My contribution for the tour is a new character snippet upholding the theme: what happens when Jude Lawrence meets her new officemate Kendis Thompson, and discovers that she’s coming onto a team with a lively sense of humor. (This is what Jude gets for having a birthday on April 1st!)

Hope y’all enjoy! I figured it was about time Jude should have a character vignette!

Anna Kashina expounds on why she finds the Fool an irresistible character type to work with.

I’ve got a new Faerie Blood character sketch up, about what happens when Jude Lawrence shows up for her first day at work.

David Sklar ruminates on how finding the Fool in yourself is more difficult at forty than at twenty.

Angelia Sparrow has some things to say about the Holy Fool, including a reference to a fine song by S.J. Tucker.

Please come around to all our posts and say hi, you guys! Bonus points if you bring with you a bit of Foolery of your own–and be on the lookout for what we’ll get posted next time. As always, thanks for coming by!

If you’d like to read the rest of the blog tour posts for this round, point your browsers right here.

And without further ado, here’s Hamish! I’ve put in a More link where he mentions a spoiler warning for the ending of his book, but you can get most of his post without it. Enjoy, all!

The Boomerang of Revelation

My best experience with a work in progress isn’t a particular event, but a kind of experience. It happens at some point with every book, but I first became aware of it when writing my second novel, The Willies.

I’m a huge fan of outlining. Before I start a novel, I plot out the whole arc of the story. It’s like taking a map on vacation: You can still wander all you like, but you won’t get lost or fall off a cliff. Some people start at Page One and that works for them — most notably Stephen King, as he claimed in his book, On Writing — but I find I can let go more when I can trust that I know where I’m going. Having a map of Paris is completely different to walking through its streets, so I don’t think it spoils the fun at all; in fact, it makes sure you don’t miss the best sights.

Isn’t outlining everything in advance like opening your Christmas presents early? No, because unlike a Christmas present, the stakes with a story are different: There might be a dead chicken in the box, and it’s best to know that before you’ve committed a year or two to the project.

That said, there’s always a point with every book when I discover some piece of the map is blank: I thought I’d filled that in, but something here doesn’t connect. With The Willies, that happened at the end, and the whole story fell into a pothole in the road. How does it end?

The Willies is a science fiction/thriller/comedy story about two friends who discover they’re clones. The lead character, Hugh, has a perfect memory: everything he’s ever seen and heard is stored up in his head. He and his childhood best friend, Simon, were products of an experiment and were never meant to be born, and now someone wants them dead. So by the end, they’ve been on the run for about 250 pages, wrestling as they go with the difficult friendship they’ve had. But how would it resolve?

(Spoiler warning: I’m going to talk about the ending here, in case you might consider reading the book.)

I figured something would turn up for the ending, so I did as Rilke says and “lived the question”: I met up with my folks and we went on a trip to Europe. Spending time with my parents as friends is important to me, but I had an ulterior motive for one particular leg of this trip: I’d been thinking for a while of moving to Scotland, but I wanted to see it again for myself, see what it was really like as opposed to the idea I had of it, so I could put it out of my head and settle down in Toronto.

Waking up one morning at a relative’s farm near Aberdeen, I was hit by a double thunderbolt: I knew I had to move to Scotland (I mean, come on, just look at my name!), and I knew how The Willies ended: Hugh had to forget Simon. Something had to change in Hugh to make him lose his memories — and, with them, his fixation on his old friend — so he could start again.

It unfolded so simply and made so much sense, resolving both the external conflict of the story and Hugh’s internal one — that it was like that had been there in the story’s DNA all along but I’d missed it.

This has happened at some point with all four of my novels. I don’t know where these things come from, and I feel like I’m not clever enough to come up with the patterns that weave so deeply into these stories then tie them all together on a ‘meta’ level. Wherever they’re from, at this point I just count on the mechanics of it, so when I find myself standing in a Parisian street that’s just pencil-marks and blank space, I throw the story out to the universe and wait for it to come back completed.

Quick intro for those of you who’re peeking behind the fold on this post:

My fellow Drollerie Press authors and I have been doing blog tours throughout 2009, visiting each other’s blogs and sharing posts on various pre-selected topics. Some of these have been straightforward, some light-hearted, and in some cases, there have been outbursts of character sketches or prose snippets pertinent to our works.

