Your Infrequently Asked Questions

I'm at the RT Booklovers Convention (#RT15) this week, so I've scheduled this post ahead of time. Which means that, as I write this, I'm not really at RT at all, but at home, doing All The Things to get ready to go. A funky kind of time travel...

At any rate, the topic for this week in my future, your present, is Your Infrequently Asked Questions.

. . .

Yeah.

I was coming up blank so I did what any reasonable person does - I threw the topic out to the Twitter Hive Mind. (I also posted to FaceBook, but that's less of a Hive Mind than a slow-moving coliseum of people mostly gawking at funny videos and arguing about politics.)

Some suggested questions - and my answers!

Are you an alien?

Doubtful. Though there IS the time-travel thing! When I was a kid, I thought so. I was convinced that my true people had abandoned me and would return for me someday. Does every kid think this at some point? So interesting how this crosses over with the concept of changelings. (Which comes out in my various stories a great deal.)

When is your next courtroom thriller coming out?

I'm actually working on a courtroom thriller/fantasy romance. Fae lawyers and wizard serial killers. The ultimate cross-genre mashup!

(You know, I wrote that as a joke and now the idea is percolating - it *would* be kind of cool! Also, this is why my agent hates me.)

Do you ever wish you had fewer hats?

Only when my teetering hat pile falls off the shelf where I keep them. What I really need is one of those room-sized walk-in closets where each hat rests on a little model head. I am trying not to buy too many more new hats. Nora Roberts was auctioning off her Kentucky Derby hats and I was watching the auction on eBay, seriously tempted to bid. I probably would have, but then I forgot to look on the last day and missed out. I'm calling that fate.

How is your big hat fetish reflected in your writing?

"Fetish." PLEASE! It's barely an obsession! Interestingly, I don't know that it is. I rarely have my characters wear headgear. Except crowns and circlets. Those figure heavily in THE TALON OF THE HAWK and THE PAGES OF THE MIND.

Are your cats muses, familiars, or ghostwriters?

Yes. Okay, actually I think they're mostly familiars. They keep me company and remind me that a good life includes relaxing in the sun, lots of affection and regular meals. Really, they don't inspire much as they find me tapping at the keyboard a waste of attention. Occasionally they attempt to ghostwrite, but their spelling is terrible and I always find them out.

Time in a Novel: What Should Your Scale Be?

Tis the season to be gearing up for the RT Convention! This is just one of the fun reader parties I'm participating in.
So, our Bordello Topic of the Week is 3 Hours, 3 Days, or 300 Years: How Do You Choose & Use The Passage of Time?

As always, that "choose" word amuses me. I like it though. I envision myself gazing into a fire thoughtfully, perhaps wearing a cardigan with leather patches on the elbows and with a notepad on the table beside me, next to the snifter of brandy. I frown as I contemplate the timeline of the novel I'm working up, envisioning the sweep of the story, how many days or years it should take to play out and.... Who am I kidding?

This is so not me.

So far, every single time I thought I was going for a long timescale, it hasn't happened. For example, The on-screen events of the three Twelve Kingdoms books (so far) take place over the course of just over a year. A jam-packed year, for sure. When I proposed the books? I envisioned them being something like ten years maybe. Now I'm adding two more books to the series and I might make it another year into the arc. We'll see. But again - who am I kidding?

I'm a fine-scale writer. Probably because I'm a character-driven writer and I love to focus in on detailed conversations and slow-burn epiphanies. I love to have that stuff on the page and to linger over it. Because that's the trade-off - if you want a larger time-scale, more stuff has to happen off-screen. It's a necessary sacrifice. I recently read a book that I loved, loved, loved - and yet, a number of events happened off-screen that I felt cheated by missing. I *wanted* to live those moments. In that case, I think the author could have made the choice to include some and I'm not sure why she didn't.

In other cases, it's not so much of a sacrifice to lose the boring, daily stuff. Much as I love Jacqueline Carey, she once dragged me through innumerable pages of a long, excruciating journey through monsoon rains. Yes, she made me live the misery and it's obviously stamped indelibly into my brain. But... really, Jacqueline?

I suppose that timescale of the story is ultimately a tradeoff between velocity of the plot and believable character development. In romance, in particular, the worst transgression of this kind is the "insta-love." In fantasy... could be the too-easily resolved defeat of the hero? I dunno. What do you all think?

Conversation Snippets from #RT13

I had this vague idea that I would write this blog post ahead of time - before I left for the RT Convention.

Ha.

Then, I thought, oh - I'll do it sometime during the week, when I have some down time.

Ha!

So, here I am, about to fly home and writing up this post about overheard conversation that makes it into books. Fortunately a readers and writers conference is ripe for eavesdropping. I don't have the brainpower to think about the whole "transforming it into literary dialogue" aspect, but I do have some great lines.

"I'm really more of a visual eavesdropper."

"I get drunk and pitch other people's books - what is WRONG with me??"

"But does the little boy *have* to be deaf?"

"What's my book about? Fighting, fucking and fireballs." (This last from Kailynn Jones, who got six manuscript requests after we told her she should absolutely use this "joke" line when pitching.)

"Every time I read about people having sex on the beach, I'm just imagining all those intimate places and getting sand out - know what I mean?"

"Do you have a card?"
"A credit card?"
"No! A business card."
"Oh, I thought you wanted me to pay for your drink!"

"Hey! That champagne bottle is to be shared with the WHOLE table!" (Accompanied by seizure of said bottle and placement of it next to her plate.)

"There are not enough gifs in the world to express the state my inner 13 year-old fan girl was in."

"I just met [insert any number of names here] - I was so excited I may have squirted."


Yeah....it is that kind of conference.

See you all on the flip side!