The Eyes of February

Right on the heels of my last blog post comes the latest announcement by the folks at Amazon about the results thus far of their Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. The "winners" of the first round were announced. 

For those who are unaware of this event, Amazon invites authors of both General Fiction and Young Adult Fiction to submit their books; the final winner will have his or her book published along with a host of other prizes. The first round of the competition involves judges reading 300-word "pitches" for the novels and deciding which 2000 of the original 5000 will move on to the second round.


Of course, I don't like to boast (well, sometimes it's all right) but I am on the list. To be more precise, my name is on the list. Specifically the General Fiction list. Peruse thus:

That means that my concise advertisement for my novel, THE DREAM LAND, was enticing enough to compel someone to invite me to stick around. A mere 297-word blurb has impressed someone enough to put my name on a list, and we all know the list is life, contest-wise.


Here is my list-worthy "pitch" for THE DREAM LAND:

Sebastian, that quiet tax examiner at the corner desk in the IRS service center, carries a dark secret: once upon a time he and his high school sweetheart Gina found a rip in the universe and stepped through it to a strange world of magical beauty.  
 
Far from being a Disney-esque playground, the world of Ghoupallesz bursts with cosmopolitan elegance, alien perversions, and political strife. Gina, the adventurous one, falls in love with the adventurous possibilities. Not Sebastian; always practical, he insists they return to Earth. Gina refuses so he goes back alone, vowing never to return. Yet he finds himself drawn back repeatedly--he calls it “research”--and often crosses paths with Gina. Sometimes he saves her, sometimes she saves him, forever soul mates. 
 
Now years later, life on Earth hasn’t gone well for Sebastian. Then the headaches revisit him, with flashes of memories from Ghoupallesz. Gina is in trouble again, he senses, and he must, as always, save her. Meanwhile, a pair of too-curious IRS co-workers have accidently overdosed on the Elixir of Love he brought back his last trip and the antidote exists only on Ghoupallesz. With these co-workers in tow, Sebastian returns through the interdimensional portal, fearing it may be his final adventure. He must gather his old comrades from the war, cross the towering Zet mountains, and free Gina from the Zetin warlord’s castle before her execution. Perhaps then she will stay with him.  
 
But are his adventures to the other side real? Or are they just the dreams of a psychotic killer? That’s what the police want to know when Sebastian returns without his co-workers.  
 
THE DREAM LAND (128,000 words) is a genre-mashing epic of interdimensional intrigue and police procedural, a psychological thriller marbled with twisted humor, steampunk pathos, and time/space conundrums.

What does this all mean? Last year I submitted a literary novel and the pitch did not impress anyone. I worked on it endlessly, tweaking every time someone commented on it. I'm not quite sure what I ended up with. This year, I wrote the blurb once...took about an hour with all the back and forth of ideas and editing...and only tweaked it three times, based on comments by only three close author friends who had read some of my work previously. Then I left it alone; I trusted my instincts.


As for structure, I think I did the right thing:

1. I did not try to tell the whole story in a nutshell, but


2. Gave the general situation and something of who the principal players involved were, and


3. Gave a direction for the story line, which


4. Ended with a compelling question that could only be answered by reading the book!


It may have helped that I tried to indicate a crossing of genres, thereby broadening my audience and the appeal of the story. Is it sci-fi or psychological thriller or interdimensional romance? Read it and find out, eh?


Word choice counts when you only get 300 of them. I did have some redundancies but I felt they were needed for individual phrases. And I noticed one typo after seeing my name on the list and returning to read my pitch and bask in the afterglow of winnerdom. Can you find it?


The next round involves judges reading the first 5000 words of the novels. Knowing this, I made sure to get all three major story lines started within that excerpt. I hope that it will prove compelling enough to advance me to the quarter finals where the full manuscript will be read. You can read the same excerpt judges will read by clicking here: Excerpt.

My forte is not the blurb. I need room to spread a story out and a novel seems the best venue. However, a lot of people will not attempt the novel unless they are hooked by a 300 word pitch (often fewer on the back covers of books). I was lucky this time. Some of my friends were not. Fewer of my author friends entered this year, it seems. Perhaps the reason is that they are simply too busy publishing their books from last year. That is, obviously, the preferred outcome, no matter whether it is achieved through a contest or through an agent, editor, or publisher.

Stay tuned for the amazing results!



You can also visit the DREAM LAND page for more of this sci-fi trilogy!

(Some day the deconstruction of the Sekuatean Empire shall indeed be complete - and we, the survivors, shall project our hearty guffaws across the universe!)


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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Description

Last week I got a bit obsessed with Description...the whole idea of lining up adjectives to explain to someone else what I was referring to--some place, perhaps, or a person I know.

My obsession reached a feverish pitch as I collected so-called description essays from my first-year college students. As I read through them (marking the obvious errors of spelling and grammar, suggesting different sentence structure, recommending additional content, and so on), I began to wonder what we really mean when we talk about description.

Then I realized, like a thump in the head from some wily Muse, what I was teaching my students might have far-reaching implications for my fellow fictioneers!

Describing Description

In Composition classes, we have exercises in which we pile up adjectives to describe a physical space, such as a classroom. That's fairly easy, but not so gratifying. Those kind of details might be sexy to a contractor planning a remodeling but not so interesting to the average reader. Perhaps because of my night job as a writer, I tend to notice things that most people don't (both a curse and a blessing), but I believe that when we have the chance to contemplate the things we encounter, we do make the details meaningful--somehow.

