Author Interview: Brian G. Wood

April 25, 2013 | Author: Heather

BrianGeoffreyWood

Brian Wood, author of Dead Roots met with me this evening to discuss writing positively, the problems with NaNoWriMo, his success in the world of self-publishing, and his systematic unwarranted torture of poor Sonic the Hedgehog.

me
All right so first of all, is this your actual first book or just the first one you’ve released to the world?

Brian Wood
I’ve been writing basically since I knew how to spell. I used to make picture books when I was in primary school, and I wrote fanfiction and a bunch of really terrible short stories when I was in high school.
I’ve done some tabletop game systems and just-
Basically I was always writing one thing or another, even if I didn’t do anything with it.

me
Tabletop game systems?

Brian Wood
D&D, LARP, that sort of thing.
My specialty was always settings rather than actual mechanics.

me
Ohhh I get it. So role playing sort of live things.
I’ve heard things about the rulebooks, but I honestly don’t know much myself.
So this was your first book?

Brian Wood
Yeah, this is the first time I really sat down and decided to do a book and do it properly.

me
How long did it take?

Brian Wood
About a year off and on.
The last four months or so was when I really knuckled down on it.

me
This isn’t even fair.
I’m going to try not to hold all this against you.

Brian Wood
Ehehe

me
I did the NaNoWriMo once and got myself through something…

Brian Wood
NaNoWriMo has its purpose, but I think it fosters a lot of bad habits. I read one forum where somebody suggested that to buff up your word count, you could give one of the characters a hyphenated name and then bam you’ve increased by 5,000 words! It doesn’t foster quality.

me
What did you try as far as getting mainstream published if you did? Also: I heard your sales are pretty good. Give us your secrets.

Brian Wood
I spent a few months submitting to agents and then I decided to do the self-publishing thing, which is a choice that i’m finding was the right one at least for this series, I think
As far as my sales secrets, I’m not smashing the records or anything but there’s been a steady uptick and basically all of my sales these days are cold sales, i.e. not friends or acquaintances who make up the majority of your early sales.
And I wrote an article about that for my blog but it basically boils down to:
First make a quality product that you’re really proud of, then be patient and do a lot of networking.

me
You talk to your Twitter followers a lot.

Brian Wood
I do, because my philosophy is just to make myself more visible to the audience and then they’ll follow the link to my books if they are interested.
Building a following is a slow business and there aren’t really any shortcuts, but you can help yourself by having a professional attitude and being really interactive.

me
My tactic is to get my famous girlfriend to link to my stuff.

Brian Wood
Yeah absolutely.
Influencers are really important.

me
So, after my review of your book you mentioned on Twitter you were glad to know that it passed muster.
I have written about this kind of thing in the past, and I went into method a lot so I’m wondering what your approach was to writing positively.

Brian Wood
I’m a male and straight and I look at women, obviously, but I’m not going to sit there and write that down because I don’t want to come off as a creep. I don’t want somebody to be reading it and think “this is how Brian Wood views women.” I keep that to myself basically.
When I describe Margaret and how she’s kind of overweight, and Tom likes it, I wanted there to be a body positivity side to that as well. The female characters are not eye candy. Tom is going to leer at them but that’s not their only purpose in the story. Sometimes that’s a conscious decision and I think I’m not giving this character enough to do so I have to go back and edit that. I’m learning as it goes.

Brian Wood contacted me over twitter after reading this interview and wanted to include the following caveat to his answer here:

I’m a little dissatisfied with my own answer regarding the “male gaze” and body positivity. I didn’t articulate it well.  It’s not about him or if he approves or not.  I don’t get into Margaret’s head really but she’s implied to be insecure.  So I suppose that was more a message to my male readers to be more accepting of different body types.

me
I liked that you made an effort toward body positivity, too. What motivates you to write queer positively?

Brian Wood
Through no conscious effort of my own, like 90% of my friends are LGBT
My two best friends in the world who I’ve known since high school eventually came out as gay and MtF trans
So queer rights and positivity are just something I’m constantly immersed in

me
Okay awesome. You did a great job of it.
And you said in a conversation we had earlier that you like to write about racial issues as well.
So, please, if you have any tips for us privileged white types on how to write racially positive
please share.
What should we avoid?

Brian Wood
It depends on what sort of story you’re trying to write and on the character’s personality

me
definitely true. What makes you cringe?

Brian Wood
I feel like media in recent years has actually been pretty good about handling African-American people, but if you give me a second I’m sure I can think of something that made me really aggravated.
I think the worst thing you can do is fetishize it which is something that occurs most often with Asian characters.
It’s easy to say you shouldn’t appeal to stereotypes but that kind of stuff usually gets sniffed out pretty quick.

me
I know a lot of this is common sense; obviously if I wouldn’t like to see every LGBT character fetishized or some sort of two-dimensional stereotypes I shouldn’t do that to anyone else, either.

Brian Wood
The way I handle it personally is to acknowledge that it’s there but it serves as more of an undercurrent than really a focal point.
You can’t pretend that it doesn’t color character interaction.
Even between characters who don’t hold any active prejudice.

me
It sort of depends where they’re from too, doesn’t it?
I grew up in a racially diverse area then moved to one that wasn’t.
So I grew up in a place where my teachers, bosses, and friends were mixed groups (though it would be impossible to deny that the higher up in a company you’d go, the more white and male it got).
Once I got to a less diverse area, people could hardly talk to each other without blurting something stupid.

Brian Wood
The issue with media at the moment is honestly more of a lack of representation with regards to race than actual bad execution
Yeah it does. Since moving back to the US from New Zealand there’s been a bit of a culture shock with regards to racial awareness

me
What’s New Zealand like in that regard?

Brian Wood
New Zealand is really curious in the way that it views race
Simultaneously there’s a similar climate with regards to the Maori people and the government, where there’s a lot of past racial tension that still isn’t 100% worked out and probably never will be
But at the same time they’re extremely, like, almost bafflingly relaxed about it.
There was this animated show called Bro’Town that was produced with government arts funding and written by a Samoan comedy troupe and they just ruthlessly lampoon urban Maori and Pacific Islander culture, particularly in low-income areas. It’s a really strange and vibrant and laid back sort of attitude towards race relations that I don’t think could be emulated in the US.

me
So basically it’s your opinion that in the USA right now, the problem is mainly a lack of representation, right?

Brian Wood
For me it’s more like…
There should be more room for a show to star a person of color and the writers to not shy away from that topic without it being seen as a cry for attention.

me
Right – as though any inclusion is “special consideration” or otherwise intentional.

Brian Wood
Exactly.
And in that vein the most offensive stuff comes from the audiences, not the source material like the backlash over Rue in the Hunger Games movie.
It’s not often that I’ll be bothered by a depiction of a minority character in a movie or book or TV show but the mainstream audience’s commentary about that character can just be the vilest stuff I’ve ever seen.

me
Oh god that was awful.
That’s a really good point. The audiences are disgusting sometimes.

Brian Wood
I’m honestly more concerned with how gay people are being simultaneously idolized and then stripped of all their dignity by mainstream media.
Like, don’t get me started on Glee.

me
Yeah that’s a problem.
It gets kind of exhausting.
Tell us a little about Blood Mother!
What can I expect from the sequel?

Brian Wood
Blood Mother was a bit of a departure in tone and identity from the first one. I’d learned a ton during the experience of writing and selling the first one, and I just took a wholly different approach to writing it with regards to how I mapped out the plot and mechanically, as well.
But it’s reportedly still very much, you know, it’s still the second Tom Bell book, it has that same feel and it carries the story to a natural place.
I was a little worried at first that it might be seen as kind of an unnecessary detour because the main plot thread doesn’t link back significantly to the first book

me
Awesome. And you said when we spoke earlier that you’d be including a trans character? Is that in Blood Mother or in the third? I know anyone who reads my blog wants to know.

Brian Wood
But the characters are still coping with their experiences in Dead Roots and there’s an underlying series of events that ties it all together and leads into the third one
There is a character in the third title who is revealed to be trans and I’m going to attack that topic with all the severity and delicacy that it deserves.
It’s someone that the readers will be attached to and familiar with by the time the character is ‘outed’ to them

me
Tell us more about your third book! When is that coming out? What’s happening in it?

Brian Wood
The third one is probably about halfway through the pipeline at the moment, we’re looking at roughly a mid to late summer release I would say.
The third one is back to Japan and it’s the conclusion of the Aki/Harold story arc and their mental struggle will be fed into the horror grinder for some really nasty imagery and set pieces.
My friend called it “A suicidal road trip full of monsters and mayhem”.

me
That’s awesome.
Okay final question: I guessed that you’d been writing Invader Zim fanfic and you corrected me on Twitter, saying that you’d written Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic.

Brian Wood
ahahaha

me
My son watches Sonic fan videos on YouTube; they get into some creepy shit.
What the holy hell is wrong with Sonic fans?

Brian Wood
I have no clue, but it’s basically always been like that
The people who are in video game and anime fandom nowadays are basically mirrors of the people who were in that scene when I was in high school and it’s baffling to me how it all sort of rhymes that way.
I wrote a lot of psychological horror stuff even back then.

me
reading Dead Roots reminded me a lot of watching Evil Dead..

