I'm melting! I'm melting!

More like brain on broil. I have sooo much to do! Yeaaaargh! I have a line up of five authors waiting on me. ffox, bless him, has been very patient. I've gone through another slug month (sllooooow braaaiin activityyyyyy), but speeded up a bit the last week. Finally. ffox's latest edit should be back to him the middle of next week. Then I have authors two to five to help. This weekend, I have a contract to complete: wrap up The Pearl for Erotic Dreams. This part of the story will end above the 60k mark. It will have a sequel, after I wrap up a few other stories first, Tristan included. I have my Soulstone Chronicles to overhaul as well. I have more plot bunnies. I'm completely in love with my Sun God story, which made it to 25k and needs to finish. It's the first non-fantasy, modern set story I ever started. Darn! I started that thing last August! Man. What the heck have I been doing? Right. Editing. *grin* Learned a lot from editing. Well worth the time spent. I also have a new one called Playing with Magnets: another attempt at modern, but without a gay protagonist. Gay roommate, though. Lots of magnets. I don't have an excerpt for you yet... Well, maybe I do. Will post at the end of this. Darned plot bunnies. They've gone past my toes and are chomping on my knees. So long as they leave my arms and hands alone. And the news! Wild Child Publishing has an announcement. Click here. And now for the Playing with Magnets excerpt: The doctor picked up the clipboard, flipped open the cover page, said, “How did you say he got the injury?” “Magnets,” said the nurse. Lips edged up, cracked a smile, made peeling pink lipstick uglier. Matt looked at the floor, caught a muffled snigger, glanced up at the nurse, shot his gaze to the doctor, found the doctor staring in disbelief. Incredulity twisted into amused rejection, collapsed into outright skepticism, widened with credulity, opened into blatant laughter. Matt lowered his gaze to the scuffed hospital floor again. “I could use a pain killer,” he said between their chuckles. The doctor managed to break his chortling off, but the nurse edged behind the curtains and sniggered her way to somewhere not distant enough. Other voices demanded what was so funny. “I’m supposed to have doctor/patient confidentiality,” Matt said. “You will have,” the doctor replied. “That nurse is talking about me where everyone can hear. Everyone, even the other patients.” Pity. Pity took the doctor out beyond the curtain to shut the nurses up. Matt grimaced, tried not to move. Moving hurt. The doctor returned, but Matt heard too loud whispering in the distance and more sniggering. So much for confidentiality. Doctor understood, sort of, because he was a man. But he wasn’t a nerd geek idiot who— Paper lifted from the clipboard, fell flat again. “Says here you sat on them.” “Yeah.” “You sat on a pair of loose neodymium magnets and they banged together?”` “Yeah.” “You sat on them naked?” “Yeah! Look! Just check me for permanent damage, all right? I’m in pain! I’ve waited hours!” “Take it easy. You need to lie down and spread your legs.” “I had an ice pack on, but the nurse said to take everything off and put on the gown. That was more than half an hour ago.” Matt lowered to the pillow, spread his legs, clutched the paper covering the examination bed. “Did the ice help?” asked the doctor, lifting the gown. “A little.” “The tissue seems very bruised.” “Are my testicles busted? Yeow!” “Sorry, I need to check.” “Warn a guy first!” “I’m touching the other one now.” Matt clutched the paper tighter, ripped up a long shred. “Urrrghhh!” “Fortunately, I think your testicles moved aside when the magnets slammed together, and they certainly did slam,” said the doctor, frowning at Matt’s groin. “But the skin seems to have sustained most of the damage. I’m worried about the blood circulation, and there might be...” “What? There might be what?” Matt said, panic edging in. “Well, one of the tubes may have been caught. I’m going to need to touch again.” “Shit,” Matt whispered, shut his eyes, tried not to squeal like a pig. He knew he looked like one, but he didn’t want to sound like one. “No. It seems fine,” said the doctor. “I’m going to give you a prescription for pain killers. Keep packing the ice on, and no exercise for a few days. Take it easy. All right?” “You said something about the blood circulation,” Matt prodded. “Well, it’s very bruised. There’s a hematoma, a blood clot in the tissue, but it should break down naturally.” “Should? What if it doesn’t?” “Do you have a family physician?” “Not here.” “University student?” “Yes.” “Just come back in if it seems worse, all right?” “How might it be worse?” Impatience began to replace the pity. Matt listened to more advice, given curtly, nodded and thanked the doctor, who left to see someone less laughable. Matt dressed, slowly, while reading the prescription that lay on the torn paper cover of the examination bed. “Strong stuff,” he muttered, winced, adjusted his jeans to a lower altitude, one that did not let material touch scrotum. He nabbed the prescription, shoved it into his back pocket, pulled a large t-shirt over his big belly, grabbed his back pack. Nothing in it but his ID and...magnets. He’d brought the culprits. Stupid. Like they needed to see them. Good thing they’d been spherical. Rolling them off had been easy. But if they’d been discs… “That hurts just to think about,” he muttered, pushed the curtain aside and shuffled slowly into the open. A snigger greeted him. He looked up quickly. The nurses at the station turned in various other directions at the same moment. No telling which had lost control. Women never gave him pity if they could laugh at him first. Fine. He was used to it. “I’ll just shuffle out of the hospital, now,” he called. “Nice meeting you.” Glances, two embarrassed, one still amused, one disapproving. Sure. Disapprove. Never leave your toys lying around on the bed. Moms all over the world should know about his little “accident”, and use it as proof that no one should be a slob. Stupid. Take a shower, come back and sit on the neodymium collection. They probably thought he’d been doing something “else” with them. “Jeez. Why did I have to think that?” Were they still looking at him? Yes. Shuffle faster. Shuffle! Go! Don’t grunt like a pig. God, that hurt.

