So what happened...? (and other ruminations)

About that ABNA thing....

Those of you who may have been following along as I recorded the trials and tribulations of being a participant in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award competition might have awakened at night wondering what has become of me and my entry THE DREAM LAND (Book I: Long Distance Voyager). Now that I am a few days removed from the harsh reality of Reality, I am prepared to disclose what I can.


To recap: I passed the first round, which involved a 300-word pitch for the novel. I felt gloriously privileged for a few weeks. On to the second round, which involved an excerpt of the first 5000 words of the novel. Well, folks...I, umm, did not clear the bar. (Congratulations to those who did, by the way!) 


Along with that result, both winners and losers received two reviews of the excerpt from Amazon personnel. Mine were rather revealing in somewhat obtuse ways. 

Here are the two reviews, both answering the same general questions:

ABNA Expert Reviewer #1

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

I love the concept you have here, and this is definitely an immediate hook. We're so used to alternate worlds being lovely medieval Narnia-like places, and here you have something garish and cruel. It almost feels like "Heavy Metal", but that's a world largely unexplored in literature, and I would definitely like to read more. This is one of the few excerpts I've read this year where being cut off at the end was a huge source of frustration, so well done.

What aspect needs the most work?

I think the writing here is not as strong as it needs to be, though. At several times, the point of view seemed to wander, or I'd be left unclear if something was a memory or really happening now, or... what. That's particularly worrisome in an opening sample, which needs to be EXTRA clear in order to rope in new readers. 

Please do not start from the POV of the psychiatrist. Readers sink into the first mind they meet, so having it be a decoy to describe the protagonist is very frustrating. We could have the same conversation with more insight and clarity from Sebastion's POV, so I highly recommend that change. 

Similarly, there's kind of a leap from Sebastion into Michael and Tammy. This really isn't necessary and it leaves the reader struggling to keep up because limited third-person usually feels much more natural than omni third-person. 

You need to cut out Tammy being an airhead and Michael wanting to hit her, in my opinion. Anything "Heavy Metal"-esque is going to have a lot of brutality towards women by its very nature. If that brutality is confined to Ghoupallesz, then the reader sees the author as a mere reporter; if the brutality leeches over into the Real World (Tammy stupid; Michael frustrated to violence), then the reader rebels and sees an author who hates women. I'm not saying you do; I'm saying the reader is going to feel that way, and you need to anticipate that and make sure to avoid it. If you must have the Michael/Tammy conversation (and I think it's superfluous) there's no reason they can't be normal, non-airheaded, non-violent people sharing a conversation.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

You have a stellar idea, a gripping world, and a great draft here. I definitely, strongly recommend a good editor or writing team or a beta reader to go through this and circle every passage that is a little labyrinthine or confusing. (Maybe read the book out loud?) I think with just a little polish, this will be a truly unique and original piece of work.

I would say "nicely done" to this review. It gives details and context for the comments given. It shows thoughtful consideration of what the author was trying to achieve, and whether or not that strategy was effective, rather than simply declaring the style to be anathema to the reviewer's own aesthetic (e.g., "I just don't like sci-fi so it was confusing..."). Personal taste is one thing but we can't expect to please everyone, so I applaud this reviewer for letting the story be what it is and judging what worked and what did not.

This reviewer pointed to certain aspects I believed might cause problems, yet I was determined to see it through without changes. As an author, I think I'm right most of the time. I had good reasons for doing what I did and for beginning the novel--indeed, the entire trilogy--in the manner in which I did begin it. In my "defense," the "present" of the story is set in the mid-1980s, a time of big hair and more narrowly defined gender roles, a time when attitudes and behavior were not considered so inappropriate. Writing "bad" characters does not make me bad, too. Everyone gets what they deserve by the end of the novel.


Confusion is what I was going for. After all, I was introducing three storylines within that 5000-word excerpt. The storylines are on different planets and in different time periods (past and present, hinting at future). And yet, they are all linked. 


The best way to show how they are linked was to juxtapose them within a short span of text (a chapter or two). In other words, this is actually a complex story even as it seems to be a simple tale of a confused man dealing with reality. 


Or trying to make sense of his dreams (hence, the uber-clever title THE DREAM LAND). Or are his dreams merely memories of past adventures in a world found on the opposite side of an interdimensional portal?

Reviewer #2 was a bit more succinct:

ABNA Expert Reviewer #2

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
The writing style. The plot here is very disjointed and hard to understand but the writing style carries the reader through.