Here are links to the various blog tours we’ve done so far:

• January 2009: Introductions
• In February 2009 we did “origin stories”, but I can’t find a master post link for that, sorry!
• March 2009: Character Interviews
• April 2009: Poetry
• May 2009: Mothers
• June 2009: Fathers
• July 2009: Summer
• September 2009: Music
• October 2009: Sweetest Day
• December 2009: Dangerous Writing

So what I’d like to do for 2010 is something similar to what we were doing for 2009, only this time around, we can have Drollerie authors go out and visit other people’s sites, spread the word about Drollerie, and give the folks who host our posts a chance to spread the word to our own readers about their work in the meantime. In exchange, Drollerie authors can host posts from the non-Drollerie ones on the same topic, whatever the topic of the tour might happen to be.

If we have enough people who want to participate often enough, we can keep to the monthly schedule, but I’m also open to “less frequently than monthly” if that works better for a majority of participants.

Topic-wise, I’d like to keep to a nice mix of casual and serious topics. In particular I’d like to have periodic topics that encourage people to indulge in brief bursts of creativity and do interesting little side glimpses of characters in their work–I love writing these myself and would definitely like to see such glimpses from other authors. Length of posts can be whatever people are comfortable writing, whether a few paragraphs or many, though I recommend not going over 1,000 words.

Depending on the number of participants for this tour or any to come, I suggest that we do a simple exchange of posts between Drollerie authors and non-Drollerie authors. If the number of participants is unequal, I can take volunteers to host extra posts to make up the difference, just so everybody gets to have a post hosted somewhere.

So what I’d like to know from potential participants are the following things:

1. Should we keep to a monthly schedule for this?
2. If a monthly schedule is too often, what interval would work for you?
3. What topics can you suggest for the forthcoming tour, or any to follow?
4. Since I’m pulling in authors from multiple locations, I could set up a mailing list for coordinating our efforts. Would you be okay with joining such a list? (Otherwise I can organize via posts right here on my site.)
5. How soon do you feel you might be able to whip up a post on the topic we all choose?

Please drop comments with your thoughts and I look forward to hearing from you all!

We are of course writing in a mix of genres at Drollerie: urban fantasy, romance, SF, horror, etc., and we’re predominantly in electronic form, although a few of us have our work available in print as well. Ideally I’d like to find other authors who are e-pubbed and/or who share our genres, but print-based authors are of course very welcome as well.

Drollerie of course lives here, and if you’d like to check out an example of one of our recent blog tours, check out the December master post I put up on Drollerie’s main blog. If you’re a writer reading this and you might be interested in setting up an exchange of posts, let me know! Drop me a comment, message me on LJ or DW, fling me email, whatever works. I look forward to hearing from you!

And also, stop by Meredith’s place and wish her well. ‘Cause hospitals are never fun, especially this close to Christmas.

Take it away, Elisa!

Danger Will Robinson! I’ve always sort of vaguely wondered who/what Will Robinson is, and I am starting to wonder how one goes about defining “danger” for the purposes of this blog post. Anyhoo, for those of you who don’t know me, I’m E. G. Diehl, and I’ve been writing for most of my life. I’ve worked as a journalist, I won several writing competitions with short stories and the like as a child/student, and Drollerie Press is publishing two of my some-twenty novel length manuscripts. I’ve been filing through my enormous list of works (ranging from essays for scholarship and grant applications, to radio plays, to articles about crime in Tulsa, to haiku I wrote about chewing gum) and I have come up with so many things that could be called “dangerous” for one reason or another that it makes my head spin. What is life but a series of risks, after all?

I once wrote a letter to the director of a play that could have gotten me ejected from the cast, but instead it resulted in my developing a much better rapport with the director in question. I wrote 2 songs for JET Coaster (my rock band in Japan) that got me in trouble with other band members, but we wound up performing them anyway, and the audiences liked them even if our oboist would flee the room in seething annoyance when I threatened to sing one of them. I wrote a play about a woman answering the door naked only to find that the person who knocked was her little brother with groceries, and that could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways, but that went over amazingly well with the theatre-going public in Honolulu last summer. Early in my novel-writing escapades, I wrote a horror story in first-person-omniscient voice, which broke every writing rule I’d ever been taught in school, but that made for the best sort of creepy atmosphere because the first-person character knew what was going on in the heads of everyone else in her story’s world, and I creeped myself out with it to the point where I had to put it aside or risk nightmares. I handled delicate topics occasionally when working as a news writer, but I managed to never seriously anger any of the parties/organizations involved. Writing-danger never really ends dangerously for me.