My mom just sent me this and busted me up. Had to share (no idea who to credit for this priceless anecdote): Subject: Hell The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well: Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities: 1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose. 2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God." THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

Another great review for Debbie's Second Sight

In the May 2007 issue of Affaire de Coeur magazine(print), Inez Daylong wrote: "This was an absorbing paranormal tale filled with suspense and passion. The characters were strong and well developed. I found the “Tiger” to be a new and interesting twist in the paranormal world and hope to find that this author goes on to others with the same theory. Mumford is a new voice to paranormal erotica and does a great job of pulling heavy romance and steamy scenes to the story while remaining tasteful and true to the story. Paranormal and erotica readers alike will not be able to put this one down." So cool. The boss, Marci, sent in the advance review copy about a month before the pub date of Second Sight, and there's the result, without the benefit of the last fixes to help the review along. Well done, Debbie. You had a winner even then. :D So if you want an excerpt of Second Sight, and also excerpts of other of Debbie's stories, hop along to her blog, where she has lots. :-)

Corporate corruption...

...in the form of screwing authors over. Go see this article on LJ: http://community.livejournal.com/sfwa/26013.html And see this for more information: http://www.booksquare.com/archives/2007/05/19/2402/

The comma splice: how to spot it

This topic has come up with more than one author, so here goes, a lesson for anyone that wants it: Here is a true comma splice. This dog is big, he jumps high. Those are two complete sentences that should be separated by a period, not a comma. This dog is big. He jumps high. This dog (subject) is (verb) big. He (subject) jumps (verb) high. All that is required to make a complete sentence is a subject and a verb. Everything else is just additional information. This dog is. He jumps. There it is, both sentences pared down to the basics. The following is not a comma splice: He removed the pins from the butterfly collection, his fingertips tingling against the metal. Pared down to basics: He removed. And now you're wondering, what about tingling? Tingling doesn't count. It's excess information. Why? Because to become a complete verb, tingling requires a helper. The helper is the word be and the moment you have the be verb there, you have a complete verb group, therefore a complete sentence, therefore a comma splice. He (subject) removed (verb) the pins from the butterfly collection, his fingertips (subject) were tingling (verb group) against the metal. Now you have a comma splice. There should now be a period after collection, and a capital H for his. So writers have learned to be lazy and drop excess information for "stylistic" reasons. Instead of complete sentences for every concept, we dump the helper verbs and have crippled (incomplete) sentences getting carried by the complete sentence. "his fingertips tingling against the metal" is the cripple, or subordinate clause. "He removed the pins from the butterfly collection" is the real sentence, lugging the cripple on its back. No comma splice there, just a subordinate clause in need of assistance. :D Hope that made real comma splices more recognisable for you. So. Look for a subject and a verb--a complete verb with nothing missing--and then another subject and another complete verb. If you have only a comma seperating them, but not an "and, but, so" or other legitimate joiner word, you have a comma splice. And just to show you the example with a legit joiner word: He (subject) removed (verb) the pins from the butterfly collection, and (joiner word) his fingertips (subject) were tingling (verb group) against the metal. Btw, you must have seen how clumsy the second