Brian Wood
That’s a fair comparison particularly with the tree imagery.

me
What did you do to Sonic?

Brian Wood
I took it to some very dark and gross and quite melodramatic places.

Brian Wood takes his readers to some dark and gross and melodramatic places in Dead Roots, then again in Blood Mother and soon to be again in King of Men which can be purchased by following those links on Amazon for your Kindle or in paperback, and here for your nook.

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Book Review: Dead Roots

April 22, 2013 | Author: Heather

Y2Q6CDead Roots: The Analyst (Volume I)

By: Brian G. Wood

Genre: Fiction/Fantasy/Action/Horror

Rating: Flawless

Tom’s official job title at the Department of Paranormal Study and Defense (DPSD) is Analyst.  Analyst is the un-fancy way of describing an action-packed, psychologically taxing, high mortality rate position at a super secret government agency. It’s not an easy job, and on top of it, he’s got a sex-crazed boss, an ex wife, an estranged step child, a (literally) haunted past, and a chainsmoking habit to support.  So, he’s got his plate pretty well full enough even before he takes on the job of chaperoning a troublesome demon named Aki trapped inside an eerily docile medium named Keda all around Japan.

The challenge is that Tom is not able to use “chems,” a term which refers mostly to benzodiazepines.  Chems are the double-edged sword of Tom’s profession.  They keep his psyche protected from things like Aki, but at the price of causing things like Aki to become Objective, or visible and also the stuff of bed-wetting, cardiac event inducing nightmares.  Things seem to be going pretty well until Aki manages to get inside of Tom’s unprotected mind and slaps him around a bit with childhood memories of being haunted by a tree in his closet – a tree whose fruit is his mother’s freaking head.  Even a horrible night trawling around Japanese night clubs doesn’t seem to shake the memories loose.  Clearly, Tom needs a vacation, but it has to wait.  Some mysterious disappearances in a town called Orchard require his attention.

The end boss of Dead Roots is a demon named Akebara, the creepy sentient tree from Tom’s childhood made of blood, flesh, and gore.  Akebara has taken over Orchard, a horrid backwoods little place at the foothills of the Appalachians where the populace is so naturally weird already that it’s hard to tell who is being haunted and who is just, well, from Orchard.  Tom’s partner Artie, Tom, Keda, and a local foul-mouthed cop from Detroit named Heather team up to find and defeat the horror that is Akebara before it takes over the whole town and then who knows what else.

I lack the necessary articulation skills to do justice to the unrelenting gore and humor of the many scenes featuring the mutilated, vomiting victims of this tree.  Let’s just say that if you find violent sudden vomiting funny, and you should, then you will enjoy this book.  The gore was delectable.  Akebara is described in all its creeping, cracking, oozing, veiny horror and its victims are even better.  I lost many ounces of weight trying to read this book during my lunch breaks and having to make the painful decision between delicious turkey sandwich and continuing to read Dead Roots.  Dead Roots won.

I was introduced to this book by world famous author of In the End, Alexandra Rowland, who assured me that its author, Brian G. Wood, was relatively speaking ridiculously famous.  He sells multiples of books per week, she assured me, and he will share with us the mysterious secrets of fame.  Naturally, I scooped it right up.  After all, once I’ve finally finished writing a book that I’m willing to show the world, I intend to be, erm, famous.  Well, I have bad news for you, readers, if you were looking for the same insight as I.  There are no tricks here.  It’s all just well-organized, superbly imagined, hilarious, charismatic, quality product.  Wood has refined his craft.  I suspect he may be hiding several hundreds of his earlier works in a locked vault somewhere or perhaps on an Invader Zim fanfic forum.  I refuse to accept that this is one of his first.  It would be too depressing.

It was hard for me to find something to criticize about this book, but in the interest of objectivity, I feel I owe it to my readers to do something other than fawn all over it like a fan at a Justin Bieber concert.  I mean, we’ll leave the discussion of whether criticism is proof of objectivity for another day.  You want to know where Wood messed up, don’t you?  Some of you are authors.  You want to know that there was a really good reason that Wood hasn’t yet been picked up by PenguinHarperCollinsScholasticWhatever because if there isn’t a good reason, the illusion of justice in this world will dissolve before your eyes. You will lose all hope and no longer want to inhabit this planet.  Well, tough.  There is no good reason.  Tom is a bit too archetypal for my tastes, I suppose, given that I’ve read about a hundred male heroes who have smoking habits and strained relationships with hot women and (not hot) kids with whom they wish they could have more time, but it was inoffensive.  His character was simply the one recognizable artifact of pop culture in a sea of one hundred percent pure originality.  Oh, and there was one scene toward the end of the book that I had to read twice to figure out what was going on.  That’s. It.

Because you’re reading my blog, you probably want to know whether this book was woman and queer positive.  It was.  There are some microaggressions in the beginning, so I didn’t have high hopes, but it turned out the book was remarkably self-aware.  The microaggressors learn their lesson.  When was the last time you saw something like that outside of an after school special?  I don’t even know.  It was kind of heart warming actually.  Even better, it was brief and not awkward or overly emotional at all.  It wasn’t so much an episode of Oprah as a brief little “oh,” and then that’s that.  No sitting around and hemming and hawing about what’s gross and who is or isn’t a full human being worthy of equal rights and whose religion is offended right now.  Dead Roots would never put you through that.  It’s much too nice for all that nonsense.

Still, this was not an easy review to write.  It took me several hours longer than expected and I left a very friendly author sweating with anticipation* while I worked out exactly how I could do the job of both telling you how awesome it was and not spoiling a single mystery about the book.  For example: I can’t tell you about my favorite character, Creeping Wind.  Sorry.  You’ll just have to shell out three to twelve bucks.

Go buy Dead Roots.  It can be found on Amazon for $2.99 kindle, $12.99 paperback alongside its sequel, Blood Mother.

*lol just kidding my reviews aren’t that exciting

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Author Interview: Ken Floro III

April 8, 2013 | Author: Heather

Ken Floro III, author of Little Green Men From Beyond the Amazon was kind enough to meet with me today to discuss writing style, his kids’ college fund, and who NOT to listen to while you’re trying to make it as an indie author.  It turns out he is an unbelievably super nice guy, and he even had some really good news about the sequel to Little Green Men (out soon).

Ken Floro
I’m excited. This is my first interview as an author

me
I wish I were more famous for you.

Ken Floro
I’m just grateful for the opportunity. Thanks again!

me
I want to talk about the thing about your book I liked the most: the voice.

Ken Floro
What would you like to know?

me
How did you keep it consistent? Is that just how YOU talk in your head?
Like is Max an extension of you or is he somebody entirely different?

Ken Floro
That’s exactly how I talk in my own head. The oldest writing maxim in the wold is to write what you know. It took me years of practice to make my inner voice anywhere near readable. I’m glad it’s working!

me
It seems to be working quite well, actually.
One thing I absolutely must know because I feel it’s crucial to understanding this book (as you may have gathered from my review of it) is how many books is this series intended to contain?
Did I just read 1/10th or 1/2?

Ken Floro
I’ve already written the second, which is slated for publication this month, and I’m halfway through the third. My gut tells me the series will run through four total, but I absolutely NEVER outline or plan my writing, so the best I can do is catch premonitions about where the stories are headed.

me
okay so at least three then

Ken Floro
Definitely three.
Most likely four.

me
That makes sense. I did feel as though I’d just read around 1/3 to 1/4 of a story

Ken Floro
Oh, good!

me
With self-publishing, sometimes it makes sense to do that. I’ve considered releasing my books in clumps of chapters.

Ken Floro
I had no idea where the whole thing was headed when the story first started bubbling up in 2003. I’ve just been going with it.
I concur with the self-publishing angle. As the author I have so much more control and feel like I can do things entirely as I want to without having to worry about striking marketing targets in given genres

me
I know exactly what you mean!
What sorts of mass-market boundaries did you feel comfortable crossing (in this book and/or in others).

Ken Floro
The first one was written from 03-05. The second from 05-07. The third one has sat dormant in its half-written state for about three years. I was holding out hope for traditional publication. Now my only restriction is saving up for the next batch of ISBN’s
With regard to markets and genres, I didn’t stop to think about it, I just wrote the story that presented itself to me. Stephen King compares writing fiction to archaeology – it’s more like unearthing a fossil than actively creating something. I didn’t set out to cross any boundaries, I just ignored them and wrote what I wanted. Then realized I couldn’t sell it through traditional channels to save my life
So here I am, an indie author

me
That’s a really good way of looking at it.
So, when you were trying to sell through traditional channels, did you receive any feedback? Did you pick up an agent? Tell me a bit about what you encountered.

Ken Floro
I’ll admit I only came to that enlightened stance after years and years of self-doubt and epic frustration
I received enough form rejection letters to make a very uncomfortable blanket, but no one ever connected with my work or gave me any worthwhile feedback beyond “You dialogue seems stilted”
(make that “you’!)
(damit, ‘YOUR”)
((and make that “damnit’!))

me
lol

Ken Floro
(too much coffee this morning)

me
I do that.
So were those letters from agents or did you attempt the publishers themselves?

