference called a “bumblebee book”.

When it came out in 1991, Outlander was a book that should never have flown—it was too long; it had too many historical details for a romance, too much romance for a historical; and there was this odd element of time travel—the heroine steps into a stone circle and is thrown back in time from 1945 to 1741. In the story the hero and heroine don’t meet right away, don’t begin their romance for another hundred pages; the author tends to go off on tangents about every little thing—medicinal plants, witchcraft, horse training, 18th Century European politics. And, perhaps bravest of all, the hero suffers abuse at the hands of the villain that would still be seen as shocking not only in historical romance, but in paranormal or urban fantasy as well.

Two things keep the book miraculously in the air, and both are the consequence of Gabaldon’s huge, uplifting talent. The first is the heroine’s remarkable voice. Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser (she has occasion to use all three last names in the course of the book) has such a unique way of seeing the world—endlessly curious, compassionate, intelligent and brave—that you can’t help but want to hear all about it. If she stops to take a detour through some lost battlefield or 18th Century hospital, you forgive her, because she makes it so damn interesting. The emotions she describes—her own and those of the people around her—are just as real and finely drawn, as vivid as if this were a diary written by a perceptive observer.

It is because Claire falls in love with him that we fall in love with Jamie Fraser, the hero of the story. We see him completely from her point of view, but she allows us a deep insight into his character because he holds nothing back from Claire and she accepts him as he is. Writing from the first person is an extraordinarily difficult task—there’s always something you need to tell from the other person’s POV—but Gabaldon has managed it here with skill.

The second engine keeping this book in flight is Gabaldon’s talent for keeping the pressure on her protagonists. When you are reading along and every few pages you find yourself yelping, “Oh, my God!” or “Oh, no, she didn’t!”, you know you’re in the hands of a master. I had a writing teacher once who explained the process of creating fiction as taking a protagonist and giving him or her problems to solve. Well, Gabaldon gives Clair and Jamie problems in spades. Piles them on. I wish I could give a brief recounting of one example of this, but paraphrasing it just wouldn’t do it justice. Let me simply say that in one chapter of the second book of the Outlander series, Dragonfly in Amber, there are about seven reversals of fortune in the span of ten pages, ending with Claire literally running into the villain in the midst of an escape from someone else. Oh, and then there was her escape from him, so I guess that makes eight.

By my mention of the second in the series, it’s obvious I’m hooked on Outlander. Of course, Gabaldon doesn’t help her readers by ending each of her books on a cliffhanger. I did stop myself after the second book, though, making myself wait and read something else in between “episodes” of the Claire and Jamie story. Otherwise I’d be wrapped in a tartan and talking like Montgomery Scott until my husband disowned me.

The change of pace I chose was quite dramatic—Barbara Elsborg’s contemporary erotic masterpiece Strangers. Here is another book in that category of bumblebees—things that soar when they shouldn’t even get off the ground—and that big buzz you hear is the sound of readers who LOVE this book. Include me now as one of them.

Strangers is the story of Charlie and Kate, two lovers who meet as they are trying to drown themselves in the ocean. Not a promising start, one would think, but again, the story is saved by Barbara’s (and I’ll use her first name since she’s a “blog friend”) great talent for creating two characters who seem so real, so vulnerable, so warm and willing to try again that we can’t help but love them.

Charlie, a musician/film star almost destroyed by his fame, and Kate, a waitress with hidden talents and a devastating past, find each other at the lowest point in their lives and make plenty of mistakes along the way to a better future together. They aren’t helped by Charlie’s scheming agent or Kate’s so-called friends, either. What is wonderful (and awful) about Barbara’s story is the depth of human detail, the sense of reality in the dialogue between these two damaged people. Barbara doesn’t hit a false note anywhere, even though the material is often difficult—child abuse, grief, betrayal, abandonment. And yet, Charlie and Kate often face their lives with humor, and their relationship uses it to good advantage—Charlie is attracted to Kate because she refuses to treat him with kid gloves. Even while the two are still in the ocean at the very beginning of the story that humor emerges to save the book from the maudlin.