Of course, we discuss using the five senses in descriptions. The visual is always prominent, and hearing and smell come along sometimes. Taste is difficult to work in if you are describing, say, a house--unless you describe the dinner being prepared there, of course. And "touch" might be a bit awkward if you are describing a person. Fortunately, touch also works in a figurative way, just as a heart can be warm. The "sixth" sense also lends itself to wider use because of the mental associations we tend to make with the various details we encounter.

Examples of Description

When we note details of visual or other sensory input, we tend to also apply particular thoughts and feelings to those details. By way of convenient examples, let me use the opening pages of my forthcoming novel A BEAUTIFUL CHILL.

In the first sentence we have several details which are both visual and contextual. What I mean by visual is obvious: what is seen by the character who is introduced in the second sentence. By contextual, I refer to the connotations those visual details might have for the character. Snow is snow, yes, but what other meanings might snow have in the context of the scene? She tells us as we eavesdrop on her thoughts.

     Snow settles wet and heavy against the frosted windows, each fluffy flake fondling its kin, kissing and cuddling like a happy family reunion.

Já, if only it were so, she thinks, permiting a cautious smile to unfold.

And with each new snowflake that comes to visit, the snow family grows, and as it grows it transforms into ice, bears down against the glass, scratching and scoring it in uncomfortable patterns. With time, it crystalizes its history in twisted hoarfrost. Her smile crumples, disappears.

Here we have details which are primarily visual but, as the heroine is introduced, we understand that what we see is what we see through her eyes, hence the details become contextualized.

At first we might feel uncomfortable with the alliteration in that first sentence, but the next sentence gives us the fact that we are seeing, and thinking, about the snow on the window in the way she is thinking of it. A person might believably think of what she sees in a fun, poetic way, especially while passing the time. The first sentence is actually part of her thoughts.

Besides the visual details, then, we also gain emotional details of both the scene and the character who experiences the scene. As I always emphasize to my students the need to include thoughts and feelings about certain details, we must always see the sensory details of a place through the context of the characters who experience them. There is no objective description.

Description provides sensory details, yes, but also various associations the characters have with those details.

We also can describe action. Fight scenes and car chases come to mind, but even the simplest movement can provide further descriptive details which not only show us what is happening but, again, add context to other details. A little further down the first page of A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, we have some simple action:

Turning from the windows, she hangs her coat on the back of the chair and sits there to slip off her boots. She stands and takes the hem of her dress in her hands, pulls the dress up and over her head, her breasts bobbing free and her bare torso feeling a chill. She digs her thumbs under the waistband of her gray leggings and rolls it over her hips and bum, and down her legs, snapping them off her feet and wiggling her toes. She neatly folds her clothing, sets them on the chair, and waits.

A good blanket of snow can hide so much, she knows, once more returning her gaze to the snowy windows. Like clothing. Yet every spring, when the snow melts, the scars remain like wheel ruts cut into the soil, ruts that dry and harden during summer only to be covered again with the next season’s snow.

It is a simple description of a model undressing for a class, yet we do not yet have the proper context in the scene--it's an art class and she is the new model is the context which is deliberately delayed by the sneaky author. So, as it stands, we are left to wonder what's happening, not knowing yet what the context is. Why is she undressing? Is it going to be a sexual or erotic situation? The description of her movements themselves are presented simply and casually; there is no intention to make it particularly sexy--which adds more context to the "objective" details of the scene. We also get some further ideas about her from what she wears (or does not wear) and also how she treats her clothing.

The descriptive paragraph is followed by her on-going internal monologue regarding the snow. The clothing reminds her of how snow covers the ground. Context: there is similarity between clothed people and the ground covered with snow. At least, in her mind. What does that connection tell us about her mindset?

Write your answer here: ____________________________________________________

Descriptions commonly include adjectives but also may include metaphors and similes, those words and phrases which we understand to mean something else than just what the words may immediately present. If we say Joe is a lion on the football field, we don't mean he runs down players and chomps into their haunches for dinner but that he is ferocious as a football player. Nor if we say George is as strong as an ox do we mean that he can pull a two-ton wagon but, rather, he is simply stronger than most guys. Metaphors and similes are comparisons. We use them to describe something by saying what else it may be similar to or alike in some way. In fiction (dare I say "good" fiction?), metaphors often can be quite subtle and when used sparingly make for deeply nuanced description.

As we continue to the next page of the novel, our heroine, the model arriving in the art studio for her first time, surprises the instructor, an old professor who expects his regular lady to be there.

“And you are...?” [says the art professor]

She keeps her face on guard. “I am Íris.”

He repeats her name as though it were a strange, new color: “Eeeeris.”

“Já,” she says, and adds a curt nod.

She remembers when she was a little girl, the first day of school or some such mythic time, a long time ago, at any rate. Her teacher told her she didn’t belong. “No iris grows here, none at all,” said the old woman from behind her desk, checking a ledger and not looking at the child. “Your parents likely had no intention of you staying. We’ll see what good you can do until then. A pretty smile won’t get you very far, that’s for sure. Much less for that devil’s hair you’re wearing.” Thinking back, she does not believe she knew how to cry. She  went to her assigned desk and sat quietly, as expected, and stared out the frosty windows at the snow gathering against the panes, already feeling a chill.

Did you find the metaphor? It's hiding in plain sight. Her name has multiple meanings, one of which triggers her memory hoard. Her name obviously can refer to a flower, but also to a part of the eye (a metaphor for seeing? having insight?) and, as we learn later, the virtual bridge between heaven and earth in Greek mythology (and in Norse mythology, though under the name "Bifrost").