Ken Floro
I attempted both and never made any headway. To be fair to those who rejected me, I last attempted traditional channels probably five years ago, and I’ve been writing non-stop since then, so I know my work has improved, but I’m in love with being indie now, so there’s no way I’d switch back. The liberty to do what I want and not have to answer to anyone suits my disposition much better

me
Makes complete sense.
You’re the first author I’ve interviewed or reviewed who was not on their debut novel so I’m very interested in knowing what other sorts of things you find rewarding about being an indie author.
For example: do you get to connect with your readers? Have you found a community?
And if it’s not too personal,
Has the complementary income so to speak ever afforded you any grand, significant luxuries?

Ken Floro
I, perhaps unfortunately, fell under the spell of John Locke, and was persuaded to dump a lot of books onto the market all at once. In retrospect, I’m still not sure if that was a bad or good idea, but I’ve been sitting on the material for years, yearning for an audience; at least now I can hunt for one

me
John Locke? Is that a character from one of your other novels? Or do you refer to the philosopher?

Ken Floro
Being an indie author, for me, has been challenging. You get to confront the deafening indifference of the universe head-on, which can be chilly and disheartening. But I remain optimistic and hope that supplemental income can help pay for some higher education for my kids some day (assuming we add to our litter)
John Locke is an indie author who made a big splash a few years back and was only recently discredited for having paid top dollar for spam reviews to pump his Amazon ratings (according to scuttlebutt).

me
Ohhhh I see.

Ken Floro
He published a book about how he made himself such a huge success as the first indie to sell one million ebooks but neglected to mention he bought most of that publicity
Again, so the story goes . . .

me
I see.
But you know… Fifty shades of crap was originally an indie book

Ken Floro
I’ve managed to avoid reading it, but it feels like I’m the only one

me
…and now whats her name and her disjointed, barely coherent vocabulary are drowning in yachts.

Ken Floro
That would certainly be nice!

me
Somebody lent me the book. My girlfriend and I got 20 pages in before we felt actively harmed by the text.

Ken Floro
HA!
For my own work, I’m satisfied that I’ll be proud to let my kids read it someday
Obviously, when they’re old enough

me
So you’re saving up your indie book income for your kids’ schooling. That’s awesome.

Ken Floro
Well, that income amounts to a grand total of $11.43 so far

me
of all the books you’ve released, you’ve only made 11.43?

Ken Floro
Yeah. Deafening indifference of the universe. What can ya do, right?

me
Wow. How many sales is that?
Don’t tell me it’s 1,143 sales, I’ll kill myself

Ken Floro
About a dozen total books, counting print and ebook, but for a long time I had all my ebooks priced at $.99
This is where the “writing whatever I want” part feels sort of like you might have shot yourself in the foot, but I can’t exactly back out now

me
Other than the staggering supplementary income with which you’ll surely one day purchase many summer houses,
and the freedom to write what you want,
can you think of any other benefits?

Ken Floro
It really is FUN! I get to write whatever I want! Staring into the horizon of building an audience is just the next challenge

me
Well, that’s as good a reason as any. How much time do you spend in the average day/week writing?

Ken Floro
It depends entirely what I’m working on. When I’m writing for my website, it can soak up 2-3 hours a day or more. When I’m editing books for publication, that can take up as much as 5 hours a day, but those fits of productivity usually only last for a few weeks out of the year. The rest of the time, I treat writing like a fun hobby. And it’s a lot more constructive than video games

me
Have you tried Sims?
Because maybe you would change your tune a little if you played Sims is all.

Ken Floro
I’ve always been fond of Civilization. A buddy introduced me to it back in high school and warned me I’d be up until 4am playing, and damnit, he was EXACTLY right. The franchise is on its 5th iteration now, but with a toddler, I don’t have the 6-8 I used to scrounge up for marathon gaming sessions any longer. Oh well

me
Toddlers are very detrimental to video game progress.

Ken Floro
You got that right!

me
Two more questions.

Ken Floro
Hit me.

me
As a seasoned indie author, what would you recommend new indie authors pursue/avoid. In other words, what did you waste your time on and what do you wish you’d found earlier?

Ken Floro
I wasted a little money on some digital advertising, and I wasted a lot of time and effort attempting to “exploit” Twitter, per the advice of a certain million-selling indie author. Now, I guess I’d say just write what you enjoy writing and be prepared to let that be good enough, because it might very well be that all you get is the satisfaction of having done it. Not to sound like a pessimist or anything. It it a helluva rush to hold your own book in your hand!
Dance like no one’s watching, right?

me
Definitely.
Okay last question:
Can you please give us a little sneak peek at what’s to come for Max?

Ken Floro
Absolutely!
In the second book, I split the narrative perspective, so half of the book is from Max’s eyes, still in first-person, and the other half is third-person, from Veronica’s eyes. They discover that the little green men are much, much more than wild animals. They also discover just how dangerous the new Director and his goons truly are.

me
It will be exciting to see things from Veronica’s perspective.

Ken Floro
It was a much easier for me to tell a story outside of strictly first-person perspective!
If you’d like, I can send you an advance copy

me
I would love an advance copy, thank you.

Ken Floro
Rock on! I’ll email it today!

me 
And thank you for coming it was all my pleasure doing the interview. You’ve been super fun.

Ken Floro III has the best blog I’ve ever seen from an independent author. It can be found here along with links to purchase his action-packed novels soon to include the perspective of a pretty awesome female character whose voice I can’t wait to hear.

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Book Review: Little Green Men From Beyond the Amazon

March 19, 2013 | Author: Heather

41rzXlojn-L._SL500_AA300_Little Green Men From Beyond the Amazon

By: Ken Floro III

Genre: Sci-fi/action

Rating: 

Jury still out pending completion of series.

Little Green Men From Beyond the Amazon (heretofore LGM) is written in the first person narrative of the main character Max, a southside park ranger whose job it is to hunt down boogey men, or little green men, or dog-men depending on who’s talking about them.  Boogey men are some sort of half-dog half-primate hybrids with moderate intelligence and an appetite for human flesh.  The southside is an area of St. Louis, Missouri that is saturated with boogey men.  Max and his cohorts spend every night out patrolling the southside and shooting little green men to death.  When people, or rather, corpses, are involved, the rangers’ job is to hide the evidence of boogey men.  Civilians are not supposed to know about them.

Everything is going pretty hunky-dory, Max supposes, until one day when along comes Dr. Victoria Tersen, a biologist with an attitude that blows hot and cold.  Oh, and apparently a nice body.  Dr. Tersen demands that the rangers capture one of the boogey men alive so that her crew up in Montana can observe their behavior and find out how to kill them.  They find out some useless information and then the Committee cuts their budget.  From here, which is about a quarter of the way into the book according to my Kindle, to the 90% mark, it’s all politics and jockeying for position.  The reader should keep in mind that this is the first book in a series.  I’m not sure how many books there are supposed to be in the Southside Ranger series, but I’m assuming this one did all the necessary discussing and figuring things out.  The book ends with a cliffhanger.

LGM is not the type of book I usually read.  I figured this out pretty much right away.  It’s an adrenaline-fueled hypermasculine creature feature with lots of thumb-jabbing and grabbings by the scruff of the neck.  Aside from Dr. Tersen, there is a woman named Terry who is a nurse that shows up for two sentences.  Everyone else is male.  Everyone.  I won’t lie; this made my inner lesbian sad.  However, and yes it’s tragic, not everyone is a lesbian.  Some people are men.  Some people, I’m even told, really enjoy stuff  like this regardless of their genders and have made Vin Diesel a bajillionaire.  Before Vin Diesel, there was Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, and Chuck friggin Norris.  Would the same people who have made Vin Diesel filthy stinking rich like this book, you ask?  I don’t know!  I’m not qualified to determine whether this fulfills all the hypermasculine man-dreams of action junkies.  I can only assume it does due to all of the thumb-jabbing.  So, we’ll go ahead and put a check in that box.

That being said, I do read and write, and I have identified at least FOUR things about the book that I can review with confidence.

Thing one: the narrator.

Max is an incredibly well written narrator.  His voice is consistent, charismatic, and unique.  Even during the times where I groaned a little bit because the plot was starting to remind me of a union meeting (which I attend monthly in real life – I’m not just guessing) my interest was never completely lost because I enjoyed reading it from Max’s perspective.  I liked the way he saw things and how casually he could describe the world and himself and the people around him as though he couldn’t take any of it all that seriously.  I particularly enjoyed one bit toward the end where Max has taken over his former boss’s office and the only thing in the whole room for sitting is an uncomfortable stool.  He fidgets around in the thing and tries to act casual, but he can’t get comfortable.  Later on, when everything overwhelms him, he leans over with his head in his hands and realizes the stool is suddenly comfortable.  That kind of deep introspection from a very not introspective character without ever breaking character was a stroke of genius.  I actually raised my eyebrows.