The question arises (in my mind, at least) as to what separates this novel from any “mainstream” contemporary romance, aside from the fact that it comes from a recognized publisher of erotica (Ellora’s Cave) and contains rather more than the usual number of sex scenes. I certainly wouldn’t compare it to other erotic novels I’ve read lacking well-developed plot, defined characters or, ahem, redeeming social value. But then, Barbara’s work is always a cut above, no matter what label you give it.

Cheers, Donna

BEAM 'EM UP, COWBOY!

2011-08-06T15:21:00.000-06:00

If you’re going to make a movie with the title COWBOYS AND ALIENS, you’d best have a sense of humor. Fortunately for their audience, director Jon Favreau and writers Damon Lindelof and Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman, maintained tongues firmly in cheek while crafting this tale of visitors from space landing smack in the middle of the usual wild west hoohah.

Daniel Craig turns in a creditable job as a post-modernist Man With No Name, waking up in the desert in the first scene with no memory and a big ole shiny thing-a-ma-bob on his wrist that no amount of hitting with a rock will dislodge. Harrison Ford shows up soon enough in the growly role of semi-evil cattle baron. He’s there to rescue his worthless, cowardly son, who’s been shootin’ up the town, but as soon as he lays eyes on Craig, he recognizes him and wants to kill him. Too late—the sheriff (Keith Carradine, always good in a cowboy hat) has already identified him as a wanted criminal and will hang no man before his time.

In the middle of all this, dad-burned ALIENS show up and really start shootin’ up the town, lassoing (yes, literally) citizens along the way. As you might imagine, six-shooters have little effect against what appear to be atmosphere-capable starfighters. But, much like Frodo’s Sting, our cowboy hero’s magic wristband begins to glow as soon as the aliens appear over the horizon and blasts one of the ships clean out of the sky.

Are we having fun yet? Well, yee-haw, you bet we are! Throw in Olivia Wilde as the Mysterious Woman, Adam Beach as Harrison Ford’s much-abused half-Indian foster son/ranch foreman (think John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter in THE SEARCHERS), Indian attackers-turned-allies, a doctor called Reverend and a bartender called Doc and a priceless scene between Ford and a small boy recounting the horrific history of a knife and you’ve got more than enough to keep you entertained for two hours.

I gather some critics were disappointed that this movie does not meet expectations for opening up a whole new crossover subgenre for exploitation. Well, no. What it does is exploit beloved clichés of both genres for pure entertainment value. Even the reason the aliens come to Earth is based on a common Western theme—they want gold. Gold is an excellent conductor and might be rare and useful to any advanced species, so it actually works here, too. There is no depth at all to this movie, but who cares? If you are a fan of Westerns and SF, and you can relax about it, you’ll have a good time.

Similarly, I wouldn’t look for depth in TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON. It’s all action all the time in this third installment of the Transformers franchise, which is just as well. The few moments we spend with Shia LaBeouf’s whiny, not-too-bright Sam Witwicky are largely a waste of time. And, fanboys, here’s an announcement: a guy like Witwicky would never have a girlfriend like Carly (model Rosie Huntington-Whitely). Just doesn’t happen. And, no offense, Hollywood, but I’m tired of seeing it onscreen when the flip-side—a “loser” female paired with a handsome, rich male—is never seen.

Two things save this two-and-a half-hour homage to Hasbro’s ingenious toy inventions of the Eighties: the effects, which are spectacular, and the wacky performances of some of Hollywood’s best. John Malkovich is a hoot as the self-parodying CEO of a megacorporation that hires Witwicky. Frances McDormand does a hilarious turn as the director of a government agency charged with minding the Transformers. Patrick Dempsey is beautiful—and smarmy—as Witwicky’s erstwhile rival. John Turturro chews the scenery nearly as effectively as the Decepticon’s grinding gear-and-bladed python. And Ken Jeong provides a good ten minutes of completely meaningless fun as one of Witwicky’s co-workers.