What aspect needs the most work?

The plot line is very confusing and disjointed.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

Overall this could use a good smoothing out. Take the plot and make it less confusing, make the writing style more in sinc [sic] with the book.


Okay.... While I often welcome straight to the point rhetoric, I feel much is missing in this second review. It seems as though the second reviewer was giving a summary of the first review, not the excerpt of the novel. Perhaps, if this reviewer had given the same degree of thoughtful consideration as the first reviewer, I may have ended up in the next round. One can only speculate. And as an author of speculative fiction, that is what I enjoy doing the most. 


What I can take from these two commentaries are what they have in common:

• the opening scenes create confusion for readers, although not in a good way;

• the skillfully-composed dichotomy of low-brow and high-brow prose styles does help overcome the storyline confusion;

• adjustments to initial character depictions should be made--even though I might claim that they are faithful depictions of the people the characters are modeled after;

• a little more hand-holding may be necessary at the beginning to get the reader started in understanding what's going on.

As I learned once upon a time in a college literature class and took to heart as a writer of fiction, within the first few pages the author teaches the reader how to read the book. If the reader does not learn that method, then it is easy to understand why the reader puts the book down in frustration. On the other hand, an author should not make it so difficult a lesson to learn. For a novel on the sci-fi shelf, titled THE DREAM LAND, a reader may expect there to be themes comparing dream and reality.


So, thanks to my dear excerpt reviewers. I only wish you, and others like you, had had the opportunity to read more, perhaps even the entire novel, all 128,000 words of THE DREAM LAND (Book I: Long Distance Voyager), for if you, like many of us, relish tales of interdimensional intrigue filled with smatterings of psychological thriller and police procedural stories, well-marbled with alien romance, steampunk decor, and darkly twisted humor, you will no doubt enjoy the sordid adventures of our hero and heroine and an assorted cast of ne'er-do-wells struggling through difficult times in a depressed economy--oh, wait, that's reality, not fiction....


Again, if you are among the curious (or the masochists), you may peruse the opening text in question at this location: Excerpt.



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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.

Are You One of the Seven Lucky Authors of Spring?