Thing two: the organization

It’s difficult to tell whether this works in the context of however many books there are going to be.  I checked Floro’s website and couldn’t find anything about how many books there are supposed to be, so I don’t know whether I’m a tenth of the way through the story or halfway through the story.  The book doesn’t stand very well on its own.  It doesn’t have its own complete plot with a traditional arc.  There is no conflict resolution.  That being said, if there are three or four books planned, there’s a lot of potential for this to turn out very well.  The action never comes to a dead stop.  The chain of promises is never broken.  I didn’t feel like I could have put the book down on page fifty and not needed to know any more.  The scenes flowed very well.

Thing three: the “bitch”

Dr. Tersen.  Oh, boy, where do I start with Dr. Tersen?  Well, she’s smart and tough.  She gets her way a lot.  She doesn’t take a lot of shit from Max.  She is also referred to as a “bitch” in literally all of her scenes.  From a harm-reduction standpoint, I suppose it could have been worse.  She could have spent every scene either having sex with Max or being discussed in the context of sex.  She could have walked into a room full of rangers and tried to give a presentation only to be ogled and whistled at.  Oh, wait, that all happened.

This stuff could all have been taken out and replaced with a big fat subtitle on the book cover that read: NO GIRLS ALLOWED.  I don’t even know what to say about it.  Is Floro a misogynist?  It’s hard to tell.  It might just be that Max is a misogynist.  It might even just be that Max is an idiot.  It might be that Floro conceived of Max’s attitudes toward women in an attempt to demonstrate that Max is a flawed character.  I want to believe this, it’s just hard to do when Dr. Tersen is the only female character in the entire book.  I’m hoping the sequels aren’t quite so hostile to female audiences.

Thing four: the cliffhanger

We finally get some fight scenes with the boogey men, things with Dr. Tersen are getting interesting and yes, in spite of myself, I even want to know what the Committee’s deal is.  I will be reading the next book when it comes out.  Or soon, if it already has.  I can’t tell from Floro’s website.

I wasn’t sure how to rate this book, honestly.  I want to see how things pan out and where things go with all the characters.  I want to know if the action is good and whether the Committee is ever developed as a full-fledged character.  I want to know if there will ever be some awesome action woman who shows up and starts doing flips and leveling boogey men territory.

In the meantime, I recommend this to anyone who chooses movies for their explosions.

Posted in Book Review | Leave a Comment

Book Review: Run, Clarissa, Run

February 19, 2013 | Author: Heather

41Tvoj4rSYL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_Run, Clarissa, Run

By: Rachel Eliason

Genre: YA fiction

Rating:

Eye-rollingly awful

Run, Clarissa, Run is an after school special novel about a kid named Mary Sue Clark, later Clarissa, who is transgender.  In the first half of the novel, the main character is primarily referred to as Clark with male pronouns.  Clark is obviously this amazingly good looking gender ambiguous kid who is amazingly freaking brilliant but nobody ever notices, because literally every single person around him is an oblivious, close-minded jerk.  All the guys at Clark’s school are hypermasculine bully jock jerks who call him a faggot and beat him up all the time, but censor themselves instead of saying “fuck.”  ”F-you!” they yell at Clark, while slamming his face into various parts of the school.  ”F-you!” Clark yells back.  By contrast, all the women in the novel are helpless, hyperfeminine victims who rely on their husbands, boyfriends, uncles, and lawyers to keep them from anorexia and cutting and whatever.  Also, Clark hates lesbians, gay guys, and kids with ADHD.  Basically, Clark is perfect and the most judgmental thing north of the Mississippi state legislature.

In Run, Clarissa, Run, literally all information exchanged between adult women is exchanged in the grocery store between flipping through magazines for recipes, a hobby toward which Clark is naturally inclined.  Clark would like us to know this is because she is a woman.  One day, while Clark is in the grocery store with her mom, fantasizing about cooking cornish game hens like women do, a woman named Shelley who is feminine and Catholic and did I mention feminine, comes along and tells Clark’s mom Kelly that she needs a babysitter since her rotten stinking hulking manly man husband has had yet another affair with the most recent babysitter.  Whatever are her Barbie-loving, princess-loving, pink-wearing, tea-party-having twin daughters to do?  Clark is obviously the answer.

Over the next few months, Clark enjoys babysitting for the Pirella family, which includes the most cartoonish examples of men and women I’ve ever seen in literature.  Manly Man Tony is a Man who drives a Jeep which is Manly and used to be in the Manly Army and also spends a lot of time in his Man Basement, hacking.  Tony takes Clark into his Man Lair and shows him a lot about hacking.  When Tony is not home, Clark becomes Clarissa and goes around the Woman part of the house, which is decorated in a Womanly manner, wearing  Shelley’s clothes and letting the twins do her makeup.  Sometimes, when Tony and Shelley are both home, Tony goes into his Man Lair and lets Clark babysit while Shelley goes around doing Womanly chores.  One day, Manly Tony comes home early and catches Clarissa wearing Shelley’s clothes.  Nonplussed, Tony shows Clarissa where to find the fucking underwear.  Clarissa is super stoked to be finally understood as a woman.  Also, she passes seamlessly, so Tony immediately wants to bone her.  Tony’s plan of action, obviously, is to teach Clarissa all sorts of things about hacking.  Because Clarissa is super freaking brilliant and learns everything faster than literally anybody else ever could, Tony compliments her all the time on what a great student she is.

Finally, about halfway through the book, the plot begins to gather momentum and the tortured reader gets a break from the front row seat to Clark/Clarissa’s head.  Clarissa, as she’s calling herself about half the time by now, has taken her gay friend Marcus, described as swishy, limp-wristed, and flaming, with her to see a gender counselor who diagnoses her as transgender and says that she’ll just have to wait for transition until she has her mother’s approval.  Clarissa uses her babysitting money to buy some “female clothes” as she calls them and makeup, in which she immediately passes.  Magic.  Obviously.  Did I mention she’s super gorgeous?  Nobody can stop talking about how gorgeous she is.  Also smart, cause even though her teachers at the mean high school give her bad grades, she’s secretly submitting assignments to a college which is giving her A plus-plus-plusses.  Tony hacks some documents for Clarissa, then turns the creep up to 11, but that’s okay because Clarissa is now hacking her own documents.  She has also befriended some poor overweight girl named Vong who speaks Thai which is important so Clarissa can go get SRS in Thailand.  Vong also gives her birth control pills to Clarissa.  When Shelley finally decides she has enough and goes to live with her uncle, Tony decides that he’s going to blackmail Clarissa to make Shelley come back, so Clarissa hacks a bunch of money and incriminating evidence and goes on the lam to Thailand.

The second half of the book is mainly just all the adults in Clarissa’s life feeling super bad about how much they didn’t appreciate how brilliant and beautiful Clarissa was now that she’s gone, all the while reiterating everything we already knew that Clarissa did as they discover it.  Up to this point, I was almost willing to forgive the exaggerated gender stereotypes in the novel.  After all, to a dysphoric teenager, wouldn’t gendered influences seem overpowering and more noticeable than to, say, a cis person who doesn’t think about their own gender too often?  I almost forgave it.  But then, an all-male cast of manly man computer guys and manly man authorities shows up and intimidates all of Clarissa’s former bullies while searching for her.  The women also get together to discuss Clarissa.  They don’t do any of the work, though.  They mostly just cry.  Every conversation is about how completely in awe of Clarissa they are.  ”Clarissa is brilliant!” they all marvel.  ”And hot!” and if she ever comes back to the states and gets caught for all the fraud?  Well, she’s so brilliant and hot and unique and amazing that they probably won’t even charge her with anything.  They’ll probably just give her a six figure a year job doing network security.

With all of the nonsense in this novel, it was actually surprising that it was technically good.  It was well-paced.  The plot followed the generally accepted guidelines for plots.  The cast of characters was altogether solidly arranged.  Had Eliason swapped out every bland character and, well, the whole bland world out for something imaginative, artistic, or compelling, it might almost have worked.  She knows how to write.  She just lacks imagination.  Like a structurally sound crack den, the blueprints weren’t the problem.

The unchecked arrogance of Clarissa’s design should really be no surprise to the reader.  In the extensive introduction, I learned that Eliason had originally attempted to fund the writing of this, her debut novel, with a kickstarter.  In the appended author interview, I learned that Eliason based Clarissa on herself (she is also a trans woman).  So, to be fair, there’s plenty of warning.  But in case you’re willing to forgive an author for a little arrogance here and there, please enjoy the following bullshit, straight from the text (trigger warnings!):

They ignored Vong.  It was the juvenile ADHD kids that taunted her.

Kids struggling with ADHD in this world have formed some kind of bully clique.

“Boys and girls communicate differently,” Christy explained.  ”With girls there are more non verbal clues.  There’s more than what we say going on.  A look can convey an entire message.”

Girls are telepathic.  Boys are blind.  This is why all people in theater are women, oh wait.

A brightly dressed boy came rushing up to Clark.  He swished as he ran, one arm up, wrist limp.

Gays SWISH.

(Clark) didn’t want to be with a woman.  That would be too much like being a lesbian.

See, it’s not that she’s not attracted to women, it’s that nobody wants to be a lesbian!