The moment in the present, however, becomes an open door to a moment in the past, and through this link we come to understand how she thinks of her name. From how she thinks of her name, we understand more about how she thinks of herself and her place in the world. And we further link that image and that idea of not belonging with the image of snow from the beginning of the chapter--creating a new metaphor that will become a major theme throughout the novel.


Descriptions are not merely decorations or clinical explanations of objective facts about time and space, but are keys to virtual doors that open to deeper meaning.

In the opening pages of the novel, the scene is intended to be very lonely, of course--even though it occurs indoors and there are a dozen or so people present. For the heroine, it is a vulnerable situation. To make the reader feel what she feels, we are presented with the details she notices--and don't get details she ignores. Snow and ice equal coldness which translates as the world is a cold place. Clothing makes the cold place tolerable. But then she must strip off her clothing, thus removing protection from the cold world. The final challenge is for her to stand nude before the crowd of art students--probably one of the bravest things anyone can do (so I've been told)--yet she handles it with all the dignity she can muster. That nakedness, vulnerability, "me against the world" kind of loneliness combines to create a new metaphor which will play out through the novel.

From this humble beginning, the heroine grows and learns to find her way through the experiences which follow, leading to life-altering complications (of course, that's the point of a novel) which test her resolve and force her into painful choices. You can read more here.

In our discussion of description, we realize that as writers we must be concerned not only with the particular details which our senses notice, but also consider how each of those details might have further associations for our characters. We must consider how any detail provokes thoughts and feelings and how these may open memories which illuminate the situation or the character's mindset, or set up metaphors which will serve as motifs, which serve as further images and contexts. It becomes a house of mirrors, where you see yourself endlessly. In a novel, we see the hero and heroine endlessly through images and thoughts and feelings.

Description thus includes (notes for the test): 

• sensory details (adjectives and their cousins)
• thoughts and feelings about the sensory details (ephemeral yet vivid)
• memories linked to sensory details as well as related thoughts and feelings (with dream-like fuzziness?)
• action and movement (avoid excessive adverbs!)
• metaphor and simile...and the motifs and themes which may evolve from them
• dialogue - what characters notice and choose to say, how they describe it, what they leave out

In this description of description, it seems that 90% of all writing is descriptive. Yet is that such a bad thing?

If you want bonus points, try John Gardner's famous exercise whereby you describe a funeral without using any words related to death, dying, deceased, etc.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Does Your Blog Follow the Latest Trend?

I've recently learned that people prefer blog posts that have a provocative graphic and are short.

http://www.amazon.com/After-Ilium-ebook/dp/B00538A19O/ref=dp_return_1?ie=UTF8&n=133140011&s=digital-text

May the Phlegm Be With You!

With apologies to George Lucas, I have been felled by the least important, least noticeable object in the universe. A mere dot on the back of a mere dot. I'm speaking, of course, of the microbe of doom. Yet it and its unsavory minions conspire to expand and fill every corner of sanity I dare believe exists within me with a golden, luscious, dripping pus. And down I go.

This is all toward me apologizing for being remiss in my blogging schedule. I confess: It has been 15 days since my last blog. (No doubt, some will rejoice.) To the sincere blogger, of course, the world seems to halt and nothing occurs. No news stories, no drama, no change of hearts or undos. Nothing was missed. Then, when we reappear, we play catch up and the world seems to suddenly shift into high gear.

The last thing I remember was a football game. And nachoes. And the cheese spilling on the computer keyboard. Then the symptoms of the Cold to End all Colds appeared. By Tuesday, the deal with the devil was struck: just get me through this week in one piece and I shall write a story with you as the hero. (I'm still working on that project, but Milton has the edge there.) Unable to be bedridden, I clambered to the office and shared my collection of microbes with my colleagues--fair compensation for them having once before shared theirs with me. I had to do that, had to save myself for the weekend!

Ah, the weekend! That fair-weathered friend who embraces us all with loving tears of joy! Or else condemns us to the death-bed and the wasting of precious time. Not for me. I dragged my drugs with me through the scheduled events of a teenage daughter's latest birthday weekend. Though it did not unfold without some disappointment (partly due to my germ-hampered planning and partly due to the whimsy of Fate), it shall leave us all better prepared for the festivities next year. It is a much more important milestone than this year's, anyway. An automobile is involved. Or some keys, perhaps.

And then the drive back, the sleep of the dead, the waking of the living, and snow--precious, dainty, horrific snow! Enough to ruin an innocent drive yet not enough to close the schools. With the local news cheerfully broadcasting Stay At Home alerts for the dangerous 1 inch of white we received, I found the highways impeccably bare. I had to chuckle as I drove along every time I spied a truck off the side of the road. Kids these days! Always trying to get themselves in trouble. So to the empty parking lot I eventually arrived, full of whimsy and the hope, however small, that students will misinterpret the "two hour delay" as "full day delay" and fill my classrooms with emptiness.

You know the drugs are working well whenever I wax wantonly poetic and pause only to lift mug (coffee) to mug (face) as I once again set my fingers to the keyboard, pontificating the merriment of the mind, and once again (yes, another 'once again'!) bother to bore the vast unwashed masses who haunt the recesses of recess of....

