I Can Find the Sugar ALL BY SELF

I really enjoy a sweet romance. It doesn't matter if the romance happens in a “romance” book or if the romance happens as a subplot. Romance is always good for this reader.

I also enjoy redemption tales, plots about healing emotional scars, stories about people working together to accomplish a common good (major or minor), and yarns about truly discovering who you are. I’ve been known to tear up just because a bunch of people who already liked each other all decided to do something good together. My heart warms when someone manages to change their life for the good. I grin when characters pet wiggly puppies.

Yes, I’m a total sap.

So here’s the thing. If you give me a book with a romance, cute dogs, a hero with emotional and/or physical scars that need to be healed, a heroine who must overcome the wounds of her past to move into her future, and a town full of wonderful people who are determined to work together toward a common goal, I’ll probably love it . . . but I might throw it across the room in a huff, instead.

Here’s a tip to avoid provoking my ire: HIDE THE SUGAR.

I don’t care if the entire book, front to back, is packed full of saccharine goodness. I’ll read and enjoy every bit of it and lick my fingers afterward. BUT. If you (or any of your characters) ever point any of it out, I’m gone. That’s not because I’m embarrassed to catch myself reading such cavity-inducing fare. It’s because, if you think you need to point it out, you’ll make me feel like a dim-witted two-year-old.

I haven’t taken kindly to that since I was four. You can ask my mother.

In a way, this is a sub-category of the famous advice to SHOW NOT TELL. Let me illustrate:

Fine: Heroine notices that hero’s eyes are haunted, and wants to help, since she’s a vet and naturally drawn to wounded mammals. Wise Woman character also notices and, keeping her reasoning to herself, sets out to help Hero heal his soul with a plan that will also, coincidentally, help save the town, provide a home for a local stray dog, and help Heroine overcome her rocky romantic past.

NOT Fine: Heroine-the-vet notices that hero’s eyes are haunted and wants to help. Later, when she sees him again, she notices and remarks to herself about the same thing. When her BFF asks about him, she ponders on how he looks wounded, both physically and emotionally. Wise Woman character engages Heroine in a conversation about how wounded Hero appears. Wise Woman character lays out her master plan for Heroine, who agrees that, yes, that would be the perfect plan to engage Hero’s skills, save the town, heal Hero’s poor wounded soul, and convince him to adopt the stray dog that has already decided to adopt Hero.

Please tell me you can see the difference.

I picked up the published book described above because I wanted a sweet contemporary romance story. I kept reading through some rather off-putting maid-butler dialogue because I really, truly am drawn to these sorts of plots. I simply could not continue past the “let’s fix Hero and save the town” conversation.

I don’t care if your characters want to fix each other, save towns and souls, and develop elaborate plans to do so. More power to them. I don’t even care if they work so long as you don’t spell them out for me ahead of time. Especially in a straight romance: I already know how it ends, so if you preview the plot for me, what do I have to wonder about?

I’m not two. If you just show me your characters going about the actions required by their elaborate plans, I’ll eventually figure out what they are, even if they never spell them out. I’ll figure out what the purpose of the plans are, even if no one tells me. I might actually conclude that the plans are clever, even if you don’t have one of your other characters around who can point it out to me.

I can find the sugar—and the message behind it—all by myself.

http://www.clker.com/clipart-77244.html

So, how do you like feeling like a two-year-old?

Why I love Janette Rallison

I've blogged before about the benefits of dark themes in YA. I truly believe that dark stuff can teach us something about life and how to survive it intact.

But what if we're not in the mood to learn about darkness, no matter how beneficial? What if we prefer lighter fare? What if we just want to feel good?

Enter Janette Rallison (and others like her). Janette deals with tough issues--don't mistake me here. Her books (her 18th comes out this October) deal with addiction, death, and betrayal--but always with a light-hearted spin. They make me laugh, they make me cry, and they make me feel good about life.

Oh, and they're always romantic. :) That's very important. Especially since Romance, Romance is the topic of Janette's Authors' Advisory Conference Call tomorrow night. She's going to tell us how to create a romantic story line--whether it's the main story or a subplot--and what the important elements of such a story line are.