(Clark’s) mental state was fragile enough without being a rape survivor on top of it.  He would rather be dead than in the looney bin for the rest of his life.

Rape survivors become “looney” and people who go to psychiatric care are in “looney bins.”

The lesbianism of the cowgirls (in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues) has less to do with their real sexuality and seems to be a metaphor for the feminist movement of the time period.”

Those women having sex with each other?  Yeah they’re straight; they’re just being feminists.

But okay, I’m being harsh.  It wasn’t all bad.  There was this really awesome typo that caused the one smile to cross my lips during the entire reading of this book:

She had the outfit back in the box and her envelope hands.

ENVELOPE HANDS

My trans girlfriend cosplaying as Clarissa.

 

For all the masochists in my audience, this book is available on Amazon for 4.99 Kindle, 12.99 paperback.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Book Review | 6 Comments

Author Interview: Alexandra Rowland

February 13, 2013 | Author: Heather

AlexRowlandThe amazing Alexandra Rowland of In the End fame met with me last night to discuss writing queer positively, drawer novels, wine-drinking suburban book clubs writing slash fic, a super prestigious writer’s resort in Ireland that does not yet exist, and my favorite color of Hot Wheels.

 

 

 

me 
I just want to say first of all that I really enjoyed the book.
And before we go any further I must know how to pronounce Lalael.

Alexandra Rowland 
Thank you! It’s “LAY-lay-el”

me 
Both of my guesses were wrong.

Alexandra Rowland
Well, that’s how I say it. You can say it however you like.

me 
You’re the author, I think you get to decide

Alexandra Rowland
Nah, I’m all sorts of into Reader Response Criticism. Fuck my preferences.

me 
Haha.
So I read on your blog that In the End is your debut novel, but it’s clear by reading it that you’ve got a lot of writing practice. So, what were you doing before In the End?

Alexandra Rowland
Well, I guess I’ve always sort of been a storyteller. I remember being REALLY young (four or five) and walking around doing house chores and mentally narrating what I was doing. But I hated actually writing for a long, long time, and it never occurred to me that making stuff up (which I liked) was kind of what writing creatively was all about. I started writing my first “real” book when I was 13. This is finished and shall Never Ever Be Seen. Before that, I wrote a lot about princesses and their best friends.

me 
No, come on. There’s technique there. People don’t take up writing one day and come up with technique like that. You didn’t just write a thing for fun when you were 13 and pick it up again now. I don’t believe that for a second.
Do you do short stories or do you have a hard drive full of false starts?
What have you been writing?

Alexandra Rowland 
I’ve never really been one for short stories, but I do have a lot of partial novels and NaNoWriMo drafts and ideas that I would like to potentially reexamine one day. I always tend to think in large-scale. I’ve never figured out how to go about doing a short story — it’s never seemed like there’s enough room to do what I want to do.

me 
You’re either the most talented person ever or you’re hiding an attic full of Never Ever Be Seens
But I’ll go with the latter. I won’t push

Alexandra Rowland 
In the End was one of those at one point. I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo 2005, and it was a VERY different novel than what it is today. Of course there was a lot of practice writing — that first novel was one of them. No one needs to see that stuff! It’s my “Drawer Novel” — every writer has one, usually their first novel, which they stick in a drawer when it is done and never show to anyone.

me
I have drawer half novels
So who was your most and least favorite character to write and why?

Alexandra Rowland 
Well, my least favorite characters are, honestly, everyone who isn’t Lucien, Lalael, or Jocelin… which is apparent in the plot, as you pointed out in your review.
I do like all three of what I would call the “Main Characters”, though, and I don’t think I can choose a favorite one of them. I like them all for different reasons.

me 
Okay, that makes sense.

Alexandra Rowland
I like Lucien for who he is. I like Lalael for who he becomes. I like Jocelin because Jocelin is just WICKED fun to write.

me
Jocelin’s a piece of work

Alexandra Rowland 
Don’t I know it.

me 
So let’s talk shop for a bit.

Alexandra Rowland
Fire away!

me
Where do you go for beta reading and criticism? Friends and family or anonymous types? Also: what’s the worst criticism you’ve ever received and how do you deal with it?

Alexandra Rowland
Oh, I always go for friends and family. I would never give my drafts to someone I didn’t know. How am I supposed to know what their credentials are? How do I know if they’re putting real thought into what they say or just talking out of their asses?  For the first round, I generally count on one or two people to be the godparents of my draft, to do really intense criticism on a one-on-one basis as much as possible. These people have to be people I trust to give well-balanced criticism as talented writers themselves. Then for the second round, I cast my net a little wider and see what the “general consensus” is — what sort of problems do two or three people point out? For In the End, I think there were about eight people total for both rounds.

me
Don’t you worry that they’ll pull their punches?

Alexandra Rowland
Well, I’m worrying about them pulling punches a lot more now than I was when I first published, I’ll tell you that!

me 
Didn’t mean to give you something to worry about haha

Alexandra Rowland
No, not because of what you said — I reread In the End recently and saw it with fresh eyes, and a lot more errors and places that needed polishing jumped out at me.

me
My English teachers used to tell me never to edit while I can still remember what I wrote.
It helps.

Alexandra Rowland 
I would agree. As for the worst criticism I’ve ever gotten — I’ve never heard anything worse than the things I tell myself.

me
I hear that.
Okay so
You may have read my recent post about writing (queer/trans/woman) positively and of course I mentioned it in my review of your book, so you know that’s an important topic to me.

Alexandra Rowland 
Yup! I read your blog today to prepare myself. Gear up for any you-specific questions you might throw at me.

me 
I was surprised when you mentioned in your comment that it was important to you, too, and that you went out of your way to write queer positively. What inspired you to make that a priority?

Alexandra Rowland
Well, it wasn’t a conscious priority for this book, mind you. My very best friend, who has been my best friend longer and more consistently than anyone else in the whole world, is gay. I have lesbian friends and bisexual friends and transgender friends — one of whom was VERY influential in helping me wrangle pronouns for Jocelin during the 2005 draft. I could be really long-winded and say a lot of things that a lot of other people have said before me, so hopefully it will suffice to say just that these people and their representation is Very Important To Me.
Like I said before, I didn’t consciously approach the book with the attitude, “This is going to be a queer-positive book.” I didn’t have any agenda or any kind of political statement to make. I just sat down to write a good story and that’s what came out. It felt wrong and irrelevant to be talking about ( sexuality or sexual tension or explicit orientation). There wasn’t a place for it.

me
There was no heteronormativity in the whole book. There was no obvious and lazy sexual tension. Lucien’s feelings are completely mysterious start to finish.
That’s going an extra mile. It’s not just a token nod to some queer friends.

Alexandra Rowland
The world was ending! There were bigger problems than existential crises!

me
I see.  What sort of strategies did you use to avoid the easy tropes? Did you ever catch yourself?

Alexandra Rowland
Well, I’m a huge fan of worldbuilding. I love inventing different worlds and cultures. I think it helped that the two main characters both come from a (in some ways) drastically different cultural background than we do. They as characters don’t really CARE about things like that. It doesn’t register as something controversial or important.

me
okay so when you were writing that, you kept their “culture” in mind, then

Alexandra Rowland 
The one thing I will ‘fess up to is that I did initially start out by referring to Jocelin as “it” — making the argument that Jocelin really ISN’T human, or sane by our standards or angelic standards, and in the case of angels, mental state is directly correspondent to physical form. I was bopped on the nose for that pretty early on. After a hearty argument with my trans friend about whether or not “zhe” was a jarring pronoun to use, I settled on “they”, and I think that was the right and correct decision to this day.

me
Very good call

Alexandra Rowland 
I agree. That would have been embarrassing later on. *wince*

me
I’m not so much fond of it when people refer to my girlfriend as “it”

Alexandra Rowland
Yeahhhh, and in the seven years or so since the first draft, I’ve become a lot more worldly and educated… I was 15 in 2005, you know.

me
sometimes it can be difficult to say “oh yeah but Jocelin is a supernatural creature who was forged in something something”
ohgod I’m old.

Alexandra Rowland
I’m just glad I made that mistake at a point where everyone can now write it off as “idiot teenager” instead of “simply awful human being.”

me 
Even queer and trans people start off as idiot teenagers, you know. If you can remember one, I’m curious if you have an example of some negativity in something you (or one of your friends) has read that affected you.

Alexandra Rowland
Well… Maybe this will be a funny story — I remember being totally bewildered when I was about eleven and first discovered that there were boys who liked to kiss other boys.
I had to stop and wrap my head around that for a while, and then I was kind of indignant that no one had TOLD me about that before.
I had the same kind of reaction when I discovered there was a word for masturbation. And then I was a huge fanfiction addict for a good long while… And got a lot of exposure to both good and painfully bad depictions of a LOT of different kinds of orientations. Fanfiction taught me how not to write about gay people.

me 
ohgod, I remember reading some Harry Potter fanfic. Fanfic is really a whole other ballgame…

Alexandra Rowland
Yeah, this could be a whole ‘nother talk. I am a huge fan of the fanfic as practice for aspiring writers. I think it is a great apprenticeship, and a great way to learn a lot of different skills.

me
definitely.