Spring Break (how sweet the sound...) has blithely passed with scarcely any bit of quality production achieved. As the annual celebration of fecundity comes and goes, I always have such great plans only to see them thwarted at every turn. I had planned to finish a conference paper, edit Book II of The Dream Land trilogy, and other important tasks. I did manage to sit in the local DMV for 8 hours across two days, which is an underrated environment for collecting quirky characters for one's writing (that's a blog entry in itself). So I was all set to moan and complain, which can make for a beautifully self-indulgent blog entry. However, before I could turn my attention to my own world-threatening problems, my writer colleague and fellow blogger Connie J Jasperson has stepped in with a strange activity that harbors deeply alien compulsions and may prove enticingly weird. To whit: "I have been tagged by Connie J Jasperson in the Lucky Seven Meme. What is a meme? Okay, not everybody knows--I didn't but Teresa Cypher explained that a meme is an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture." (*For more info on this ancient Greek rhetorical device which has recently fallen into contemporary mainstream usage, I refer you to Richard Brodie's book Virus of the Mind [1996]; it is especially relevant in this social media age where every little irrelevant dingle-poo becomes the latest craze ["goes viral"] and is half-a-second later replaced by a still newer morsel of meme. But I digress....) The rules, straight from Connie’s blog:  Once you are tagged: *go to page 77 of your current WIP  *go to line 7 First obstacle: what exactly IS my current Work-in-Progress? I am working on Book III of The Dream Land trilogy but have not yet arrived at a finished page 77. In that light, Book II might be considered my WIP, although I am also rewriting my Japanese romance mystery, AIKO. Next conundrum: Is that page 77 in double-spaced or single-spaced version? I usually work single-spaced until preparing the manuscript for sending out or printing. I shall opt for single-spaced, since that is how a reader will ultimately see the text when it is published. (I'm a bit upset that there is no presumption of 777 pages in my WIP!) *copy down the next 7 lines/sentences as written and post them on your blog or website  Another conundrum! I have identified the required selection of text but I know it will not make any sense if I share only those lines. We need context; otherwise, they are just sentences bursting from out of the blue. So I shall offer the lines, then offer the context. “It’s my job, Chuck. I write reports about all of my cases.” [said Dr. Toni Franck] She began to move around the sofa back to her desk, keeping the furniture between herself and the detective. “You’re always talking to him, listening to him. I don’t even get your smile. That bastard is here to be punished, you know. And he sees more of you than I do. You don’t even return my calls anymore. You don’t talk to me. You don’t listen. Why can’t you ever listen to me?” He intercepted her in front of her desk. She held her ground. “I was listening to you,” Toni responded. “No, dammit!” He pressed against her, took her wrists in his two hands. “You did not listen to me. You keep talking about that psycho murderer. You never stop talking about him. What, are you in love with him or something?” “Chuck, I’ve had enough of this.” [That's seven, but I'll add 3 more as a bonus. Continuing...] “You’re always talking about him, but when I ask you any questions—like, it’s my frickin’ job, ya know—then you never answer, and say it’s your goddamn patient-doctor privilege. Well, what other privileges does this damn patient of yours have, huh?” “I can understand why she’s your ex-.” She watched in horror as his face burned into a deep crimson. Here is the Context: The conversation is between Dr. Toni Franck, the psychiatrist of our hero, Sebastian Talbot (a.k.a. the interdimensional voyager known as Set-d'Elous), and the detective Chuck McElroy, who is part of the team investigating the murders of Talbot's IRS service center co-workers two years earlier. After awakening from a short coma, Talbot has been in an asylum for the criminally insane, yet Franck recognizes he is not the usual kind of patient; in fact, she is charmed by him. One of the missing-presumed-murdered people is Chuck's ex-wife, Tammy Tucker, who Talbot insisted when arrested and interrogated (that's before the coma, which was caused by a gunshot wound, which...long story, you know....) is still alive and well, living on that other world which is accessible through the interdimensional portal. Chuck interviewed Franck and developed a relationship; they went out a couple of times for dinner, presumably so he could get more information from her about the patient (Talbot) but Chuck starts to be attracted to her. This conversation occurs in her office; Chuck has arrived to take her to dinner but everything goes wrong. I put my own spin on the rules by selecting seven paragraphs, since they are short and mostly one liners anyway. I hope that doesn't get me banned or, worse, that I'll die in 7 hours 7 minutes for breaking the thread. *tag 7 other authors *let them know they've been tagged The seven Connie tagged were: 1. Joan Hazel at Momma Joan Explains It All 2. Stephen Swartz Deconstruction of the Sekuatean Empire (Yeah, me!) 3. Kathleen Barker at Dashboard Confessions of an Undisciplined Mind 4. Brooklyn Hudson at Wishbone & More 5. Carlie Cullen at Carlie M A Cullen 6. Lisa Zhang Wharton at Eccentric Asians and Man Eating Pandas 7. Johanna Garth at Losing Sanity

The difficult aspect for me is selecting the seven lucky bloggers to whom I shall pass on my meme/virus. You see, the seven listed above are the seven I would have sent this to. They do not wish to be attacked again by the same meme, I think. Thus, I shall delve into my list of fellow bloggers and wave my magic wand to determine who the lucky seven shall be. (This list has nothing to do with how dear to my heart they are or any semblance of a hierarchy.)


Rachel Tsoubakos at Rachel Tsoubakos

Danielle Raver at Philosophies of a Young Heart

Gary Hoover at The Author's Studio/Land of Nod trilogy

Dean Lappi at Dean Lappi

Alison DeLuca at Alison DeLuca

Ceri Clark at CeriClark.com

Roxanne Barbour at Roxanne S. Barbour, Author

These are my Lucky Seven. We shall be in touch. If I have inadvertently put you on the list even though you have been tagged by someone else, please smile and consider yourself extra lucky. What you do with that luck is your decision alone, so choose wisely. And be kind.





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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.

The P-Word

The latest rage, according to mass media is the idea--indeed, the very notion!--that women who are, shall we say (for demographic purposes), married with children secretly desire to read about being tied up and sexually manipulated. The flagship book of this genre is Fifty Shades of Gray, a self-published make-work of bondage and torture, purportedly not a true tale. (I've been wondering if a hundred shades would be even more erotic, or around twenty would be more acceptable to society.) More surprising to all, it seems, may be that those women actually enjoy reading about such scenarios. This newest "mainstream" literature has been dubbed "mommy porn" by several people reporting on this newest trend. When I saw this morning that my literary colleague Johanna Garth was blogging on the P-word, I knew I had to respond.