As a special bonus, Janette has volunteered to give away two of her books as part of her conference call! I'm not going to tell you more right now--details will be discussed on the call. Call in, ask questions, and WIN!

"Which of Janette's fabulous books can I win?" I'm glad you asked.

How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend is about Giovanna, who has a really cool boyfriend Jesse... who agrees to support the mayor's son in his student body president campaign against her twin brother. Of COURSE she has to dump him, right? Ever hear of loyalty? Only, being Jesse's ex-girlfriend isn't as fun as the alternative. But how do you get your boyfriend back in the middle of a down-and-dirty election when you're on opposite sides of the war?

My Fair Godmother is about a normal girl. With normal problems. In the normal world. Who makes a normal wish for a princely prom date. Only she happens to be assigned a very ABnormal godmother-in-training for three of her wish-fulfillment needs. She signs a contract without reading it (gasp!!), ends up as a series of fractured fairy-tale princesses, and dooms the boy she likes to the middle ages until he can figure out how to become a prince. Fer reals. In a plan that involves dragon-slaying. This is the first in an ongoing series about the exploits of Chrysanthemum Everstar, who only scored a "fair" on her fairy godmother test. I've read the first two and eagerly await more.

You want to win them, don't you? Call in tomorrow night, starting with an informal Q&A at 8:45 EDT, to find out how. See the Authors' Advisory site for details.

Where were YOU 11 years ago?

2013 Note: I can't let the advice in this post stand without a disclaimer: I'm now divorced. We didn't make it to 13 years. Please take all advice herein with a large grain of salt. Obviously, I don't really know what I'm talking about. Thought I did, though. Feel free to cherry pick what might work for you. Also, these rules probably work best if they're followed by both spouses. Just saying.

Okay, so Will and Kate are married. Can we talk about something else? This girl had the right idea:

Forever infamous Grace Van Cutsem. She was "over it" before "over it" was cool.

No, I'm not knocking everyone's favorite couple. I'm half Brit, myself (my dad has the accent to prove it), so I'm genetically inclined to be impressed by the royal family. Plus, I can't help myself: Will and Kate are COOL. Wasn't her dress gorgeous? What a sweet couple of kisses, huh? :)

But enough about them. Let's talk about me. The day before the Wedding of the Century, I celebrated my 11th Wedding Anniversary. (Yes, I got married in the year 2000 so that I would never need math to figure out how long I'd been married. Don't you wish you'd been that smart?)

Anyway, this was me and my hubby way back then:

We did this so much, his uncle gave us some lip balm at the luncheon.
Absolutely no little girls made faces in our pictures.

Isn't he handsome? His hair has never been long enough to part, since.

In honor of my anniversary, I thought I'd share with everyone the secrets of a long and happy 11-year (and counting) marriage. If your name is Will or Kate, feel free to emulate our example in your own marriage. The rest of you, just keep muddling along on your own. Nothing else to see here....

