The Importance of Red Shirts

Recently, a beta reader who was looking over a novella for me said she wasn’t surprised when a certain character died: something about the guy just marked him as a ‘red shirt’ from the start. At first I was a little concerned. This character’s death was supposed to be a turning point, an event that showed that we were moving into the climax of the story and that things were serious now. If this guy seemed like a red shirt, that might dampen the impact of the moment.

(Point of interest: The term ‘red shirt’ comes from the original Star Trek series and refers to the fact that whenever an away party beamed down to an alien planet, there was generally one red-shirted crew member who got eaten/phasered/wasted by the bad guys. I hope that was educational for you. Next week I will explain the term ‘Jump the shark.’).

'Absolute Visions,' on sale now!

I'm part of a fantastic writers' forum called Absolute Write. AW is packed with talented writers, so when forum owner MacAllister Stone announced that she was putting together a speculative fiction anthology there were plenty of submissions, including mine. I sent in a personal favourite: a short sci-fi story called 'The Machine that Loved Alan Turing.' It's kind of a personal one for me, which sounds weird since it's a dystopia story about a robot in love with a long dead historical figure, but hey man, I can relate. I really love this story, but I was starting to worry that I was the only one: it had been rejected seven times before I subbed it to the AW anthology.

But then...accepted! My story was one of the 19 that made it into the book. I'm humbled not only to have made it into the anthology, but to have my name alongside writers that I admire such as Suzanne Palmer and K.L. Townsend. I have yet to read the other stories in the anthology, but I am still sure of their quality.


It's really amazing to have something of mine show up when I type in my name on Amazon.  Right now the hardcopy of the book is for sale for $9.99 on here. A kindle version should be up soon, but for now I can't wait to have the real thing here in my hands.

Oh God, that last part sounds like 'That's what she said' set-up...

Anyway, in case I'm not being subtle enough: Buy this book! It's full of work by both talented writers and illustrators (did I mention there's illustrations?). Support not only the artists but a great forum.

Somethings aren't obvious until you write them

This was supposed to be a longer post about, well, anything else, like my time in Amsterdam, or how learning karate has made me a better writer, or an update on my new year’s resolution, but I’m sick. Not really sick, just kind of sick. I’ve got a killer cold that’s seeped into my bones. I’ve been downing vitamin C, lemon and honey tea, and Echinacea. I’ve even been using a neti pot to try and clear out my sinuses. A neti pot, for those of you who don’t know, is a little pot you fill with boiled water and a salt mixture. You let it cool, and then you stick it in a nostril and let the water drain out the other side of your nose. It’s like a mix between an ancient Mayan torture device and something frat boys use to initiate pledges.

I realized how sick I was when I tried to write. The only parts that were any good, the only time my words rang true, was when I wrote about how much my characters wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep. I didn’t see how wiped out I was until I saw it written down in front of me.

So, after making an effort to put some words on the page and updating this blog, I’m going to do what my poor characters can’t and go hide under the covers. See you all in better health next week.

My Favourite Joke and Thoughts on Beta Reading

A young mother gets on a bus with a stroller. As she’s paying her fare the bus driver looks down at her child and says “Gawd, what an ugly baby!”

The woman is too shocked to respond. She pushes the stroller down the aisle and takes a seat next to an older lady. The older woman looks over and sees that the woman’s face is scrunched up as though she’s about to cry.

“What’s wrong, dearie?” the old lady asks.

“The bus driver just now, he really insulted me,” the woman said. The older lady scowls at the back of the bus driver’s head.

“Well, that’s not right! You shouldn’t just take it. At the next red light, you should go up to him and tell him that you’re not going to take that kind of treatment!”

The young mother looks down at her sleeping child and brushes the curls off his forehead. She nods, her jaw firm.

“That’s right,” she said. “I’m going to do exactly that!”

“Good!” the older woman says. She gestures at the stroller. “I’ll look after your pet monkey while you talk to him.”

Ba-dum tish! Okay, it’s a cheesy joke, but I find it sadly relatable. Whenever I ask people to read an early draft of a story I’m working on I worry that I’m like the mother in the joke, convinced that my baby is the most beautiful baby in the world where’s in reality it looks like a hairless lemur.

The Girl with a Beef against The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I don’t like this book. There are a lot of reasons, though the more controversial elements of the novel (like the fact that it has more rape in it than ten issues of a DC comic book) are actually pretty low on the list for why I think it’s no good. I’ll let others argue about whether it’s effective in its themes and message, whether it’s actually feminist or merely exploitive. There are lots of blogs out there already tackling that. My reason for disliking TGwtDT boils down to the writing.

This post will probably make a lot more sense if you’ve read the book, though if you haven’t you can still read it and be entertained by me ranting against the work of a dead guy who can’t refute my points. I try to avoid major spoilers here, but I do talk about later scenes in the book so be warned.

Problem number one: What to call blog?

So, in order to increase my web presence, I've decided to start a blog (again) about my life as a writer. For the most part this is just a place for me to keep track of what is going on around me, a place where I can note contest deadlines, writing tips, link to better blogs, etc. I had planned to start blogging at the beginning of 2012, but before I could start ignoring my blog, I had to name it. This took me several weeks.

Some early ideas I had revolved around puns. Whenever I thought of one that I thought might make a good blog title, I'd Google it. I have since learned that if you think of a good pun, fifty other people will have already thought of it and half of them will have blogs with it as the title. The Write Stuff, Write On, Walk Towards the Write, Write and Wrong, Left and Write, it never stops. So puns were out.

I thought of putting my vocabulary to work and giving it some really pretentious title. For awhile I considered christening this blog 'The Eidetic Amnesiac.' I thought it was a pretty good description of me in that I can remember in great detail books, movies, and arguments where I was totally in the right, but I often forget little things, like, say, turning off the coffee marker. I also liked that it was an oxymoron (my back-up title was 'The Waking Somnambulist,' which was also very oxymoronic and scored high points in the big words column). In the end I decided that 'The Eidetic Amnesiac' was just too lofty. I just wouldn't be able to keep up the level of snobbery that that title deserved.

Since highbrow was out, I thought of going in the opposite direction and just naming my blog after whatever was on Urban Dictionary's main page that day. At this point I was getting pretty desperate, but even then I still knew that Hippocampus, Yestergay, and Free Coochin' were not what I was looking for in a blog title.

So there I was sitting in front of my computer, eating a sugar cookie, trying to figure out what to name this baby. I looked at the cookie in my hand and thought 'I eat to much sugar.' Most people would think that this is a totally unrelated thought, but not in my mind. My brain took this stray thought and melded it together with my blog, and in a fit of laziness I had my blog title. Finally.

So, now that this blog has a name, here are some posts you have to look forward to:

-The crazy things we do for love and research
-What's up with the 'Wacky Gator' arcade game?
-Three times the universe conspired to give me free food
-My issues with 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (I can stomach disturbing content, but not bad writing)
-Links I like

I plan to update at least once a week by posting every Monday. So, see you then!