As a young man, sure we snickered and sneaked peeks at the girly mags. As an adult I had greater access to such materials. But the stigma persisted. While I never outright read anything more spurious than a few "letters to the editor" of certain magazines, I did appreciate depictions of amorous activity within the pages of otherwise mainstream literary works. It was titillating, as intended, but moreover depicted realistic, believable behavior among consenting adults. In my own writing (A Beautiful Chill, After Ilium, Aiko, and The Dream Land trilogy--yep, alien sex in that last one), I have tried to continue that philosophical concept: sex, even in more extreme forms, is realistic and believable behavior between normal adults.

Enough said on my perspective. I cannot comment on the female perspective for obvious reasons...except as reported by females who have spoken on the topic while I was listening, invited or otherwise. The titillation it brings (and in literary terms that also means plot, description, characterization, motivation, theme) is certainly the result of the material being taboo. The ebook revolution has made it possible for readers to read in public surreptitiously. No more hiding behind a newspaper or covering the raunchy cover art from judgmental eyes. Nothing new about that.

However, what does this trend really mean? From a psychological perspective, people have dreams that show what they fear and what they desire, both of which cannot be presented during waking life or acknowledged in public. Yet, if we allow our fears and desires full reign during our daily lives, we might be:

1) embarrassed, 
2) distracted from what we must do (job, etc.), 
3) tempted to change our routine, duties, tasks, or 
4) disappoint, even betray, the values of various political forces aligned against us.

For the first, embarrassment is a form of relief. Let it go. It passes. What doesn't embarrass you makes you weaker. For the second, it is simply a matter of practicality. Who hasn't slipped away to the company restroom for some R&R? Or dabbled on certain websites while using an office computer? The third result is what worries members of society who have activated their junior policy police decoder rings: What would society be like if these women were to turn to such a pornographic lifestyle as depicted in erotic books? Utter chaos! Husbands would be abandoned, children left starving in the streets, and the world a messy mess! No, we cannot risk letting anyone catch a glimpse of what other options exist outside of normal, narrow, nitpicked, non-naughty social roles and public behavior.

It is the fourth result that has us alarmed--alarmed enough to announce media-wide that the latest sensation is not to be allowed. Indeed, the warning exists solely for the purpose of arming hordes and legions of do-gooders (those with their membership dues up to date) that a new target has sprung forth from the loins of imagination! Attack! Twart the evil ideas! Stomp down and rub out the undesirable desire! It also happens to fit nicely with the latest so-called "war on women"--a strategic misnomer whereby each side can accuse the other of hating women and wanting to control them. Personally, I think there are quite a few men who need to be controlled lest they upset the natural order. I call them politicians. And I might include everyone who seems to want to influence them in one direction or the other. Vote for "Other" this fall, folks! Vote with your genitals. Everyone should be the sole boss of his/her own body.

In the end (whoa, what an unfortunate choice of prepositional phrase, but it fits the theme of this blog post), people will--and certainly should--be allowed to make their own choices. Even if the lowest common denominator is porn. The rest of usyou must wait patiently to detect the first sign of the Apocalypse. Unless this trend is that first sign. Then it will be much too late. But wait! There's more!

There is the PayPal-Smashwords conundrum. A business has a right to decide what it sells or does not sell. That's capitalism. McDonald's makes demands of food suppliers and they comply or do without the business of the largest restaurant entity on the planet, possibly the universe. With books, it seems fair (at least on paper) that the same idea should be true. If I do not want to sell your dirty book, I should not have to. Yet consider the reverse: If you do not offer my dirty book for sale, you won't get some of the profit. And dirty books tend to sell; everyone likes a dirty book (or "graphic literature") once in a while. Those who do not are dead, or as another trend would suggest, or are zombies.

I do not write erotica for the sake of arousing the reader in certain biological ways. I include scenes and behavior and activities to further the development of plot or characterization, to complicate the plot, to serve as illustration of world views and behavior tendencies. It's what people do. It is integral to the plot. Having declared such, I also have written pure erotica (yes, an oxymoron, I know). It's a way of visualizing possibilities, of trying out strategems or role playing options in life. Don't we all?


We don't have to publish it. But some of us do. And others seem to like that. It is a match made in the bedroom, or the bathroom, or a beautiful meadow full of soft moist grass, or a city park with a hard wooden bench under the starlight, or on a kitchen counter with the dishwasher running rough, shaking us to orgasmconclusion--or any long, firm, powerful, symbol of wild abandon without the abandonment. Like the Washington Monument. Such is our language. Such is our heart and mind. Dirty is in the eye of the gardener.


In the interest of not offending the visually challenged, some examples of erotica have been censored.