All right, I'll stop. "Please make it stop!" Stop talking to yourself. "I'm not talking to myself!" And mind all those exclamation marks! "I am minding all of my exclamation marks!" Sign off now. "You sign off!" No, you! "No, you!" Shut up! "You shut up!" Stop repeating after me! "Stop repeating after me!" Well, you're a nincompoop! "Well, you're a nincompoop!" You're the nincompoopery king! "You're the nincompoopery king!" No, you are! "No, you are!" Stop or I'll kill you! "Stop or I'll k--"


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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

New Book Cover...to be or not to be?

Once upon a time there was a book called AFTER ILIUM that was not too happy sitting on a shelf, waiting to be discovered. That was common in those days of the late 1990s. Yes, it was the best of times and the worst of times. Books were paper and sat on shelves. To get to an agent or editor they went out in boxes. Then, in summer 2011, the novella known as AFTER ILIUM was crafted into a full novel and offered for sacrifice to the Fates.

That was history--ancient history, ironically. Then came electronic books, a brave new contest and a reading revolution, and inevitably a book cover. I took a deep breath and dove into the Photoshop ocean and tried to swim. I could dog-paddle well enough, but I longed to win Olympic gold. That was not to be. Others assisted me in my cover creations and all was calm. Then a storm whipped up on the horizon, a tempest in a teapot, and blew my book cover away.

So once again, I pulled out my trusty Photoshop and set to work teaching myself everything all over again. The result is that in less than 19 hours I have made a new cover for my novel, AFTER ILIUM. What do you think? It may be bright enough, but does it grab your attention? Especially in a thumbnail form? This is the test for it before I send it out of the nest to fly on its own....

FURTHER UPDATE (FEBRUARY)

Fantasy Island Book Publishing's own staff artist Ceri Clark created the newest cover, which shall grace  all ebooks and print books from here on out.

***UPDATE***

Even newer covers made! In response to feedback, I have reduced the "red eye" effect, give Paris some shadow, and popped the title text. This time it only took 2 hours because I still remember how   to do it from a couple days ago. It is better now? (Compare to the previous "new" cover below.)

The old new covers:

front cover

front and back covers

So what do you think? Would you click on this pic? Would you turn it over to read the blurb? Would you buy it after reading the blurb? Would you be scared away by the author's portrait? 


Thanks in advance for your comments.


Here is my Amazon.com author page with links for ebook and print editions of After Ilium.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

It's ABNA season!

With the start of a new year the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards is once again open! 

Among my writer colleagues, impressions of this event seems to be equally divided between enthusiastic and wary. I tend to fall in the middle, as usual. I see the good and the bad. First, a little history, then a major plug for my indulgences....

After a hospital stay which had me worried about the future, I decided to shift into higher gear with regard to my writing, the only thing that really mattered to me. The first thing that came up was ABNA. I thought it might be a good test of my "best" novel, A BEAUTIFUL CHILL. At least I could claim to have something "out there" in some form. Meanwhile, I learned a lot from discussions with fellow writers. I got a query together and began sending them out. As I said, at least I was doing something.

Previously, I had revised my novels to within an inch of their lives, then set them comfortably on the shelves inside my computer. Too busy with other matters, I longed for the day I'd dust them off and hand them over to an agent or a publisher who would shower me with the praise and money from all my dear readers. Dreams tend to wait patiently, I've learned, especially if you don't call them forth to do something.

In the 2011 competition I was, as they say, pitched at the "pitch" stage. I think we all agree it's rather difficult to condense the essence of a 100,000 word novel into 300 words. Hook the reader rather than tell the whole story seemed to be the consensus of advice. Others thought we had to hint at the direction of the story. Others still complained that the instructions for writing the pitch led many to write something that would not be effective.

That led to my excerpt being dismissed. Since then, I have further revised the first chapter until it was so thick with blubber that it needed to be taken to a meat slicer. But amazing things did happen. I didn't win anything but I got noticed. And in that moment of time, that was quite enough.

I submitted my ABNA entry to an independent publisher and it is now on its way to being published (A BEAUTIFUL CHILL). I also was able to submit another novel to a publisher who noticed my writing through ABNA, and it is now "out there" for mass consumption (AFTER ILIUM). (Shameless plug: Available now at Amazon.com in ebook and paperback editions!)

So I'd chalk it up as an overall good thing. Some of my colleagues had less pleasant experiences. On the discussion boards where writers in general but particularly ABNA participants asked questions and received answers, shared writing samples and various links, and critiqued each others' work, it seemed at times to become a battlefield full of conflict. Noses were bloodied and backs were stabbed! I twisted an ankle.

Having sat through a few writing workshops over the years, I know how easy it is for personalities to clash and how different interpretations of a text can cause people to come to blows. I was not too involved in that side of ABNA; however, as a result of being supportive of some of the people there, I was also attacked. Attack, in this case, means an especially hateful critique was posted about my novel excerpt, more general vitriol than substantive criticism. The fighting went on.

I was out of the competition anyway, was now working with two independent publishers, and so I gradually faded from the discussion boards. Until now....

Once again, like spring following winter, the ABNA has returned! With two novels spoken for already, and another "on order," I had to choose something new for my entry. My remaining crown jewel, however, is a science-fiction novel: THE DREAM LAND (click to read ABNA excerpt).

Sci-fi never gets far at ABNA, apparently. There has been much discussion of genre bias, though much may depend on the personal tastes of the judges along the way. If any sci-fi work was to succeed, I considered, it would be mine. Why? Because my sci-fi tome is about as minimally sci-fi as any sci-fi novel could be. Indeed, it is overall a relationship story. It just happens to be set half the time on another planet, reached through an interdimensional doorway. Once there, my characters engage in the usual business of life: loving, fighting, traveling, eating and drinking, more loving and fighting, learning alien languages and adapting to alien customs. Like I said, the usual.