On a totally different danger note: I’ll admit that Kinlea Keeper (published by Drollerie) is FAR from the most socially dangerous fiction I’ve written, but the man himself is one of the top two most dangerous people I’ve written (in an “ultimate showdown” of every character in every world I’ve written, I think Kinlea would win if the battle were held in his world and Kalia would win if the battle were in hers, but only very few readers will know what I’m talking about when I say that). Does that make him a dangerous thing, or is it just plain rude to call a person a thing, even if it’s a fictional person? I wrote a weapon that could change reality in its entirety once (in a novel called An Exercise in Bad to Worse), and that’s a pretty dangerous thing, though only within the context of the world for which it was written. These dangers are safely fictional dangers and can’t hurt me or you or anyone else we know, so I don’t think they really count.

I guess the writing experiences that felt the most dangerous to me were for job/university/grant applications of various sorts. Those always feel a hundred times more important than they are when I am writing them because the results directly affect my immediate future. But isn’t that silly, really? The very worst thing that could happen in that sort of situation is that I do not get the position I’m after, but seeing as I’m a successful graduate student, actor, writer, and musician, not getting the positions I didn’t get didn’t seriously impede my progress in life.

Well, I guess I’m finished picking my brain in search of danger (real and imagined). I like to push boundaries hard and fast, but they so rarely push back, and now I feel like a very safe, boring, and lucky writer indeed. Crazy that, considering the topic! Ah well. Happy Holidays to all, and if you happen upon Will Robinson in your travels, give him my regards and tell him I know where they keep the first aid kit. –E.G.D.

Check it out, folks! Here’s what Imogen’s got to say.

When I wrote Frayed Tapestry, my young adult fantasy story based on the myth of Hades and Persephone, I didn’t think about it being dangerous writing. In my story Hades has abducted Persephone, erased her memory with a draught of pomegranate juice, and created an elaborate, false world to keep her in. Her real memories only start to break through when she accidentally tastes her own blood—the only thing in this false world that doesn’t carry the same power of forgetfulness.

Once Persephone understands this is the only way she can get her own memory back, she’s driven to deliberately cutting herself so she can taste her blood again. She shuts herself in the bathroom and uses Hades’ razor to make a cut on her arm. Later, realising that anything she eats clouds her mind with forgetfulness, she sticks a finger down her throat and makes herself throw up. Her full memory comes back, she knows what Hades has done, and she is able to escape and return to her own world.

The possible connotations of these elements to a story meant for young adults didn’t even cross my mind until after the book had been published (with a warning, by the way, because it’s not suitable for young young adults). In the story, Persephone’s actions are appropriate for her situation. In real life though, do they translate into self-harm and bulimia? If a reader takes my Persephone as her role model, will she emulate the courage that drives her actions, or will she emulate just the actions themselves?

As I said, this concern never crossed my mind until I heard someone put out a plea to, not just young adult authors but authors of adult-oriented erotica, that they only ever write “safe sex” sex scenes in case young adults picked them up. This person argued (with good reason, as everyone who’s been a teenager knows!) that young adults don’t necessarily confine themselves to the books meant for them to read, so every writer, not just writers of young adult fiction, had a responsibility not to portray unsafe sex as desirable.

Later, Twilight came out, and I saw people criticizing Bella as a bad role model for teenage girls, and recommending that parents make sure they discuss abusive relationships with their Twilight-reading daughters. And other people defending the books by arguing that no, actually Bella was a good role model.

Most recently, on a writers’ board, I saw a writer requesting writers not to write young adult heroes/heroines with superpowers because it would give young people the impression that their self-worth lay in having these superpowers rather than in anything that was within their real-life reach.

So, as a young adult writer, what are my parameters? Safe sex, strong role models, healthy relationships, no superpowers… In fact, it’s probably safer not to write fantasy at all—I don’t want to give young people the idea that only magic equals happiness, do I? And I’d better not write happy-ever-after romances, because not many relationships started as teenagers last happily for life. And my characters probably shouldn’t do anything without checking with their parents first, and certainly not if their parents have forbidden it. And, and, and…

Is my scathing tone coming through?

As a writer of young adult fiction, a reader of young adult fiction, a mother of two young adults and an ex young adult myself, I am horrified at the idea that all young adult fiction should be made “safe” like this. Who decided that all young adult heroes/heroines should be “role models”? Why should they be role models? Why can’t they just be characters—interesting, flawed, good-and-bad, realistic characters?

Adult fiction is permitted to embrace the weird and wonderful: super-powered characters, anti-heroes, characters who sometimes kick ass and who sometimes cry and manipulate and lie and fail. Why should young adults be denied that? Fiction is not real life; fiction is wonderful, made-up escapism where eleven-year- old orphans can find out they’re wizards or nine-lived enchanters, where ordinary teenage girls can become the one true love of a sparkly vampire or, against all odds, win that year’s Hunger Games, or find they’re the destined Summer Queen.