1. Our Rule #1 has always been "No Sleeping on the Couch." While the spirit of this law (don't go to sleep angry) has been kept, there have been many nights when I've had to wander out of the bedroom to rouse my sleeping husband at 3:00 am, so he can join me in bed. More, "sleeping apart" has happened a lot more than we'd like, with hunting season and various professional conferences taking their toll on our nights together. Still, this is a very good guideline to have. You should never be just roommates with the one you love.
2. No veto power. Jerry has lots of friends who call him lucky because I "let" him do so many things. He's on ski patrol, he goes hunting and fishing, he goes out shooting guns and playing lumberjack. Remarkable freedom for an old married man, yes? For my part, I got to drag an Idaho boy out of Idaho for FOUR LONG YEARS so I could finish my education in the BIG CITY of Provo, Utah (poor thing barely survived) and I still regularly ignore him to read, to write, to blog, and to travel to conferences where I sometimes forget to call home (oops). Why do we let each other do these things? Because we have no choice. (Oh, yeah, and because it makes the other one happy, blah, blah, blah.) I don't get to dictate to Jerry what he's allowed to do. He doesn't get to dictate to me what I'm allowed to do. We take care of our family duties as a team, but we accommodate each other when outside interests take us away. We aren't jealous of each other's time.
3. Be the Grown-Up. The first two won't work unless you act older than two. Have a little confidence in the one you married. Don't get your feel-bads all in a twist over the little things that go wrong. Take your love for granted--by which I mean accept it as a constant, and not to stop nurturing it--and don't keep checking to make sure it's still there. Paranoia is not attractive. Do the things that make your spouse happy without keeping score (except on the super-secret scoreboard you've hidden under the bed and will never EVER bring up in conversation).
4. Forgive, forgive, forgive, and APOLOGIZE FIRST. After every fight, remember this rule: the winner of the fight is the one who apologizes first. The one who can calm down the fastest. The one who can figure out what the heck the other one was saying and realize that he/she had a good point. (A wrong point, perhaps, but certainly understandable.) Once you pull your head out, it's a race to see who can ferret out all the things you personally said that might possibly have been exaggerations, euphemisms, or outright excrement. Once you've figured that out, apologize for your part in the mess. Realize that it would never have become a mess if you'd been just a bit more #3. Then forgive your spouse (and yourself) for not being more #3. Winner gets make-up... um... you know.
5. Nothing separates you. Kids don't sleep in your bed. They don't sit between you at church (yes, it's possible to keep them quiet if you have long enough arms). Mom and dad's places at the table are right next to each other, and damn the location of the head and foot. Watching a family movie? Mom and dad sit together. Don't underestimate the value of physical proximity to help your bodies and minds remember who your other half is. Support each other in everything--especially against children, in-laws, and random catty neighbors. Even if you agree with whoever is saying bad things about your spouse, you FIGHT FOR THEM. You defend them against all comers. The only one allowed to put your spouse down is you. In the privacy of your own home. Right before you do #4. If you're ever tempted to complain about your spouse, don't. Not to your mom or to your best friend. As supportive as they can be, those third partiers could hold a grudge against your spouse for the awful, awful things s/he did long after you've done #3 and #4, gotten back to #1, and remembered that you're in love. And that you have very good reasons to be so.

I'm sure there's a lot more, but my big bully of a husband is forcing me to bed (this blog will post automatically at 8 am, but my kids will wake up automatically at 7 am. In seven hours.) before he goes out on a walk to try to get his hip to settle for the night. Hopefully, he'll find his way to bed eventually....

Anyone want to help add to the list?

Anticlimax (or why dodge ball is more fun when you get HIT)

So I've finally started pulling out of my romance reading binge. (Thank you, thank you, hold your applause.) One thing that helped? At the bottom of the stack were two books that, well, just didn't measure up. One was by an author I'd never read. One was by an author I've loved in the past (not Robyn Carr or Susan Elizabeth Phillips or Jennifer Crusie--those ladies would never do this). The woman can write... but this one fell flat for me.

No, I'm not telling you the names of the books or of the authors. I'm not writing a book blog--and even if I were, it's my blog, so I get to censor myself as much as I like. :)

The new author's book isn't really worth critiquing. It was full of so many newbie mistakes it can stand as a primer on what not to do. Yes, I took notes. No, I didn't finish it. Let's move on.

The more mystifying mistake was from the experienced author. I read one of her books once, loved it, forgot I'd read it, picked it up again, and, even after I recognized it, could not put it down. It was amazingly good. I recommend it to any romance lover. (Or, I would, if I was going to tell you who the author is. Which I'm not.) I've read a lot of her books, in fact, and loved them, too. This one, not so much. The beginning and middle were fine, but the ending.... Oh, the ending.