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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.

Falling Ahead & Judging the Results

I do not know what the Mayans had in mind for March as they geared up for the forthcoming disaster scheduled for December, but for this year, I can see the light at the end of the lamp. Considering that there was no winter to speak of here in my midwestern desert, spring has indeed arrived early. Trees have blossomed and, over a mere weekend, have shed them in favor of green leaves. There have also been tornado threats. The less said of that, the better....

There has also come the season of high school competitions. I spent the weekend pretending to be a judge and I believe I comported myself well. As someone from the field of wordsmithing, I was deemed a reliable judge of linguistic performance and analytical competence. And so, there I was: at a forensics competition at a local high school, which involved students from several area schools--about 1% of those schools' student populations, I would guess, making for a different kind of 1% distinction.

I made myself available for all rounds but acted as judge (but not jury) for only 6 of the 8 sessions. First, I judged political debates and debates on moral issues--always a fun time. Then I judged "poetry interpretation" and "prose interpretation" whereby the competitor both read/recited and kinda acted out the work, often with voice changes among the characters. It made for an odd collection of entertainments. Finally, I was on a panel of three judges for the six "dramatic interpretation" finalists. Their presentations were heart-wrenching stories half-told, half-acted, and were extraordinarily done, half of them successfully choking me up.

The event was inspiring to me, usually a cynical sort of person, and gave me a little faith that students I had taught over recent years would not be the sum total of the next generation. Indeed, the 1% of students I observed this weekend made me feel proud to be an educator. Although none of them were my students, I was very pleased to see the dedication, the giving a darn, the careful consideration of complex issues, and just taking a Saturday away from some kind of non-academic entertainment to show what they can do in the world of words.

Bravo to all of them! It was a weekend well-spent for me, as well.


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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.

Did you Leap over Leap Day?

Because Leap Day graces our calendars only every four years, it serves as a special time to summarize the events of the past four years and to reflect on achievements done and crises averted. The extra day also postpones paychecks by 24 hours. You win some, you lose some. Here are the more interesting facts going back to February 29, 2008, a period of 1460 days.

In the past four years, I have:

• lived in 3 different states (Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma)
• taught at 4 universities (well, 3 universities and 1 mere college)
• taught 36 classes to a whole lot of students (12% of whom slept most of the time)
• earned 1 degree (Ph.D., long story there)
• completed a dissertation project (March 2008) - (yep, wrote a book about how to teach writing)
• published a novel (December 2011) - that would be the nearly invisible AFTER ILIUM
• driven more than 100,000 miles
• flown more than 20,000 miles
• visited no countries outside the US (I did go to China just before I started counting in February 2008)
• slept in 48 different beds (residences, visiting relatives, hotel, hospital)
• bought about 150 books (about 15 were ebooks) - I'm surprised how low the number is!
• read 56 books (about a third were fiction)
• attended 6 professional conferences and presented a paper at 3 of them
• finished writing a novel (The Dream Land, Book II)
• had my heart ripped out at the valves in the first round of the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition (stitched back, thankfully)
• had a novel accepted for publication (A Beautiful Chill)
• driven only one particular vehicle (not counting four rentals while traveling)
• attended 4 hockey games, 3 football games, 2 basketball games, and 0 games of other sports
• seen [only] 14 movies in theaters (but watched about 20 more via Blockbuster rental or Netflix by mail)
• seen 1 play in a theater
• attended 1 concert
• attended 3 lectures or speeches (outside of professional conferences)
• bought 5 computers (3 were for other people as gifts)
• downloaded 13,467 pictures from the internet, none of which would be classified as porn
• 25 haircuts (1 unintentional)
• bought 34 pizzas from pizza restaurants (another 60 or so bought frozen from groceries)
• visited a Mexican food restaurant (mostly "fast food") about 226 times ("Yo quiero burrito!")
• had Chinese take-out 6 times (all in the US)
• smiled about 2098 times
• frowned about 1450 times
• remained stoic and solemn 79 times (in 5 of those it was appropriate)
• gave exactly 662 hugs
• received about 470 hugs
• used up 131 reams of printer paper
• used up 246 pens
• drank about 500 lattes
• caught about 10,000 hours of sleep
• had 225 dreams (counting only those that could be remembered the next morning)
• re-entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition in 2012 and passed the first round with The Dream Land, Book I.

So...how was your Leap Day 4-Year Assessment? Did you measure up to your own expectations?

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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.

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.

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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.