THE DREAM LAND must be classified for ABNA purposes as sci-fi because it does involve interdimensional traveling, but it also has significant elements of contemporary hard-luck stories of working class people trying to get by in government jobs, a police case involving the search for a serial killer, a reluctant psychiatrist trying to help a recent widower regain his connection with society. And, on the other side, we have two high school sweethearts who discover an invisible doorway through which to enter a strange new world. What follows are their sordid adventures, repeatedly returning to Earth and back to the world of Ghoupallesz, where they eventually become a famous warrior and his queen, both with families and responsibilities. Then, as all good stories must, there are twists, and twists upon twists which bring everything together in a stunning climax meant to blow readers' minds!

Wow, that should have been my pitch! I can't complain. It won't win. Probably the judges will never see it. I could be pitched at the pitch stage again, or I could go on living another few weeks as the 5000 word excerpt is scrutinized. Beyond that is the uncharted territory of the full manuscript, quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals. By then, of course, we will all be staring at the summer. By then, many of us will have started our next projects. Or we will be revising the one we tried at ABNA. (See a sample of THE DREAM LAND.) By then, ABNA 2012 will be forgotten and few will be thinking ahead to 2013.

It is a valuable learning experience, no matter the outcome. Even hard lessons are valuable. My skin is a couple layers thicker now, thanks to that experience. And my writing has improved. Or, perhaps, it is my revision skills that are better now. Either way, I give two thumbs up to ABNA and encourage anyone who has a novel length work to give it a try. I did, and I'm doing it again.

So...good luck to everyone! 
But better luck to me!


p.s., Reading The Dream Land will greatly benefit those who may wish to understand everything about the Sekuatean Empire.
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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Dealing with the "Mom" Review

It was not actually supposed to happen. Not in this lifetime, anyway.


My mother read my book!

Freshly out in the marketplace, my novel AFTER ILIUM (Fantasy Island Book Publishing, 2011) was always intended for an audience of everyone older than 16 and not my parents.

I'm no prude, but my novels deal with realistic, believable situations (yes, sci-fi included!) where characters act in rational or believably irrational ways when dealing with the situations in which they find themselves. That does mean sex and violence happen.

That does not mean "They kissed and the next morning he got out of bed and left her." Or "He threw a punch and missed."

Rather than go full porno ("erotica" to those gentler souls), I had the sex scenes told through the Point of View of the naive young man who experiences it. Needless to say, Alex has a romanticized lens through which to have his first experience with a woman, the older and exotic Elena, who he meets on the way to the ruins of ancient Ilium.

And the story features brutality on both sides: fighting, maiming, killing, and a sexual assault. People are hurt, some die, some survive but in a lesser form. What I attempted to conjure was hardcore reality--yet what would be believable for the characters and situations presented. Fortunately, our hero is not party to such violence--until later, that is, when he thinks he's killed someone.

Given this kind of story (young man meets older woman, has affair, gets into trouble, struggles to make his way back), I advised my parents that it was not suitable fare for them.

As former teachers, my father is an avid reader of history, politics, biography while my mother reads romance and Christian how-to books. I thought I was in the clear because my book was not among their usual genres. (My father, once upon a time when I was a young writer, stated firmly that he did not read fiction because it was not true; why read something that's fake?) I cautioned my mother that she would not be well-served by pushing my novel to her church friends. She should simply be happy for me for finally getting one of my "hobbies" published. I thought that was the end of it.

But no! Through the wonders of technology, a neighbor of my parents (who are deep into retirement) had a Kindle. They downloaded my ebook. Then the unthinkable happened: they lent the Kindle (with enovel on board) to my mother! Less than 24 hours later I received a phone call. It was time for The Mom Review.

I prepared for a grilling, as though I were still 9 or so and had been caught being mischievous. Actually, I had been mischievous--in my writing.

Rather than a verbal assault for the inappropriate content I'd written, my mother began with a list of items she thought needed to be fixed. No typos, thanks to my intense proofreading, but a few curious sentence constructions nevertheless. She pointed out grammar errors in the speeches of the Greek woman who is speaking English imperfectly. She questioned whether or not my use of Turkish phrases were correct. She asked about particular plot points, not understanding some of them. She compared the Iliad she had learned in school long ago (not as far back as Homer, however) with my version, as though there were more than one. I dared quote chapter and verse to back up my case.

And then came...the delicate parts!

In the scene where young Alex Parris is making love with the seductive Elena for the first time, the word "sailing" does indeed set up a metaphorical description of what happens. No body parts are mentioned. Everything is couched in nautical terms, to whit: She guided him on a tour of her body, and he was willing to explore each port of entry, languishing there until she called him to continue sailing her fragrant seas. You get the idea. I quickly deflected further discussion of the scene and allowed my mother to move on to her next area of concern.

We've become accustomed to violence, more so than sex, it seems. ("I don't mind blowing men's heads off in a war movie but I'll not sit still for bare tits on the screen!" I've heard before.) So there were few objections to the fight scenes. I was afraid she'd ask something about the sexual assault, but she passed it by. Too awkward, perhaps. Instead, she wanted to know the fate of Benson, the victim of the assault. I directed her to the page where that information could be found. [Nope, you ain't getting a spoiler here.]


Once through her list of concerns, I got the final assessment. Try to hear her voice in the way I've written it: "It was...um, g-good." I wondered at that moment how many stars I'd be getting. And then, leaving me in dismay, she added: "I think it's all right for [her church friends]." I suppose that's some kind of assessment, right? Kind of a "not as bad as I expected" review. Thanks, Mom! 


