Nara Malone’s Interactive Novel

I’m not sure how I arrived at Greyhound Summer, the interactive novel written and blogged by Nara Malone, but I am sure I like it.

The main character, Arie, reminds me of all the ragged teen heroines I wrote in my late teen/early twenties days of online RPGs, of the heroines who continue to whisper in the back of my mind when I hear Nickelback or Staind or Kid Rock on the radio. Her voice is dry and a little bitter, but the bitterness doesn’t grate on my reader’s ear–maybe because intimacy and invitation layer over the bitterness, drawing me in instead of pushing me away.

Nara’s voice, in blog posts that aren’t fiction, closely matches Arie’s voice: intimate, welcoming, non-abrasive–you won’t go wrong if you skip the fiction and stop by just for the author’s blog updates. But I do recommend what I’m seeing of the fiction. Greyhound Summer makes me want to buy a bus ticket. Memories of bus trips from Boston MA to Clarksburg WV, however, remind me to keep my credit card in my purse and my feet in Maryland.

13 Things that make me crazed

Today’s list of 13 is pulled from a recent spate of reading. I have a number of pet peeves, and I’d like to share. Some of these are non-fiction gripes, some are fiction. But, whatever the type, running across these things makes me screech like an old lady with her girdle in a twist.

1. Major misunderstanding/factual errors with regards to the US Constitution. Alright, people, here are your hints for the day. The President DOES NOT have the power to declare war. That’s Congress’s job. Regular old bills do not require a 2/3 majority to pass Congress (except when overriding a Presidential veto, but that’s a special case). It only takes a simple majority. The Judiciary doesn’t enforce anything. The courts rule on things and it’s (at least theoretically) the President’s job to enforce them (okay, the Executive Branch, but that’s headed by the President, so…).

2. Characters that are TSTL (too stupid to live). If I want to slap sense into the main characters because they are being idiots, that’s going to make me crazed. No, Janet, when Bob tells you to stay behind the concrete wall away from the bad guys, you should not duck into the middle of the fire fight without either training or a weapon. Similarly, Bob, when Janet tells you not to touch the green wire on the bomb she’s walking you through dismantling, you should not choose this moment to manifest your inner caveman and decide you know better than she does. If you do, you deserve to have the bomb blow up in your face. Twice.

3. The villainous monologue. Okay, I’m as big a James Bond fan as the next girl (probably bigger), but if the villain is so idiotic as to reveal his dastardly plan to the good guy, he deserves to have his butt whooped. Hint to villains: shoot, don’t talk.

4. Which brings us to the Ridiculously and Needlessly Complex Contraption of Death. Here James Bond rules. Or, actually, I think the Hooded Claw of the Perils of Penelope Pitstop may rule. But if your villain reminds me in any way of the Hooded Claw, well, something is very wrong.

5. Inappropriate imagery. In no case should raw hamburger and cooked onions be conflated with sex. Ever. No, I mean it. That is NOT sexy. Similarly, no manly man hero should cavort or mince (as a non-cooking usage – its fine for cooking). Also, please refrain from the use of grossly inappropriate descriptors – do not use anything that makes me want to head for the toilet to describe his manly bits or her girly parts, or the sounds they make when they come together. Please. I’m begging.

6. Complete bung-ups of real places. If you are going to set your story some place in the real world, do yourself a favor and look at a map. Google is your friend. Do not have your rancher hero in west Texas driving into town in Dallas (just for the sake of clarification, it is 793 miles from Texarkana, TX to CHICAGO, IL. It is 811 miles from Texarkana to El Paso. Let’s review. Chicago is closer to Texarkana than El Paso. A jaunt from Ft. Stockton, TX to Dallas takes 7 hours). Similarly, do not put geographic features, such as mountains, places where they aren’t. There are no mountains in Dallas or Houston, there are no flat plains on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. AAAARRGH!

7. Deus ex machina: it is not your friend. The gods dropping down from on high to grace the heroine with the answer to every problem on the last page of the book is not going to endear you to me. Plot resolutions should make sense, they should be an organic part of the story. If your story reads like this: bad things happen, more bad things happen, the H/h are in a no win situation, the end is nigh…. And A Freak Tornado drops down and obliterates the villain but leaves our H/h untouched! … step away from the keyboard. Just walk away.

8. The Big Misunderstanding hinges on absolute idiocy. Alright, I’m not a big fan of the trope of the Big Misunderstanding, but if it must be done, it should not be horribly obvious that the author is trying to prolong it. If six chapters in a row, there is an opportunity to clear up the misunderstanding, and the author magically prevents the misunderstanding from being resolved? I am crazed.

9. Major physical impossibilities. Unless the hero has joints in places normal humans don’t, he isn’t going to be able to do some things. If a man who is six-two is boffing a five-four chick, he is not going to be able to be delving deeply  into her womanly depths and sucking mightily at her engorged and flushed nubbins at the same time. Not. Physically. Possible. Unless he’s plastic man.