Alexandra Rowland
But back to the original question — once I met my best friend and found out he was gay… Well, I come from a family of political activists, so I took up arms for him and his cause, and watched films and read books and came to this painful awareness of how horrifically trying (understatement) it can be for LGBT people.

me 
Can you think of a specific example? I’m always curious to hear from allies what sorts of microaggressions they noticed.

Alexandra Rowland
I’m trying to think of one. It still makes me really sad that there aren’t very many happy-ending gay films. Or happy-all-the-way-through. Same for books. I just want to read about cute people being in love with other cute people where gender or orientation or Other People aren’t an issue, no matter who they are, and I want that to be a real life story.

me 
Yeah, that would be pretty great.
Fried Green Tomatoes almost sort of comes close almost.

Alexandra Rowland 
Well, I have two really favorite gay films of all time, which are: To Wong Foo: Thanks For Everything — Julie Newmar and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.

me
I haven’t actually seen those. I’ll have to do that.

Alexandra Rowland
Both of those are awesome and fabulous and funny the whole way through except for a couple really jarring scenes where “real life” comes stomping back in and reminds you that no, not everyone is okay with this. To be totally honest, I think one of the reasons In the End came out the way it did was that I just stubbornly do not want to deal with those issues. I want to wave a magic wand and have everything be fine with everyone — unless it actually hurts other people, of course.

me
And it’s funny you should mention that actually because fantasy is EXACTLY the place for that.

Alexandra Rowland
Yep. Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to writing it — I can pretty much just say “These things that bother me are not an issue for these people and here is why, and also dragons.”

me 
I grew up with Heavenly Creatures which is a movie that came out when I first started questioning. This reveals my age. There’s a lot of negativity in that one.
SO
enough about queer stuff and what’s important to me,
I want to know what’s important to you
Every author fantasizes about their book being read by one of those suburban wine-drinking literary clubs. If that happens to In the End, what do you hope the topics of discussion will be?

Alexandra Rowland 
Pfffffffffffffffffhahahahahahaha

(a minute or two pass)

Man, I am sitting here in stunned silence because I cannot wrap my head around the idea of a fancy-ladies’ wine-and-books club reading my book. Don’t they just read Eat, Pray, Love over and over again???

me 
perhaps you’ve underestimated how drunk they can get.

Alexandra Rowland
OHHHHH. Okay, now we’re on the same page.

me 
And actually last I checked there were a good deal of them reading Fifty Shades of Jesus Christ Make it Stop

Alexandra Rowland
So really drunk ladies. Man, I hope they write scandalous slashy fanfiction. Lawd, that would cause me so much glee. Endless glee. Glee upon glee.

me
Slash fic. Gotcha

Alexandra Rowland
Of course, I would put on my serious face and nod thoughtfully and make a pedantic speech about how flattered I am that other people would be so inspired by my work to use some of their creative energy to expand my world. But inside I would be cackling and full of glee.
In all seriousness, that is one of my secret aspirations. I think that’s one of the biggest signs of achievement and approval a writer can get in their career. When people play dolls with my characters, that is when I will know I have MADE IT.

me
I’ve officially changed my fantasy for my book from ladies’ wine and books club to drunken ladies writing slash fic
okay 2 questions remaining.
first, are there any sequels planned?

Alexandra Rowland
RIGHT?! It’s the ultimate goal, man. The smuttier, the better. Go wild, kids.
Everyone has been asking if there’s going to be a sequel! I hadn’t been thinking about it when I published it, but so many people have been asking me about it that I can’t help but think, “Man, if I were going to write one, what sort of stuff could I do with it?”So everyone has been asking if there’s going to be a sequel. I hadn’t been thinking about it when I published it, but so many people have been asking me about it that I can’t help but go, “Man, if I were going to write one, what sort of stuff could I do with it?”
I really like the characters. I think that there’s still a lot of room for them to grow, and more of their world to explore, and more awesome adventures to have. I just don’t have any solid ideas about what those are or where I’d go with it.  If there is a sequel, it won’t be for several years. I’ve got a bunch of other stuff that I am super excited about working on right now, so I’ll let the potential sequel simmer on the back burner for a bit and see if it makes stew.

me
Fair enough.
Final question:
When the rights get sold to Warner Brothers and you make tens of millions of dollars, how will you spend it and what kind of car do I get?

Alexandra Rowland
I am so glad you asked this question. I am going to buy myself a castle in Ireland and invite 30 of my closest friends to live with me in it, and invite the Society for Creative Anachronism to have events on my front lawn, and run the whole thing as a writers’ retreat. With the leftover money, I will at LEAST buy you a Hot Wheels in the color of your choice.

me
That’s all I ask.

Alexandra Rowland
For future reference, what is the color of your choice?

me 
I like acid green

Alexandra Rowland
I’m sure I can manage that for you.

me 
Yay!

Alexandra Rowland
Only if you review my next book, though!

me
Yes ma’am

Alexandra Rowland’s self-published book, In the End can be purchased on Amazon for $6.99.

Posted in Author Interview | Leave a Comment

How to be -positive

February 11, 2013 | Author: Heather

As a lot of people know, I’ve been blogging semi-regularly since 2005, but this is the first blog I’ve ever had about books and writing.  I used to blog about feminism, gender equality, breastfeeding and associated activism, women’s issues in parenting, queer issues, and sundry politics.  I gave up on it simply because after a while I became tired of repeating myself.  I also got a little tired of every post of mine that became popular attracting a wide audience of MensRights idiots and having to hide my identity.  Sure, I get an itch every now and then.  This week, for example, I saw two very infuriating things in my google reader that were hard to resist.  Some idiot pastor by the name of Kevin Swanson claimed that the wombs of women on birth control were full of tiny dead babies and that he’d heard this from scientists.  Bryan Fischer of the infamous American Family Association held a long radio show about how gays in the boy scouts something something and Obama is sending women to war which causes their bodies to stop producing estrogen.  It was tempting to fall back into my old habits.

I resisted.  I am firm in my resolve not to beat my head against a desk for the rest of my life over a bunch of idiots that will never ever stop being idiots.  I’m done. I’m so done.

I’m not done.  I thought I was done but I realize now that this is probably a little bit impossible.  See, as I tell the people who submit their work for my review: I’m not famous, but my girlfriend kind of is.  She’s got over 8 million views on her YouTube channel and thousands of followers on Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook and wherever else that hang on her every word. Because she loves me, she promotes my blog.  This is good for me.  If you’re a writer whose work I’m going to review, then hopefully it’s good for you too.  This means the review of your book has access by proxy to a kind of following I have not yet developed for myself (and you may not have developed for yourself) until such a time as I do.  For me, it also means that most of the people who have heard of me have heard of me through my famous for being queer feminist atheist girlfriend.  It means that most of the things I’m asked to review are queer or feminist or religious or anti-religious in nature.  As such the subjects of queer-positivity, woman-positivity, and trans-positivity have already come up in my reviews.*  So let’s talk about it.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that you, the person reading this blog right now, are or will be in the process of writing something.  Let’s say for the sake of argument that, because you came to me to read about writing, you care about being queer, woman, or trans positive.  The thing you are writing does not have to be a work of fiction.  It could be a non-fiction book or essay.  It could even be a sales pitch, an expository article, or sports commentary.  There’s always room to be trans, queer, or woman positive.  So how do you do it?  You might be wondering, even, how you can do it without hindering your plot or spending pages explaining every character.  After all, established tropes are helpful in filling the gaps in your reader’s imagination, right?  Well, fret not.  It’s easier than you think.

Step One:  Figure out what the popular minority tropes are and don’t use them.  

I highly recommend this article I recently read from Sociology In Focus by a mother who attempts to take all the gender nonsense out of the books she reads to her daughter.  For example, she encounters a story about dinosaurs wherein a purple girl dinosaur who hates or struggles with math is taught to appreciate math when her blue brother dinosaur saves her with it.  To save her daughter from yet another agonizing stereotype threat, she editorializes and makes all the dinosaurs girls.  Aside from girls bad at math, boys good at math, some other common stereotypes that women get really sick of seeing in art include women being described by their looks alone while men are described by varying sets of strengths and weaknesses, women always being described by what they’re wearing, women being in nurturing/caring/loving/sex-related roles, but not really affecting anything important, and women being warned to stay away from the dangerous action and subsequently needing rescue from it.  It’s exhausting.  For a more, perhaps excessively comprehensive list, I suggest going to TVTropes.org and starting with manic pixie dream girl.

Gay men are not always fashionable.  If you have a gay guy in your work, make sure that if he’s fashionable, then that’s not all he is.  Gay men are also not always lonely, promiscuous, or happy to commiserate with straight women about how much guys suck.  Lesbians are definitely not always victims of evil men who turned to women for safety.  They’re definitely not always feminine.  Bisexual women are not always gorgeous and willing to have threesomes and they are definitely not girls who just went through “a phase.”  Trans women… oh god where to start.  Well, they’re almost never cannibals, murderers of cis women who want to steal their beauty, hulking strong (HRT gets rid of that), balding (again, HRT, I’m looking at you, Nip/Tuck), or whatever the hell else you saw on CSI.  They absolutely do not exist to make every man in a 30 foot radius start shouting about how not gay he is.  Oh, and bisexual men and trans men exist.  If your writing contains those tropes, you’re not clever.  You’re lazy.  You are a black hole of creativity.  You are the death of originality.  Your work is bad and you should feel bad.