I was delighted to recognize Leonard Nimoy’s unmistakable rasp as the voice of Sentinel Prime. What better excuse for any number of TREK references in the dialogue throughout the film?

Okay, so far I’ve given one A and one B. Sorry to say I have to give a C this time out, too. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER had a lot going for it, but falters by taking itself way too seriously. You would think “camp” would be written all over a script that includes evil Nazis in possession of a secret formula; a villain with a red skull bent on world domination; a wasp-waisted female “handler” with a crush; and a hero that goes from 90-pound weakling to bulked-up he-man in seconds and uses a machine gun and an American-flag shield as his weapons of choice. But, no, everyone except Tommy Lee Jones (as the Army general who is supposed to find a use for “Captain America”) and Hugo Weaving (as Doctor Nazi Red Skull) seems to be treating this as Oscar material. Puh-leeze.

I could even have tolerated this until the ending, which, not to give away anything to those who haven’t seen it, is nothing more than a blatant come-on for a sequel. Well, I won’t be on pins-and-needles waiting for that one to come out.

DONNA’S JOURNAL

The August, 2011 issue of Romance Writers Report, the official magazine of Romance Writers of America, features an article by Larissa Ione, author of the Lords of Deliverance series of apocalyptic romance on dystopic, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic romance fiction. The end of the world has some appeal as a subject for SFR, says Ione, even beyond YA and digital publishers (a viewpoint I heard expressed among editors and agents at the conference in New York, also). The author points out, however, that working with such dark material isn’t always easy. As always, the worldbuilding must be meticulous, but not overwhelming. Some readers prefer man-made disasters, others, natural ones. And finding time for love among the ruins is a challenge. The article is available online for members at http://rwanational.org/.

Cheers, Donna

DEATH OF A DINOSAUR: BORDERS CROSSES OVER

2011-07-29T12:25:00.010-06:00

And now a moment of silence for the passing of a dinosaur. Not the last of its kind, but at one time a large and fearsome beast, now reduced to a blind, stumbling hulk gasping out its last days in the desert of uncaring commerce. Borders, once the purveyor of authors’ dreams along with the books you could hold in your hand, now and forever out of business.

What of the authors whose books once graced the shelves in Borders’ many shelves? The publishers, editors, agents, cover artists and assorted others associated with the actual production of books? With some exceptions, for anyone under the age of oh, say, thirty right now, the answer is a profound “Meh.” Add a shrug if you want.

Oh, but there’s still Barnes and Noble, you say. Books-a-Million. Even Walmart. Uh-huh. And a few small, dedicated independent bookstores still survive at minimal profit, too. And the libraries, God bless ‘em, keep fighting the good fight for shelf space while ebooks, DVDs and outreach programs compete for budget dollars.

Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite, Amazon, swallows the reading world. After all, what’s not to love? You can order real books and have them delivered anywhere in days. You can download ebooks to your Kindle or Ipad or phone and read them in seconds. You can self-publish your novel. You can distribute your digital novel to a worldwide audience. And soon, you will be able to publish your romance novel through Amazon’s own publishing line.

You don’t have to have lived through the days of the robber barons and their monopolies of railroads, steel and coal to know that there is something wrong with this picture. Barnes and Noble is barely holding its own against this juggernaut. Books-a-Million, Costco and Walmart survive because they are warehousing/ discounting-type operations. They sell large numbers of certain kinds of books that are guaranteed to make a profit. Forget the mid-listers in that scenario. And as soon as the book department starts losing money it will be shut down.

The closing of the Borders in my town of approximately 100,000 people means we will be without a bookstore. At least for a while. Books-a-Million plans to take over the recently closed Joseph-Beth bookstore in a few months. Walmart has books. We have a used/rare bookstore downtown. That’s it. Nothing else between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia.

Suppose for a moment that Amazon decides they don’t want to play nice anymore. (That assumes, of course, that they have been playing nice so far.) They can raise prices to whatever they want. They can refuse to carry books from this publisher or that one. They can refuse access to this author or that one. They can drop certain books and manipulate prices and promotions to encourage sales of others.