10. Plot inconsistencies/hanging chads (or at least hanging plot lines). Series are particularly bad about this, but I’ve seen it in a number of stand alone books. I hate, hate, hate it when an author either screws up the line of the plot and drops in something that goes against an earlier plot point or leaves some thread of the plot dangling like so much string before a cat. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the story is going along nicely with Bob the Vampire Hunter hunting down Vlad the Vamp. Vlad kidnaps a tasty treat in the form of a young lady- Janet again, spiriting her back to his icky vampy lair. Bob the Mighty Hunter shows up to stake Vlad by following him to his lair, and confronts him. There is a Mighty Duel. Bob is victorious (naturally). And he leaves. WTF happened to Janet? Don’t do this to me.  It makes me nutto.

11. Obvious babelfish moments. When you insert little foreign phrases into your story, check them with a native speaker. No, really. Because I assure you that some things just don’t do well in babelfish-ese. Here’s an example. I just put this through babelfish, so it isn’t from a specific work, but it illustrates the point.

In English: Holding him in her hand, she breathed a sigh of admiration. “You are so big.”

In Babelfish Spanish: Holding him in her hand, she breathed a sigh of admiration. “Usted es tan grande.”

Now, for those of you who haven’t had Spanish, Usted is a formal address, like using Mister or Sir, a more respectful form of you. In casual usage, you would be “tú” – but simply making the switch isn’t adequate, because the verb needs to be conjugated differently (Tú eres tan grande, though idiomatically still a little funny). But the above sentence really reads more like “Mister, you are so big.” Which makes me giggle in that context. Moral here is that if you don’t know what you are doing, stick to single word translations rather than phrases. You are less likely to go catastrophically wrong.

12. Ridiculous denial. I actually just hit this in a book, and I’ve seen it often (Christine Feehan is champion at this one). This is when one character is faced with a truth they don’t like, so they deny deny deny. In the face of overwhelming evidence, in the face of all rationality, whatever. They don’t like the truth so they simply deny it. In the story I just read, the guy changes to a werewolf in front of her. She freaks. He tells her she has were blood. She freaks harder (I’m with the author so far). Then she denies it is possible. There is no such thing. (You’re losing me). She runs home to her family crying about the horror of it, and saying she can’t possibly be were. Her grandfather says “well, actually, you are.” Her response? “Did he put you up to this?” (despite the fact that until she came through the door, grandad had no idea the guy existed, let alone that she was dating him). Grandad says, no, of course he didn’t. She says “not possible, you are lying” and so on. For entirely too long. You lost me. Why? Because my sympathy level for her dropped off when she started creating conspiracy plans to deny what she’d seen WITH HER OWN EYES. This starts moving the character into TSTL territory. ugh.

13. Last but definitely not least is disgusting and gross habits or actions. At no point should the H/h pick his/her nose, contemplate the stained-from-repetive bodily excretions state of their undergarments, eat from the garbage, or do anything similarly disgusting. I am willing to make exceptions for individuals who are eating less than pristine food because of severe economic hardship, but for pity’s sake, don’t tell me about the havoc it wreaks on their digestive system. Ew.

So… what makes you crazed? What things will just pull you right out of the story and have you tossing the book aside?

Summer, She is in Full Swing

Because I’m a champion blame-placer, I’m stating up front that I blame summer for recent and upcoming sporadic site activity.

Elise is pulling a reverse school-year thing, pretending she’s in the wrong hemisphere, and has dug in to sweat over a dissertation deadline while other students of the world kick off their shoes and slather on the sunscreen for beach bumming. I think her deadline is sometime late July, after which I expect to see much musing about Hannah, Birdmen and the other plot-filled stories her brilliant mind manufactures.

I am bailing water hard and fast, trying to keep my head above demands of my my recent move, my dayjob (increased slightly by premature birth of a coworker’s baby–yay baby! boo work!), upcoming adult toy parties (look for some give-aways after that experience), couch-surfing friend visitations, RWA Nationals, and, hopefully the last in a long line of Summer Stuff, a week in Las Vegas.

Fear not, however: I’m participating in a blogging workshop that will hopefully improve my blogging expertise and provide entertainment for you in the near future.

Also, and this is a PROMISE: as soon as I unpack (read: find) the usb cable for my camera? Oh, there will be pictures. Of everything, from Smart Bitch Sarah drinking from a Pepsi bottle to my friend Kai’s chihuahua December hopping on her hind legs trying to see my guinea pigs.

Just you wait.

Twitter-inspired parody

Alright. You can blame Keri Stevens for this. And Jennifer Leeland. And,  indirectly, Jane of Dear Author (since #RRTheatre is her bailiwick).