Dare she pass it on to my father now? If she does, there goes my inheritance. I wonder how to explain to any family member why I would write such sick, twisted scenes in my novels. What kind of person am I? They would no doubt be thinking: "Did we ever really know Stephen?"


How have my fellow writers dealt with their own "Mom" and "Dad" reviews? 


[I should point out--because they'll never read my blog!--that poor Alex's parents are modeled after my own, but, ironically, my mother only asked if Alex's father was supposed to be my father. She never asked about Alex's too doting mother. Hmmm. We write what we know....]




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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Am I a Masochist? Entering ABNA 2012

It is that time of year once more, the season of the contest! The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards!

I did it last year, on a whim. My book, a literary novel about a doomed relationship (A Beautiful Chill), did not get very far at all in the process. Nevertheless, the contest proved beneficial. Through associations I made I was able to get that book in the hands of a publisher and the book will be available later this year. I also was able to offer another novel (After Ilium) to a different publisher I met through contest participation. After Ilium is now available for purchase in ebook and print formats.

Although I may not show it by jumping up and down in the bookstore aisles (not yet, anyway) or putting my editors in my will, I am pleased with the way things are moving along.

Now it comes again: the Contest. 

I have nothing else to offer that has not already been spoken for in other venues...except one.

Based on last year's rough, cutthroat, backstabbing, heartshredding experience (somewhat for me and distinctly more for some of my colleagues), I know some of us do not relish the idea of diving back into those shark-infested waters, to use a dumb cliche. Some of us don't mind, of course, because we are, by nature, masochists.

Is it oxymoronic to use the words 'writer' and 'masochist' together? Perhaps. Especially in instances where a writer offers up his or her "baby" to the judgment of strangers. Yes, I am speaking of competitions and contests, typically of the sort where hopeful wordsmiths submit their manuscripts to the scrutiny of others. We work hard on a story, crafting it in ways that we believe render it effective and entertaining. That's what we believe, anyway. To be sure of it, we share it. But the process is a little strange.

Imagine if we took our child and treated him or her the way we treat our books? I've worked on this child for several years. We've changed hairstyles, fashions, interests and abilities, but it still has basically the same plot. And we did move from one setting to another, which may have some influence on the latter years. Still waiting to see what happens. So...what do you think? Good? Do you want more? Oh, I can dress him like a girl, if that's what you want. I can also make her talk like a grumpy old man. I can change anything, just please, love my child!

Fortunately, the book baby is a bit easier to deal with. I can take plenty of criticism about myself, my behavior, my quirks, my misanthropic tendencies (in writing, that is), but darned if I'll sit back and let people who don't know me and have no vested interest in what I do or do not do paste their judgments for all to see! Then again, that is part of the process. This is what we expect:

I made this book (that much is obvious). I worked hard on it (perhaps in futility; length of effort does not always correlate with improvement). I like how it turned out (which can possibly be confused with simply being glad that the thing's done). Now I want to know what you think of it (which in many cases seems to be an invitation to shower praise). --Really? That's what you think of my book?

And we swiftly unfriend. And start a new book. Because we are masochists. Because we are writers. Because masochist and writer are synonymous.

So, on that happy, uplifting conclusion, let me announce that for this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, I will offer up for sacrifice the first volume of my sci-fi trilogy The Dream Land. One slant that I shall cleverly take is to label the novel a psychological thriller rather than a work of science-fiction.


The story, you will see if you check here, is about an ordinary guy who quite likely is venturing through an interdimensional portal to another world where he is a lover and a fighter. Or he may be dreaming it all. This matters to folks back home because some people have gone missing and he is the last to see them. Did he accidentaly leave them on the "other side", or have they been conveniently murdered? Ah hah! you might be thinking. I get it! Psycho thrilla masquerading as sci-fi!

In case you are not convinced of my ultimate Winnerness, please consider this cute girl (click her to receive a happy thought)!

Good luck to everyone entering ABNA 2012... but better luck to me!



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(C) Copyright 2010-2012 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

There Will Be Blog!

Good Morning and Happy New Year! 
The world did not end! No, wait. That's this year. Never mind.

Many New Year's Resolutions are being broken, here on the third day of the year. But fear not, I am blogging. That is the least of my troubles. You see, as seems to always be the case, trouble follows me like a forlorn, starving puppy. This tends to happen most when I am away from what constitutes my normal environs, i.e., work, the day job, my position as a teacher of writing at a local university. It's a bittersweet effort, like most things in life. When it's good, it's very good, and when it's bad...well, let's not talk about that. We are still on winter break, thankfully or not, so I have some time left to fall into mischief.

Perhaps enough said on mischief, the better. Right? And yet, speaking of mischief...


Please read the preceding blog entry and click appropriately to quickly receive a copy of my new novel AFTER ILIUM, a modern retelling of Homer's infamous epic of the Trojan War and the adventures of Odysseus trying to return home after the war. In my take, a young college graduate named Alex Parris goes to see the site of ancient Ilium (Troy) and gets into trouble.

Not simple mischief as I tend to do, but serious, hardcore, desperate trouble. First, there's the woman: Elena (Greek for "Helen") who is older, mysterious, exotic, voluptuous, you get the picture. Elena and Parris, kind of a coincidence, huh? She lets him fall for her only to send him off on his own odyssey across the wild Turkish coast, trying to return to her. What young Mr. Parris experiences in what quickly becomes a fight for survival will teach him a lot more about life than four years of college ever taught him. He will be a very different person After Ilium.