The problem was a series of anticlimaxes. None of the set-up conflicts ever actually exploded. Every one of them fizzled upon detonation:

1. The heroine of the story had a doozy of a secret. The kind of secret that would make any normal prospective husband turn tail and run. When she told the hero about the secret, I braced myself for... something. Maybe he would take some time to think about it, while she felt horrible and wondered if she'd lost him forever. Maybe he would renounce her, expose her secret and then have to make it up to her later (of course there'd be a later: this is romance). Maybe he'd just quietly turn away, apologize, and wish her a happy life before realizing later that he couldn't live without her. What happened was, well, none of the above. He immediately embraced her, asked a few clarifying questions, then promptly declared his undying devotion. Whew. Dodged that one. That's a... relief.
2. The hero had a rival who, through a bit of detective work, discovered the heroine's secret. When he proposed and she turned him down (already in love with the hero), I braced myself for his revenge, which would, of course, be terrible. He'd been set up as a bit of a controlling boor, who dreamed of possessing her (secret and all) and restricting her freedom. He took her rejection philosophically, then calmly told her that he knew her secret and detailed the steps he'd be willing to take to protect his wife from such a horrible past. Again, I braced myself for the heroine to make a horrible mistake. Will she accept his proposal to keep him quiet? Turns out, no, she turned him down again and went directly to the hero to enlist his help. Smart girl. Good dodge.
3. Hero and Heroine then promptly went to confess her secret to her father. Heroine is worried that he'll be angry with her for keeping it from him for so long or that he'll be angry with her stepmother for helping her conceal such a thing from him. He's upset. He's sad that she didn't trust him. He takes some time to himself to go throw things around, just to vent his frustration. Then he forgives her without reservation. Yay. Happy, happy day. So glad everything is turning out so well.
4. Of course, I'm still worried about the rival, who knows her secret and can ruin her with it. In the next scene with him, we find him on the road, traveling away from her house, contemplating the perplexing result of his proposal. Upon reflection, he decides that he was awfully rude, and turns around to return... and apologize. Yanno, just in case she took offense. Her stepmother stops him on the road, asks him his intentions, and he's shocked that she'd ever suspect that he'd even think of taking revenge. He reveals that some of his plans to protect the heroine are already, disastrously, in motion, and that, even if she doesn't marry him, he'd never violate her trust. Sigh.
5. Worried about his plans? Don't be. Turn the page, and you find Heroine's father discovering that the plans actually weren't accomplished. All is well. Yippee.
6. Then, of course, Hero must tell his family--including his overbearing, demanding father--that he's marrying such a tainted woman. That goes surprisingly well. Hero is actually a bit shocked. Personally, I'm beyond surprise.
7. Hero must then ascend to his grandmother, whose approval is essential to preserving Heroine's popularity. He's nervous. (He obviously hasn't been paying attention.) Grandma already knows the secret (of course) and, after about 30 seconds, gives her wholehearted blessing. Aren't we happy? Why aren't we happy?

If you stopped reading halfway through the list, you're wiser than I am. I kept waiting for some conflict to mess things up for them, just as everything was going so well. It never happened.

Ever watch a game of dodge ball? Can you imagine a game of dodge ball where every ball that is thrown is dodged? Both teams throw and throw and throw, then skillfully jump, duck, and dodge every last ball. Nothing is caught, no one gets "out," and the score is deadlocked at zero.

Can you imagine anything more boring? How much of that do you think you'd sit through? Five minutes? For five minutes, you'd probably just be impressed, right? What skill! Ten minutes? Might start getting a bit boring. You'd start looking for the magnets and wondering if it was actually a holograph. After fifteen minutes, you'd be wanting to tie every last player to a pole so you could pelt them yourself, right?

In dodge ball, as in fiction, the entertainment value is found in the balls that hit home. The more painful it is, the more we like watching it. Player takes one in the face? We groan... smiling. Player's feet are knocked out from under him, causing a spectacular mid-air cartwheel before he goes crashing to the floor? We grimace as we cheer. Tension isn't found in a full set of invincible teams, but in the winnowing of them, as one team dwindles, its players nursing bruises on the sidelines.

Fiction is no different. No one wants to read a book where everything goes right. We want the conflict to be so strong, we wonder how the characters will ever get out of the mess they're in. We want the hits coming so hard and fast we wince while we frantically turn the pages, ignoring children, husbands, and burning dinners on the stove as we wait to see how it all turns out. Until the very, very end, we want to be kept on our toes, heart pounding, sure that, this time, good won't win. The underdog won't triumph. The couple won't get their happily ever after.

Until, miraculously, it does. They do. The team with one person left standing manages to beat the score of uber-athletes on the other team. The hero launches a Herculean, adrenaline-fueled effort, just as all is lost, and triumphs. Just as her love is about to marry someone else, the heroine bursts into the chapel. Evil is slain, just as it seemed at its strongest.