It’s great—for adults and young adults—to find good role models in books, in the same way it’s great to find interesting obscure facts about Ancient Rome or information on how to stop bleeding or make hasty pudding. I often refer to snippets I gleaned from historical romances to help me place other historical events. But it’s not necessary for all fiction to provide either education or role models.

If a young adult reads Frayed Tapestry and thinks it’s cool to cut herself, if she reads Fire and Shadow and goes away believing she’s only worthwhile if she’s a fire-starter, if a teenage boy reads Falling and thinks it’s okay to climb up to his girlfriend’s bedroom without her parents knowing, then I will be appalled and upset. And yes, I will probably feel guilty and responsible.

But it’s not okay to sanitise fiction in order to avoid any kind of negative response to it. It’s one thing to control the content of books for young children to avoid overloading immature minds with stuff they’re not equipped to handle. With young adults, though, the clue is in the title. They’re young, but they’re also adults. They deserve fiction that’s sometimes reassuring, sometimes safe, sometimes educational. But they also deserve fiction that makes them think, that pushes boundaries, that’s edgy and risky and weird. And (in the limited way of anything that’s not sentient, poisonous or high-voltage) dangerous, too.

http://imogenhowson .blogspot. com
www.imogenhowson.com
http://twitter. com/imogenhowson

* * *

Next up on the Drollerie Blog Tour: John Rosenman is hosting Heather Ingemar!

Hey all, and welcome to the October 2009 edition of the Drollerie Blog Tour! This month’s theme is the lesser-known holiday of Sweetest Day, and we’re taking the opportunity to touch upon the general theme of what the day stands for: those who are encouraging to us. Some of us will be addressing this in terms of our writing, and others? It’ll be our characters.

And without further ado…

Sarah Avery is hosting Heather Ingemar’s post about how her first writing mentor helped her get serious

Nora Fleischer has my own little character vignette about a moment of encouragement in the early life of my heroine from Faerie Blood

On Meredith Holmes’ blog, Heather Parker talks about how a pair of cats and one well-timed remark from her husband gave rise to Middlewitch

Jessica Howe has a guest post from John Rosenman, who wants to give credit to several people who have helped his writing career

Imogen Howson is hosting Catherine Schaff-Stump, who describes her reaction to Sweetest Day

Heather Ingemar has a visit from Fraser Sherman, who sings the praises of people who may surprise you–or not, if you’re a writer yourself

I’ve got Sarah Avery, who tells us about one of the nicest things her husband ever did to assist her writing

At Heather Parker’s blog, Nora Fleischer gives thanks to the first author who ever gave real praise to her work

John Rosenman hosts Meredith Holmes, who thanks several people important to her and her writing efforts

Catherine Schaff-Stump has a post from Jessica Howe, who wants to tell us about the land where her muse has gone to play

And last but not least, Fraser Sherman hosts hosts Heather Ingemar, who finds that Sweetest Day has something in common with her own writing efforts

Thanks again all for reading all our posts. Which, we daresay, is all part of the theme this month!

I’m hosting the inimitable this time around, and without further ado, I shall turn the floor over to her!

The living room looked as if a Babies-R-Us had exploded in it. On the dining table, three baskets of clean laundry waited for someone to fold them. The kitchen floor was still smeared with finger paint, how many days after the painting incident? We weren’t really sure anymore. And our son wanted to experiment with the potty, which meant somebody would have to spend the next hour reading him those same damn potty training picture books. Between my students’ return from vacation, Dan’s work deadlines, and Gareth’s obsession with wearing big-boy underpants, we had completely lost our grip on the chores.

It was the fourth night in a row that I’d planned to get out of the house and write, only to conclude I had no right to the time. Yet again, I rolled up my sleeves and headed for the sink. The pile of dishes threatened to topple down onto the counter at any moment.

“Go write,” said Dan. “I’ve got it under control.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Under control?”

“All right, nothing is under control. Go write anyway.” He picked up the picture books I could not stand to look at one more time that day. “Gareth, give Mommy a good-night hug. She needs to go to work now. Sarah, I don’t want to see you back here until they close up at Barnes & Noble.”

Nothing was under control, of course. Three hours later, I came home to a house Dan had been working on ceaselessly since the moment he tucked our son into his crib, and the place still looked like it merited a visit from a reality television crew from the Home and Garden network. It’s amazing how effort disappears into the vortex of parenthood.

I’d written my five hundred words, like a person or something, like a writer, like the self I remembered being. It was the sweetest day.

Many thanks to Sarah for sharing this lovely moment with us! And if you’d like to continue checking out the blog tour posts, go visit Heather Parker and check out Nora Fleischer’s post there!