Step Two: Go the extra mile and be daring.  Make your characters individuals.  

I really don’t want any whining about how hard this is.  Charlaine Harris is swimming in bazillions of dollars right now after writing a queer and woman positive bestselling series that got turned into True Blood.  Suzanne Collins wipes your misogynist tears with hundred dollar bills from her Hunger Games money.  J.K. Rowling wrote Hermione Granger, Tonks, Ginny Weasley, Dumbledore, and Professor McGonagall then nearly outsold the bible.  Meanwhile, LEGO’s marketing team is struggling to catch up after they abandoned gender neutral inspiring advertising for hypermasculinized nonsense and lost the female half of the market. Now they’re releasing hyperfeminized junk.

Don’t underestimate the purchasing power of women and definitely don’t underestimate the appeal of queer stories to the public right now, with support for LGBT issues at the highest it’s ever been and at the forefront of the public consciousness.  Dare to make a male character that finds comfort in having the dishes super clean.  Write a gay guy with a beer belly who came out at age 30.  Write a boyish lesbian who sucks at baseball.  Have your scientist just happen to be a woman and describe her by her intelligence and not by how long her legs are.  Write a trans woman who blends in.  Write a bisexual man.  It works for Bret Easton Ellis!  When you’ve got an ensemble, make it 50/50 male/female to avoid lazily created sexual tension and even make it more realistic.

Unique characters and ensembles create intrigue.  They add depth and originality to your work.  Do not be afraid of scaring off your readers.  Color outside of the lines.  And if you needed a little more inspiration to write characters who aren’t stereotypes: think of it as an easy way to trick your readers into thinking you’re super deep.  It’s a shortcut, okay?  Take it.

Step Three:  When all else fails, fool yourself

The world is 51% women.  Movies and television distribute speaking roles at a 2:1 men to women ratio.  The ratio of men to women depicted in STEM fields is even more depressing.  VIDA has a lot of great data on how women are represented in books and poetry (mostly from the production side).  The inequalities are staggering.  It’s not quite as depressing within the actual written fiction itself, but it comes close.  LGB people are generally depicted lazily or hypersexually if at all, and trans people specifically are overdepicted and in a horrific manner.

I’ve been delving into the politics of gender and LGBT equality for years and years, but I’ll admit, I even sometimes fall into the traps.  Sometimes, a long way into writing something, I’ll be a little tired and just need to write in a cleaning staff member to get from point A to point B.  You know what it’s like.  They just have to be there, in the way.  And how does it come out? As a woman.  Maybe even a woman of color and if I’m not careful, an immigrant.  I’m not proud of it and you won’t be either, but it’ll happen sometimes by accident.  You get used to seeing these things.  You write a diner and the guy in the kitchen is overweight and greasy.  You write a banker and it’s a well-kept white guy.  Your character walks into a daycare to pick up their kid and the daycare worker is a homely woman.  Most of the domestic staff are going to be women.  Most of the people in positions of power are going to be men.  Most of your characters are going to be white straight cis men.  All this even when your intentions are pure and even if you’re not white or a man or straight or cis. You’re surrounded by it.  It’s not your fault.

But you can fool yourself.  I keep a tally.  When my men are starting to outnumber my women, I change the genders of a few of the men.  When I’m writing a woman, I refuse to describe her body or her clothes unless and until it is absolutely necessary.  When I have to write a minor character that is at a computer repair shop or beauty salon, I describe the person first and then roll a die.  Odds it’s a man, evens it’s a woman.  Roll it again.  Roll a 6 and they’re gay, roll 1-5 and they’re straight.   Roll again.  1 or 2 and they’re a person of color, 3-6 they’re white.  Get yourself a bigger die if you want to make this resemble census data.  Stick to it.  This forces you to think up a whole person before you even know what their gender or orientation or color is.  It forces you to come up with a realistic individual.

Ta-da!  You’re an artist.

Look over your work.  Look at those characters!  Look at how realistic and layered and varied they are.  Look at how much better your stuff is.  There, aren’t you glad you’re now a trans-queer-woman-positive writer?

 

 

*Since I am not a person of color, a person with a disability, or otherwise a member of or partner of a member of any other maligned class, I don’t speak about those things.  I care about them, but I simply don’t have the requisite life experience to speak confidently on those topics. 

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Book Review: In the End

February 8, 2013 | Author: Heather

theend_cover_2-e1342392785769In the End

By: Alexandra Rowland

Genre: Fantasy

Rating:

Exquisitely creative

In the End begins colorfully with a clever and casual remastering of the creation fable.  The Creator in this story is a being who becomes bored with their sole companion, Void, and decides to create Stuff to take the place of Nothing.  Because this Creator has only got Void for putty, and Void is kind of a jerk, Stuff doesn’t come out perfectly, but it’s better than Nothing.  So, the Creator decides this is a good way to pass the time the way some of us take up knitting, and makes it their full time hobby.  Heaven, or Riel as Rowland dubs it, is a lovely but boring sort of place on the Creator’s coffee table and Hell, or Rielat, lies underneath the floorboards.

We meet the main character, the Fallen angel Lucien, at the end of a long reconnaissance mission on Earth.  He has an apartment, a cat named Antichrist, and a crush on his local weatherperson.  Lucien is content on Earth because it is not Rielat.  Unfortunately, Lucien’s working vacation comes to an abrupt end when Lucifer and the archangel Michael get into a snit and wage war on each other, choosing Earth as the battleground.  Believers of all kinds are raptured, which we learn means harvested for their “belief” much the same way humans in The Matrix were harvested for their electricity.  Belief can be turned into Stuff which Riel and Rielat intend to use to obliterate each other.  The sky and the ground open up, throwing bits of flaming brimstone all over the place and knocking out all of mankind’s vitals like running water and electricity.  Lucien hides behind some trees that are convenient to the respective openings and watches the battle from a safe distance.

Along comes Lalael (La-lyle? Lolly-el? I don’t know), Riel’s ugly duckling.  Lowly ranked and clumsy, Lalael attempts to defeat Lucien, the nearest resident of Rielat he can find.  This doesn’t go so well, but Lucien is a slacker, not a fighter, so he tries to make friends with his hopeless nemesis and in the midst of the scuffle, the battle behind them comes to an abrupt end.  The realms close up at their backs and leave both angels behind.  Forever.

Both angels expect Earth to come to a sudden end, but it doesn’t.  With nothing else to do and no more loyalties to worry about, Lucien and Lalael move in to Lucien’s apartment together and get up to some odd couple hijinks, supernatural style.  They’re faced with the questions of what they should do with their useless-on-Earth skill sets to make a living, how to deal with people when they find out they’re supernatural, how to live among the remaining humans and their limited resources, and what to do with this weatherperson-damned angel Jocelin who arrives out of nowhere and wreaks havoc on everything.

From start to finish, this book is incredibly entertaining.  Full disclosure: I’m a bit biased when it comes to religious fiction, or at least the sort that exists simply to have fun with some well established supernatural archetypes and not to hammer in the message of believe-or-else.  In the End is exactly my type.   It’s also not all that deep.  It’s fun and occasionally emotionally engaging, but it’s not a Big Question novel.  What’s unique about In the End is that it’s an abundantly creative and intelligent work without being a Big Question novel.  It’s well-organized and carefully paced.  The rules of the world are logical and the powers of its supernatural inhabitants suitably limited.  The language is playful and mood-appropriate.  The creativity is humbling.  It is sophisticated entertainment.

The only complaint I could think to make during the reading of the book was that the development of minor characters seemed a bit unbalanced.  Motley assortments of minor characters that we’d never see again were introduced and described during the rapture while minor characters that ended up having consequential roles in the outcome of the novel were big question marks, or indistinguishable copies of some other minor characters.  I kept expecting to see more of the characters from the rapture reappear somewhere and tell us how they were doing.  But these are nothing.  They could be worked out and polished in a one-hour session with an editor.  Hazard of self-publishing.

One of my favorite things about this book aside from getting to see Lucien and Lalael be awesome and witty was how queer positive it was without actually being about being queer.  There is no central same-sex relationship.  Lalael has a girl that he was interested in back in Riel, but apart from that, nobody’s orientation is ever apparent or even mentioned.  There is none of the obnoxious heteronormativity that’s almost impossible to avoid in most media.  Girls and guys in the same room together aren’t fraught with sexual tension, nor does everyone around them start to suspect.  Lucien’s only romantic interest that we know of is in the weatherperson whose gender is never mentioned.  As for being transpositive, well  I didn’t know what to make of it honestly.  Jocelin is gender variant, but not the butt of any jokes about gender variance, and is only notable because angels in Rowland’s world all come out of the fire with bodies that fit their mental genders.  While some of the minor characters spent a little more time than I was comfortable with on the “is Jocelin a guy or a girl” question, nobody ever used this as an excuse not to take Jocelin seriously or be disgusted by them.  For the most part, the book managed to be queer positive without ever even mentioning LGBT people.  It flowed perfectly naturally.  Like The Hunger Games’ unique woman positivity which included women in all levels of power and situations without being treated differently for being women or ever mentioning inequality or feminism, In the End made it seamless.  There was no discussion of LGBT activism.  Negativity and erasure were simply absent.