Who is going to stop them? Consider that even the people who would normally be in competition with Amazon (epublishers, for example, who have their own “distribution” sites), have agreements with them to expand the sales of their ebooks. The old rules against monopoly and restriction of trade apparently don’t apply. Yet. And by the time the powers that be figure out new rules, it may be too late. The power to make all the decisions will be concentrated in the hands of a very few—or maybe even just one.

So take a moment to mark the passing of this skeletal creature as it shuffles off into the distance. We know not what skulks at its heels.

Donna’s Journal
Action!
Actions I've taken as a writer. Where am I? What am I doing?

Well, I’m no Stephen King or J.R. Ward, y’all. When I go on vacation I actually, uh, vacate. (Did you know that Stephen works every day except his birthday and the Fourth of July? The Fourth of July? Really? Why not Christmas? Or Halloween? I don’t think J.R. ever takes a day off.)

But when I got back I finished up the revisions on Trouble in Mind and will be sending it out to my enthusiastic, but way-too-honest agent friend for her reading pleasure. Also to my beta readers (look out, you two), who now no longer have the excuse of the NY conference to escape the task of reading the manuscript. Then I go back to work on the first draft of Fools Rush In, the third book in the series. Really need to make some progress there.

Ping Pong
We'll comment back to our co-bloggers on things they've posted on their journals.

Thanks to Barbara Elsborg and D.L. Jackson, both experienced and multi-published e-writers, for their feedback regarding my thoughts on whether to go digital in my last journal post. Your comments were invaluable, ladies. I’m still mulling it over, getting closer each day. Thanks, too, to Laurie, who I know is also having the same kind of thoughts.

Cheers, Donna

Laurie's Journal

2011-07-25T09:57:00.001-06:00

Happy Monday, everyone!

I'm short on time yet again this week. I have a lot going on behind the scenes. Some good...some not so great. But that's okay, I'm a writer. I'll persevere! :)

So although I don't have much to say today, I'd like to share something exciting and inspiring with you that I just located on YouTube after hunting for three weeks. (I KNEW it would turn up!)

This was the opening clip to the 2011 Golden Heart/RITA Awards Ceremony this year and it highlights one of our favorite things--HEROES!--and even captures a couple of my favorite SFR leading men. Now, how cool is that?

Here you go. Enjoy!

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

2011-07-16T18:29:00.000-06:00

Last week I blogged about "When Careers Collide" in my weekly Mission Success writer's journal.

Here's a few photos to put a visual on what was happening in Los Alamos (and throughout our state) while I was attending RWA Nationals. The most serious situation was when a major wildfire entered the town of Los Alamos and threatened one of our national laboratories.

It's easy to see from the photos why this mission was named Operation Red Sky. The fire is still burning, but critical structures are out of danger and it is more than 50% contained.

[Photos arrived via email so I can't give credit to the exceptional photographer.]

Spacefreighters Lounge

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Living With World-Changing Prophecy

Announcements!

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Laurie's Journal: Mission Success

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Beyond Labels: Who R U?

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In which we continue to expound about character-driven sci-fi...

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Will the kids be driving landspeeders?

Where the Imagination Goes...

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Inspiring Quotes

3 in a row for Laurie's #3

Where the Imagination Goes...

50 Amazing Facts About Astronomy

Factoids: Fate of the Shuttles

AMAZING HORROR STORY

Do you write up or down?

Launch Date for GHOST PLANET!

Why it Shouldn't Happen in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Call for SFR Submissions

TERRA NOVA COVERING OLD GROUND

BANANA MAN SLIPS NOOSE

FREE BANANA MAN!

Mission Success: Laurie's Journal

APOLLO 18: HOWLING AT THE MOON

The Burning of Badjuju

Returning to Another World

APOCALYPSE NOW OR LATER

Sound Off: Did Science Fiction Just Become Fantasy?

SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED

BEAM 'EM UP, COWBOY!

DEATH OF A DINOSAUR: BORDERS CROSSES OVER

Laurie's Journal

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

SFR Holiday Blitz ~~ BONUS ~~