Today After Ilium goes "live" on Amazon.com, available in ebook and paperback formats.
(Don't be alarmed by the glitchy "preview"; the real book you get is perfect and looks perfect.)

Be careful, however. It will make you horny, then make you cry. That's what readers have told me. Which is good, because that's what I intended. I love it when a plan comes together! (My parents are not allowed to read this book, so you know it's juicy.) Romance/betrayal/adventure/desperation/farmer's daughters and Navy doctors/goat piles and eye patches! Yes, youthful exuberance will get you in trouble every time!

The End is Near. Long live the Future!

Greetings and salutations bloggers, bloggettes, and bloggophiles (and the Freudian-slipped mistyped bloogers)!

I had sincerely believed I had put away the blogosphere for the year, having made plans to do unto others what has been done unto me, shorthand for making merry in the holiday tradition of my kinfolk. But, twas not to be. With a funeral trip and a lengthy stay in the sick bed (had an outstanding assortment of weird dreams), some quick final editing of my debut masterpiece AFTER ILIUM and even quicker academic conference proposal dashings off pre-deadlines, my break from the Day Job has hardly seemed the thing of endless possibility it began as. (I love long sentences, don't you?)

So now that the end is near, I feel rather jittery, full of unspent energy I barely used the preceding three weeks. As I spent some time perusing the proof copy of my novel AFTER ILIUM and finding a dozen spots to correct, it occurred to me that there may yet be a sequel in the works. Mind you, it won't likely be as intense in either sex or violence as the original. In fact, it would not even include any of the same characters, although I reserve the right to bring in the mythological undead, as hero Alex Parris often did in the original book.

This sequel would be titled WAY AFTER ILIUM. It would concern the journey, nay, odyssey of the author of AFTER ILIUM as he travels from his home away from heart in central Oklahoma to the deep south, to a town appropriately named Troy, in the state of Alabama. There he has planned an event at the local institution of higher education. Among the buildings of that institution squats a small yet magical Barnes & Noble store, ostensibly for the procurement of textbooks and the sordid what-nots of student life, of course. However, because it has gained a phenomenal reputation for magically launching the first works of several famous artisans, writers, skilled people of all makes and models, the Author of AFTER ILIUM wishes to likewise partake of the magical influences of that sacred venue.

The trip, of course, would be the bulk of the story. All manner of adventures might test him, everything from car trouble to bad weather, criminal mischief and indulging temptations, the innocent misdirections of well-intended community leaders and snarky local cops--all providing as great an odyssey as poor Alex Parris faced on his unexpected journey across the Turkish coastline, hoping to be reunited with the woman he loves--yes, that older, mysterious, exotic Greek woman he meets on the cruise ship to Istanbul and whom he sees as his personal Helen of Troy (perhaps, she's from Alabama, after all)--until his own physical survival must become foremost in his mind. Indeed, another morality play. The world of literature is full of them. One more won't hurt, eh?

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth," they say...because you may find Odysseus staring back with some choice-yet-unkind words to give!

Look for the original AFTER ILIUM coming in January! Available from the publisher Fantasy Island, and from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. (The Amazon "preview" is glitchy but will be fixed shortly; don't let that dissuade you from diving in.) Available both as ebook for your new holiday Kindle and in traditional paperback that you can take to the beach or read during class behind your textbook.

And the sequel WAY AFTER ILIUM will be forthcoming in a couple years or so. Well, at least after the Author has lived through the adventure--because we all know writers must write about what they know in order for it to be authentic and believable, right?

Until we meet again in print or ebook, may you all (especially my potential readers!) have the merriest end of year celebrations you can safely have, and may the coming year be full of amazing adventures and many purchases of books (especially of mine, thankyouverymuch!), and good fortune in all of your deeds, sordid and otherwise.

The Author of AFTER ILIUM pretending he has just found a kick ass novel on the shelf in the local Barnes & Noble store, hoping others will wonder what he is reading and open a dialog with him through which he might tell them exactly what he is reading and perchance they might wish to read it, too, because miracles never cease and sometimes stars fall from the sky, long before Hell might one day freeze over!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2012 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Greats Stories for a Great Cause!

FLASH! COMPLETELY NEW NEWS!

Not much time has passed since my last post, but here is something I must add!


The anthology from Fantasy Island Book Publishing is now available at Amazon.


Here is the link: The Story Tellers' Anthology

Contents
Shaun Allan - Final Entry
Shaun Allan – The Tooth, The Whole Tooth and but The Tooth
Alison DeLuca – Crown Phoenix
Alison DeLuca – Beta Test
Stephen Swartz – Rendezvous
J Darroll Hall – Appalachian Passages
Connie J Jasperson – Long Hard Run To Alpharse
Connie J Jasperson – Once Upon A Time
Lynette Ferreira – All Over Again
Marilyn Rucker Norrod – From The Ashes
Lisa Zhang Wharton – The Adult Book Store
Lisa Zhang Wharton – Butterflies: A Surrealistic Writing Class
Nicole Antonia Carson – The Last Five Pounds
Nicole Antonia Carson – Women of Wal-Mart
Rachel Tsoumbakos – Mildred the Ghost
Danielle Raver – The Enchantress
Kathleen Barker – O Canada
Joan Hazel – The Orbs of Taliesin
Elaine Gannon – Bits on Display
Ceri Clark – Mind Games

(and a fantastic cover by Ceri Clark, too!)