We were discussing (via Twitter) #RRTheatre and my unholy urge to write erotic satire (more properly, erotic parody, because satire implies more intellectual investment than we’re talking here). Jennifer Leeland and I brainstormed a number of ideas – included in the following exchange (JL=Jennifer Leeland, KS= Keri Stevens, EL= me):

KS:@Elise_Logan Problem is, it would still be coherent. No matter how hard you tried, it would be coherent.

EL:@KeriStevens coherent? well, maybe. assuming i didn’t write it at 5:30am when Munchkin wakes me these days.

JL: @Elise_Logan Satirical erotic romance:Feisty heroine wakes up blind and with amnesia/Hero claims he’s her fiancee.Killer wants her dead.

JL: @Elise_Logan and hero is really a vampire. Heroine is a vampire slayer. Can they screw happily ever after? Only with much bursting.

EL: @JenniferLeeland that’s not satire. i’ve SEEN that plot. lol

EL: @JenniferLeeland virgin vampire slayer. she must be a virgin.

JL: @Elise_Logan Of COURSE. And he tells her she’s actually very “skilled” just to mess with her.

JL:@Elise_Logan And she “bursts” every time he bites her. Plus they make beautiful undead babies.

EL:@JenniferLeeland he has to think she’s a slut. and… and… um… can they have a secret love child?

JL:@Elise_Logan *snirk* And then this werewolf can claim she’s HIS mate but the were’s mate is actually her twin sister.

EL:@Elise_Logan and.. someone has to have a dire illness that turns out to be a misdiagnosis.

JL:@Elise_Logan That only affects vampires. A vampire plague. That only her blood can cure.

EL:perfect. Oh, God. How do i write that? maybe we can make it a joint project.

KS:@Elise_Logan No–I stand by my assertion. I think some of us are constitutionally incapable of the dreck we’ve seen in #RRTheatre

EL: i’d never be able to write it. i’d be laughing too hard to type

EL:@Lori_Ella yes, well… i’ve (sadly) seen some Gulliver’s Travels themed porn cartoons. There was no brain bleach good enough for that.

KS:@Elise_Logan See? Constitutionally incapable.

EL:@KeriStevens just for that, i’m going to have to try. oh, the pity of it.

JL:@Elise_Logan Oh come on! I can totally laugh and type at the same time

EL:@Elise_Logan LOL!!! Done. #eroticsatireOMG

JL:@KeriStevens @Elise_Logan …I’ll cater to my baser instinct. What shall we call this? #eroticsatireOMG

Thus began the intermittent contributions to that hashtag. We’ve been playing with it for a few days, and it’s making the itch to write this mess worse, not better. Every time we go off on this topic, I just giggle like a fiend. Did I mention that the hero is now a Greek Vampire Billionaire (with, naturally, the secret love child)?

So, what do you think? Is there a market for an erotic parody? should I keep it in the maybe file? Would you want to read it? Let me know!

His Neve Problem

Xu Scholen stepped out of the lift into the corridor. Taking a deep breath, he walked toward the systems bay. His ears twitched at the droning hum of the engines overlaid with the quiet hiss of the backup systems. A quick check of his complink told him Commander Steesk was in TWR. Why she was there, he didn’t know, since they didn’t have any target world reps on board.

His ears also twitched at the thought of his upcoming meeting. Not only was Neve Steesk Chief Engineer, she was also his Chief Fantasy. With her oddly tinted hair bound in myriad tiny braids and secured at her nape, he wanted nothing more than to spend hours unraveling it: combing it through his fingers, winding it around his arms, draping it over his skin. She definitely aroused more than a professional interest. Given the Fleet Command attitude toward sex, he wouldn’t normally bother to dampen that interest, but this was a delicate situation.

His fascination with Neve ran deep. He wanted her under his control, sexually. Too bad she wasn’t ready for that sort of relationship.

Xu licked his lips, imagining the pleasure of training her, drawing her out to her limits. She wouldn’t roll over, it wasn’t in her nature. No, she’d fight him, and the challenge would be in bending her to his will without breaking her. There was nothing sexier than a smart, strong woman who submitted willingly.

Continue reading His Neve Problem…

A HINT OF WICKED winner announced!

First, please accept my apologies for the delay in choosing a winner. Reason, not excuse, being that I underestimated the amount of energy and time and mental power I would have to invest in moving last week.

Second, thanks so much to everybody who stopped by to make a choice. I’m still unsure what choice I would have made were I in Sophie’s position. She’s tangled in not just two, but three relationships with her men, between her intimate ties with each and her much longer standing, deeper rooted friendship ties with both.

Less about me, though, and more about you -

The winner of the autographed copy of A HINT OF WICKED is Anita Yancey, who said she would choose Garrett, Sophie’s first husband. I wonder if she’ll change her mind after she reads Sophie’s story.

The winner of a choice of e-books from my currently available titles is Fran (I highly recommend “Changing Thumbelina”).

Congratulations, ladies!