sentence is, now that you have the helper verb with tingling. So you fix the sentence again and use tingled instead. He (subject) removed (verb) the pins from the butterfly collection, and his fingertips (subject) tingled (verb) against the metal. And there it is. Hope that helped. An author queried me on the following (I have his permission to use this): Which is correct? - “You are too good to be true, a copper who not only cares about his community, but lives with the people too.” or “You are too good to be true. A copper who not only cares about his community, but lives with the people too.” My answer: The first is a complete sentence with no comma splice. The second is a complete sentence and then an incomplete sentence following. The last part is incomplete because of the who phrase. The who phrase is a descriptive phrase normally tagged to a complete sentence, and that's why your first example was correct. This: A copper who not only cares about his community, but lives with the people too. is only a complete sentence without who: A copper not only cares about his community, but lives with the people too.

POV poopies

Here's something I get tired of seeing, some statement along the lines of "I don't like first person stories because the sex scenes suck", or something of that nature. I've seen the statement from a writer's viewpoint as well, where the writer won't write first person because, well, he or she can't show how all the characters feel. Given that many on-line publishers refuse omniscient manuscripts, I think these writers need to wake up. When you write tight third, it's one POV, just like in first person. One. The only difference is pronouns. You have a scene, and by this I include sex scenes, and you have exactly one POV. How can you know what every character feels, hmm? In true tight third, you only know what the single character feels. Just like in first person. His/her senses, his/her thoughts. That's it. One person. Like I said, it's only a difference of pronouns. This came up on more than one blog, either in the blog post or in comments. It's come up on a forum I visit. I didn't really say anything about it at first, only confessed that I happen to like a well-written first person story as much as a well-written third person story. I didn't really know why then. I didn't analyse it. But I have since. Here's the thing. A badly written third person sucks every bit as much as a badly written first person. Sweeping statements that first person sucks worse strikes me as coming from someone that didn't analyze the reason. Here's where first person has a chance to fail, and fail worse than tight third: first person sex can utterly bomb (actually, all of a first person story can bomb if you frig this up) when you don't establish straight off a descriptive narrative voice that feels natural for the POV character. There it is. Establish a natural, descriptive narrative voice. The first person character must show straight off he/she is a describer. Then, once you have that, you must line everything up to evoke reader interest, just like in any other story. The reader must want to follow the character along, throughout the entire story, sex scenes included. Sooo... You read a first person sex scene that sucks, I wonder if it sucked because it was first person, or just sucked because it wasn't written well, just like many third person scenes aren't written well. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've seen tight third sex scenes cheat, add an element of omniscience that doesn't belong. You can't cheat in first person. So perhaps it takes a more alert writer to pull off first person well. Perhaps. Third person writers should try writing first person stories, because you know, you get better at tight third if you learn to pull off first properly. And the reverse is also true. First person writers should try third person stories, just to practice that descriptive element, watch those pronouns, and then translate the knowledge gained into better first person narratives.