Victory must be snatched from the jaws of defeat. (Some cliches are true--just don't use them in your novel.) If it is handed over on a silver platter, we won't value it: we care very little for easy victories. We want easy in real life--fiction is for hard fantasies.

Sadly, even though I know this, it's hard to actually do it. If the awesome author mentioned above can slip up like that, I think I need to go over my ending a few more times, just to make sure my MC actually has to fight for her victories.

What do you do to make sure your climax isn't anti-?

Embracing My Obsession

I do not write romances. I write urban fantasy with a romantic subplot. A small sub-plot. Life is about more than love, folks, and I want to write about things that are more important than two teenagers finding their soul-mates in high school, dang it. Like, um, teenagers solving crime. That's more important than love, right? And discovering themselves. I'm sure THAT's more important than love. Self-identity is very important. How can you be true to yourself if you don't know who you are? Right?

Right?

So here's the thing. During my recent reading famine, while I worked very hard on my editing, I finally learned to read books in snippets. No more did I need to devour the whole book--no matter the genre--with single-minded obsession, turning pages as if the turning itself was the accomplishment of an important life goal. Instead, I was living my own life. Writing my own book. I learned to be more selective--if a book hadn't gut-hooked me by page 50, and I found myself able to put it down for days at a time, I no longer force myself to finish it. I simply stop reading.

And then, as inevitably happens after any period of self-deprivation, came the binge. I simply cannot get by without books. It's time I accept that. So, for the last week, while I try to get over my lingering cold, I've been reading like a starving woman in a grocery store. I went to the library, got the books that sounded the absolute best, took them home, and have been reading, reading, reading. It has been very nice. Very cathartic.

Only, I have not been reading urban fantasy. I have not been reading stories of people finding themselves or of solving crime, though those have often been subplots.

I have been reading (don't judge) ROMANCES.

I can't get enough. I am obsessed. I can't put them down long enough to even think of editing my own little urban fantasy. I eat less at dinner (which is good for my weight) so I can leave the table and get back to reading. I stay up late (which is NOT good for my health) trying to get to the next chapter before my husband flips the breaker on my light. (And when he does, I'll just read by the light of my cell phone.) I surf the net less and Twitter less because, let's face it, the books I'm reading are not streaming on Twitter.

Here's the thing about romances: there are no surprises. Not really. By the end of the second chapter, you know how the book will end. Which guy will fall in love with which girl. The genre demands the HEA (Happily Ever After) and the authors (wonderful, wonderful authors) deliver. Over and over again. Browse your library's romance section, pick up a book at random, read the first paragraph of the first chapter, then the first paragraph of the second chapter, and most often, you'll know who is going to marry whom.

And. I. Love it.

I love the feeling of happy inevitability. The joy of being right (even on such a simple question).  The sweet pain of watching a couple who absolutely have to get together suffer as they deny their feelings, or wonder about the other one's feelings, or miscommunicate and make wrong assumptions that drive them apart even as they both pine away for each other. *Swoon*

And here I am, NOT writing romances. Relegating my romantic subplot to the smallest portion of the text I can shoe-horn it into. I'm so dumb.

I'm not saying that I'm going to start writing romances. Not ROMANCE romances. I'm not sure I'd be able to focus a whole plot on boy-meets-girl right now. I need more plot elements to play with, and I really do enjoy the other aspects of the urban fantasy genre. But I'm going try to honor my obsession. I'm going to edit my WIP to insert more romantic pain. I want my readers to know that my MC should be with that boy and be waiting with baited breath for his next scene. To swoon when they kiss. To feel strangely complete when she is with him and discontented when she is not. To feel personally betrayed during that scene where everything she thinks she knows about him turns out to be wrong. (Duh.)

Maybe, if I have more romance in my WIP, I'll finally be able to wrench my attention away from other people's romances and focus on my own. #headdesk #headdesk #headdesk

What about you? Are you writing the books you most like to read? Do you have a secret reading habit you try to deny? Which elements should you be using more in your own WIP?