In the End is Rowland’s debut novel, but it reads like well-polished craft.  It’s available on Amazon for $6.99 which is a bargain for what you’re getting, I promise.  Go read it.

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I know you’re all wondering how my Sims are doing…

January 22, 2013 | Author: Heather

In the process of writing Failure to Thrive, I spent three months in front of my computer.  Three.  Months.  For several hours each day, I would glue my substantial ass to one office chair or another and write.  On most days, I wrote over two thousand words and then deleted a third to a half of them.  Those were the good days.  On other days, I’d outline, cry, scrap the outline, cry some more, resist the urge to binge drink my troubles away, and fumble eight hundred or so words onto the page.  Every day I promised myself that when the novel was finished, I’d get out of the house, maybe take a walk, see the sunlight, or maybe even try to re-learn my children’s names.

Finally the day came.  On December 21, 2012, I wrote the final word of the rough draft of Failure to Thrive.  I promised myself that I would resist this urge to do nothing until such time as the editing was finished.  Until the last t was crossed and i dotted, I would not rest.  I edited 26 pages.  I started this blog.  Things were going well and THEN….

SOOM SOOM!!!  

(that’s Simish for hello or goodbye or something.  I don’t know.)

WugKkHi

I’ve been addicted to this game since 2002 but Sims 3 is the best because you spend a lot less time reading stupid books and trying to talk to annoying neighbors and all that.  The “grinding” (I’m told this means pointless repetitive game tasks) has been reduced slightly.  Sure, you don’t have all the options there were in Sims 2 when it comes to face shape and stuff, but who needed all that?  I mean I was practically drowning in choices.

Lilith Stupidhead was my first Sim.  She married Louise.  They adopted Loretta, who married Mitzi and then they adopted Lisa who’s now a teenager with an extraordinary skill set and one published novel under her belt already.  They’re all lesbians.  Sometimes that’s difficult to do cause some guy will walk into the room and they’ll get stupid pink hearts all over their heads, but I got around that by throwing a lot of parties and only inviting women.

Who needs productivity?  I mean sure, sometimes when things are slow at work, the urge to write overwhelms me and I absolutely must write a story about a heavyset teenage girl who sells fake magic as a part time job (more on that in a later post), and yes I have to read In the End by Alexandra Rowland, my latest submission which I’m thoroughly enjoying.  But you know what?  After three months of the most productivity I’ve ever coughed up in my life, it feels damn good to sit in front of my computer and make Lilith write novels until she gets a little frazzled mood alert.

I will still try to find time for hobbies, like mocking the insipid poetry of Richard Blanco at Obama’s second inauguration.  I mean okay it was pretty awesome that we inaugurated a black president for his second term on MLK day and had a gay, Latino poet and all but who can stand the dripping pastoral imagery?  I almost tossed my scrambled egg breakfast when he got to the bit about apple stands, stained glass windows and something something Freedom Tower.  I mean why even have poetry if you’re going to do that to it?  I also found time to write a scathing reply to a recent highly transphobic article by UK feminist Julie Burchill.  You can find that here.  I’ll eventually get back to being a working, productive adult.  Really!

But for now, Lisa aspires to the honor roll and that takes a lot of work.  Also Lilith has got to be about ready to kick the bucket so I have to make sure Louise is ready with her moodlet manager.  My girlfriend wants me to take her ashes to the science lab and restore her ghost when that happens, but I don’t know.  Five is a lot of Sims to manage.  Also I want to buy the biggest house in town and charge everyone a lot of rent.  And I have to catch a robot fish.

 

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Book Review: The Spirit of the Afterbirth and the After Birth of the Holy Spirit

January 11, 2013 | Author: Heather

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The Spirit of the Afterbirth and the After Birth of the Holy Spirit

By: Debra G Patterson

Genre: Religious (Christian) inspiration/poetry/memoir

Rating:

What on Earth did I just read?

If The Spirit of the Afterbirth and the After Birth of the Holy Spirit were at your party, it would be that excited, charismatic woman that wanted to tell you all about how amazing you are.  She’d introduce herself cordially to the rest of your guests and compliment your home and your outfit.  She’d listen to every single one of your boring anecdotes and tell you there is absolutely no way she could throw such a wonderful party as the one to which you’ve so graciously invited her.  You’d be flattered.  When it was finally her turn to speak, you’d have no choice but to listen with a kind smile while she told you how proud she was of her new beautiful dress that she bought for your occasion.  You simply wouldn’t have the heart to point out that it seemed to be missing a sleeve and her underwear was showing.  You’d want to punch your significant other in the face when they pointed out that it was on backwards.  It would be nothing short of torture.

So you must understand that I do not want to be giving this book a bad review.  I want to punch myself in the face for it.  When the author, Debra G. Patterson introduced herself to me one day (she’ll never remember it… I hope) and told me about the book she’d written and how she dreamed of being a “big writer,” I was excited for the opportunity to read her work.  I wrote down the name of the book, which she bashfully admitted was a mouthful, on a little notepad and told her I’d be looking her up.  She was beside herself.  Forgive me for paraphrasing as I don’t have a recording of the conversation, but she told me that she had written the book “not to convert anyone, but because everyone just has such bad self esteem these days, you know?  People just don’t feel good about themselves.”  I almost want to spell her name wrong a few times as I write this just to make sure she doesn’t ever read it.

Before I get into my feelings about the book, I know that some of my readers know who my partner is and they know she’s the infamous YouTube Queen of Atheism.  I know it will be tempting to accuse me of bringing my own personal feelings about religion into my review of this book, but let me assure you that my partner and I have significantly different passions.  I can appreciate religious literature.  I can appreciate all kinds of art without agreeing with it.  I can appreciate memoir, heartfelt poetry, and well-done fantasy along the entire spectrum of godless to extreme mysticism, and just as often I disdain poorly done work that agrees with me (The God Delusion comes to mind).  Had The Spirit of the Afterbirth accomplished what it had set out to accomplish, then I would be more than capable of giving credit where it’s due.

Enough about me.  Let’s get this unpleasantness over with.  This book is barely coherent.  It’s a collection of poems about God and Jesus followed by several personal anecdotes, followed by several commands to be grateful and happy or something followed by more poems and anecdotes.  To be fair, the anecdotes are almost interesting.  Patterson’s memories definitely come alive in their vivid descriptions and I could imagine myself in her grandmother’s kitchen washing dishes or combing her great-grandmother’s white hair.  I could see her as a child walking down hot Louisiana streets and the tar melting and sticking to her and her siblings’ best shoes on their way home from church.  But the spell was broken at the end of every sentence, because literally over three quarters of them ended with exclamation points.  Even if they hadn’t… I’ll be honest even though I want to stomp on my own foot right now, they still wouldn’t have helped the book because they never went anywhere.  She’d tell a story about combing her great-grandmother’s hair and it would all amount to nothing.  What did she take from this experience?  What did it have to do with anything?  Nothing.  She just wanted to talk about it.

The central theme of this book is difficult to pinpoint, but I think it’s meant to be inspiration.  As religious texts go, there’s very little in the way of preachiness.  Patterson made good on her promise.  There was clearly no intent to convert.  What the intent was, however, is anyone’s guess.  It did make some exciting claims like, for example, the birth of Jesus brought Democrats and Republicans together:

The Young Babe was worshiped and sought out by all nations: black, white, the poor, the humbled shepherds, and the wealthy! He was wisely honored by three noble kings! For once, both Democrats and Republicans came together under one small roof while bearing precious gifts! Above all, they hoped to witness the birth of the Boy King. They found him in the after birth!

That would have been pretty neat if there were any such thing back then.

The words were all spelled correctly, and to the best of my knowledge they were all real words that actually exist and were placed in relatively appropriate contexts, so my difficulty in completing this book was less a result of careless errors than it was my personal inability to fix my attention upon the religious-for-the-sake-of-religion.  There’s no coherent story.  There is no arc.  There is no rhyme or reason to any of it.  The poems aren’t even sectioned by theme.  The book could perhaps have benefited from  at least that.  I mean, I wasn’t expecting Milton or Dante, but a minimum of some kind of literary adhesive.  This section is about joy and that section about sorrow.  Something, anything.  In my head, I begged silently for her to work with me.  In return, I got more of a love, tenderness, joy, and inspiration that was incapable of direction.

Sitting by the roadside and while waiting upon a change, blind Bartimaeus became disturbed by a great noise! It arose from the large gathering that chose to ignore him in his problem! He had once considered many of the “passer byes” to be his good friends.  But they mocked and scorned him into silence!

I’m sorry, book.  I’m sorry, author.  You can come back to all of my parties but you probably won’t want to after you heard what I said about you.  I’m going to go drown in guilt now.

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