Submission calls and new submission standards

Two announcements today, one for Freya's Bower, one for Wild Child Publishing. I'll begin with Freya's Bower. Cut and paste from the bosses now follows: Chapter Book Submissions Call Freya's Bower is starting a new line of chapter books. These are a series of three, or more, installments of an ongoing story. Each "chapter" must be 5000-6000 words in length. They will be released monthly. The story can be any heat rating, any genre, and can even incorporate any of our series (Goddess Freya, Valkyrie, T.R.O.U.B.L.E., Angels and Demons) Due to the length, they will not be given ISBN's and will have one cover for all installments with the exception of a minor change to distinguish each installment from the others. (i.e. Title one: The Southern Sting: Chapter One, title two: The Southern Sting: Chapter Two, and so on.) To submit, include the first chapter in the body of the email text with "CHAPTER BOOKS" in the subject line. Also include a one-paragraph synopsis of the following installments planned for the story. Send your submissions to: submit@freyasbower.com. If you have questions email Faith at editorfaith@sbcglobal.net or Marci at mbaun@freyasbower.com. Please read the guidelines for formatting and any questions you might have before submitting. And next up is Wild Child's change to story lengths: Wild Child Publishing will now accept novellas (30,000-50,000). In the past, we have only considered such short works on the rare occasion. However, I have decided to expand our catalog to include shorter works. Wild Child Publishing will continue to accept works of 50,000 words or greater as well. All mainstream genres are welcome as is non-fiction. Be sure to read our guidelines carefully. These are designed to make the submission process as quick and easy as possible and to ensure that submissions are handled expeditiously. Unless stated otherwise, our ebook section is open to submissions all year round.

Soul Haven receives a good review...

So wonderful! Sonja just received a lovely review from a tough reviewer. Three and a half points for Soul Haven. Well done, Sonja! POD Critic: Soul Haven - A Review And don't forget Sonja has a contest for this book. Enter while you can. :D

Woot Debbie!

The first review for Second Sight is in. White Russian gave her five fluted cocktail glasses and said: Words to describe Second Sight: Murder, intrigue, suspicion, nail-biting. Things I said out loud: “Who the hell is the killer?” “Oh, the suspense!” “Oh my God…” Buy it and love it, readers. A solid and delightful read. Read the full review here.

After much trial and error

And a back that's giving me agony, but no, my brain did not implode, I have managed to put up the beginnings of my new look for Blogger blog and websites. What a bitch! Yahoo Geocities did not want to accept the new CSS code. I spent hours pairing the old code with the new, and whittling the combo away, bit by bit, until I had a code that worked for Yahoo. The code is backwards from what it should be, some things on the bottom that should be on top, but you can't see that. No. It looks ok. So there's some links and wordage from Andreas that don't belong on the websites, but I haven't gotten around to fixing those yet. I'll add something in later. I'm tired and the back has said "ENOUGH!" Off to bed I go. Oh! And Debbie had a good chat at eBookLove. I managed to become unmoderated at last and could participate. What else? I'm forgetting something... I don't know what I'm forgetting. Anyhow, a bit more fiddling left to do and the overhaul of the sites will be done. Long overdue. Chris Ffox is up next for getting a line edit of his manuscript. He'll be sharing edit time with...me! I'm going to wrap up Loved Him One--again--and send it back to Marci. I just finished two more chapters of The Pearl for Erotic Dreams, and I may actually wrap that up as well. I will have to make the story a two parter. It's humongous. Plot bunnies are chasing the tiger. Poor tiger. Yes, I'm going to bed. Really. Here I go.

Changing the theme

Bear with me. I'm changing my blog look. I tried a new, new, new blog template for the new Blogger, but the frigging thing wouldn't let me put a banner at the top of the page, no matter where I put the code. I have said some very bad words this afternoon. Poor Debbie. She's doing a loop chat today on eBooklove (see the link in the lower post) and I can't join her. My posts are moderated. I posted this morning and the posts still haven't gone up on the group. So here I am, being absolutely useless on Second Sight's release date. And so, the blog gets a new look at last. I'm also working on my websites. I have draft pages up, but not finished. Here's a peek: http://soulstonechronicles.bravehost.com/draft.html Yes, it still has Andreas' data still. I only managed to create a banner last night. I'm so sick of the purple or blue Psyche/Eros themes. Chucking Eros into a pit and squashing him for now. Always wanted to squash him. He's sooo squooshable. Anyhow, once the draft page is done, it'll become the index page. And then I must fix all the pages that link to it. What I like about this new page is that it's CSS, which fits to the size of anyone's screen. I checked. It does. Back to frigging with my blog stylesheet. Damned new blogger stylesheets. They are NOT user friendly if they don't let you put up a banner. The Blogger guys running the show didn't even offer a new template that gives a user the ability to put a banner on top, simply and without blowing your brain out your ears. What? They want us to beg, right? They do. I know they do.