You might notice that one particular name and story title is in boldface. Mine. (Well, this is my blog, right?) Just wanted you to know, in a non-threatening way, that one of my stories is included. Now, that's not the only reason to click on over and download that baby. (My story is "Rendezvous"; it's my only entry in the urban fantasy genre, trying to impress my Twilight-obsessed daughter with my own vampire/reincarnation hybrid tale.)


The real reason, aside from some great stories in a variety of genre, is that all proceeds from the purchase of this anthology are going to a charity, Samaritan's Purse, whose focus is on providing safe, clean drinking water in devastated areas. You can learn more here: Samaritanspurse.org

So...Happy Reading!  And thanks for your contribution to good stories and clean water!





(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

December Muse Tells All....

Dear Decembrists (if you're offended, you can google the term),

I kept looking at the calendar this past week, day after day, feeling as though I should write a blog post. It's been a while, though I have nothing much to confess. Or comment on. Problems everywhere. More of the same out there in the real world. Even the fantasy realms are somewhat boring this time of year.

The only news of any worthiness, I suppose, would be the fact that I recently sent back my so-called final look at the final manuscript version of my debut novel* AFTER ILIUM, the sordid tale of the innocent young man tricked by the evil older woman, and so on. Been done many times before. I've tried to put a unique spin on the template by creating a parallel to the Trojan War couple's story.

I had the idea back in 1998 when a few bits of impetus came together in fortuitous ways. My goal then was to have the modern plot parallel the ancient plot without seeming contrived. In other words, our hero had to see the parallels without the author intruding and saying to the reader "See how this parallels Homer's Odyssey?"

In a summer creative writing workshop, it became a fun exercise to me. As a what-if kind of story it was easy to plot...if one is deliberately plotting to follow the plot of a well-known classic. (In that summer, however, I only managed to put it into an 11,000 word story; definitely too much telling, less showing.)

1. Find a young man, recently graduated from college, a nerdy, geeky, bookwormish fellow who likes studying history, has some computer skills (I suppose that may be redundant with "geeky"), and sees the world always through rose-colored lenses. Give him the name Paris, but not too obviously. Make it a surname: Parris. Then send him to Turkey, to the site of the ruins of ancient Troy, often also called Ilium (hence the name of Homer's other book, the Iliad). So far, so good. What could happen?

2. Introduce a "Helen" character in a believable way. Can't name her Helen outright because that would be too obvious, so name her Elena--close enough. The young man, Parris, becomes enamored with this woman, of course: she is sexy in an older woman way, voluptuous, sensual, seductive. Let her be running away, seeking some adventure. And they meet. It's easy for him to like her, but she...? She will need to gradually warm to him, decide to flirt and seduce him, to toy with him for the few days of this trip.

3. Then, as young men are prone to do, this Parris fellow decides that this Elena woman is Ms. Right, especially after she lets him play with her in bed and other venues. Voila! They are a couple. Believable enough so far, eh? So, from this point, do they live happily ever after? Or does something else happen? In the Homer epics, they remain a happy couple until Paris, the Trojan, dies in battle. Helen is recaptured by her husband, Menelaus, and returned to her home. But here in modern times, there is no war to solve the plot conundrum.

4. Or is there? If not a war, then at least a fight. If this Parris fellow is so hot for that Elena woman, let him try to protect her when she seems to be threatened. Then he would get into a fight, say, with some men...yes, at the site of ancient Ilium! Perfect. But in a modern tale, what would likely happen? He would be arrested by the local police. That's believable. But just as Odysseus had a crew of sailors on his voyage back home to Ithaca from Troy, this Parris fellow needs helpers--some of the sidekicks who inevitable get killed off so the hero can live to the final credits.

5. So here we have this Parris guy, sensitive, intelligent, but not a leader or a fighter, mooning for his lady, trying to reason his way out of his predicament. He has to find his way back to her. That has "odyssey" written all over it. The rest is mere parallelism. In the Odyssey, Homer has his hero visit different places, each with unique challenges and each leaving him with new lessons learned. Eventually he makes his way home, of course, and even there he faces challenges. So does this Parris fellow, only his must conform to the realism and available technology of the modern era.

6. Instead of a cyclops, Parris encounters a constable with an eye patch. Rather than his crew being incapacitated from eating lotus plants, his odyssey buddies get stoned on wild hashish. A quartet of farmer's daughters take the place of Sirens. The stormy sea and the rugged cliffs Parris must traverse replace the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And he is found washed up on the beach not by King Alcinous and his lovely daughter Nausicaa but by a lonely Greek fisherman. Instead of calling the gods for assistance with a message via Hermes, our Parris fellow gains access to a computer with internet connection. He is finally on his way back to his lady, Elena.

The ancient Paris never returned to Troy; he died there. Our modern Parris does return, expecting to find his lovely Elena there. Instead, he meets....whoa! What was I thinking? That would be quite an egregious faux pas, giving away the ending like that. Nobody likes a spoiler. However, to complete the point of this report, it is perhaps enough that you can now see how the challenge of retelling an ancient tale in a modern setting can be accomplished. Has it been done successfully? That is the only worthwhile question in need of answering. And I, unfortunately, am not allowed to answer it. Only our dear readers may do so.

And for that, I have much gratitude and appreciation, no matter the result. Enjoy your reading!


Available soon from Fantasy Island Book Publishing, and via ebook sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, with print format following quickly after.


*Although I have written 7 novels to date, After Ilium will be the first to be made available to the purchasing public. Some of the others will be published in coming years.


(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.