The most important books for writing romance.

My favorite titles.

I wanted to talk about my favorite books on writing. Every author has her go-to's for inspiration and help, and here are mine.

How can one live without Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing?

People love to denigrate our genre. This book gives an insightful and quirky look at how much and how little attitudes towards women's words have changed. It taught me just what kinds of horrible internalized sexism colored what I wrote, how I viewed other women, and worst of all, what I did to myself.

Find it here: https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/rushow



Making a Literary Life by Elizabeth See.
A far greater writer than I'll ever be says this:

If everyone who wants to be a writer would read this book there would be many more good writers, many more happy writers, and editors would be so overwhelmed by sweetness they would accept many more good books. So what are you waiting for? Read it! Ursula K. Le Guin

Find it here: http://www.carolynsee.com/Books/literarylife.html



Write Away by Elizabeth George.
From Publisher's Weekly:

Here's a useful book for the novice writer battling the fears and insecurities that attend when she contemplates her first novel....George illustrates her points with passages from both her ownworks and those of numerous writers she admires (Martin Cruz Smith,Barbara Kingsolver, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris), this remains more of a how-I-do-it book than a how-to-do-it book. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unlike PW, I'll say that this book is good even for experienced writers. I love her examples - they illustrate her points brilliantly.

Find it here:http://www.elizabethgeorgeonline.com/books/write_away.htm

The most important romance specific book on my shelf is Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women by Jayne Ann Krentz.

"In Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, Jayne Ann Krentz and the contributors to this volume—all best-selling romance writers—explode myths and biases that haunt both the writers and readers of romances.

In this seamless, ultimately fascinating, and controversial book, the authors dispute some of the notions that plague their profession, including the time-worn theory that the romance genre contains only one single, monolithic story, which is cranked out over and over again. The authors discuss positive life-affirming values inherent in all romances: the celebration of female power, courage, intelligence, and gentleness; the inversion of the power structure of a patriarchal society; and the integration of male and female. Several of the essays also discuss the issue of reader identification with the characters, a relationship that is far more complex than most critics realize."

Find it here: http://jayneannkrentz.com/dangerous-men-and-adventurous-women/

I feel that the most important book on my shelf remains Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller. I'm not going to kid you - this is a painful and devastating book, whether you have been a victim of sexual assault or not. But it endlessly reminds me of what I feel is the great gift that romance gives every reader: That her pleasure is central to life, that her consent should never dismissed or belittled, and that each of us deserves to be heard.

Find it here: http://www.susanbrownmiller.com/susanbrownmiller/html/against_our_will.html

Vampires in Literature

My favorite vampire in literature (other than my very own Valerie Tate, if I may be so immodest), is Joseph Le Fanu's Carmilla.

In the story, Carmilla befriends the lonely, isolated Laura.  In true romance fashion, Carmilla recognizes Laura as a friend from a dream they had shared at six years old.

 In the older style Harlequin stories, the shy heroine is drawn to a handsome, brooding, moody hero. In this story, Laura is drawn to Carmilla's beauty.  Carmilla herself is moody and passionate. There is much foreplay, snuggling,  and Laura braiding and playing with Carmilla's hair. Carmilla herself goes from an engaging young woman to a determined lover pressing her suit with kisses on Laura's cheeks and claiming that Laura is *hers*.

"Darling, darling," [Carmilla] murmured. "I live in you and you would die for me. I love you so."

The pursuer overcome with possessiveness and extreme displays of desire is still a common motif in modern romance novels.

In true Victorian fashion, Laura, virginal, pure, and close to her protective father, begins to exhibit unusual behavior, such as exhaustion and restlessness and meloncholy. Common behaviors for someone in the throes of first love.

The father and the other male researcher refuse to share their suspicions with Laura, leaving her helpless in the face of Carmilla's desire for both blood and love.


And, as is usual in literature, the passionate and sexual Carmilla is revealed to be a perversion and executed.

Laura, 'safe' after her exposure to independence, is restored to her virginal state and returns to her remote home under her father's protection. But a hero can never truly return to who she was before her experiences. She still remembers the sound of Carmilla's steps on the drawing room floor.

The Ultimate Muse

Happy Birthday, Bram Stoker!

Thank you for a wonderful book that has inspired so many. My passionate Valerie would not exist without you.

Dracula's Secret available here

Dracula's Desires available here

Here we go again; the denegration of women's reading

To be clear; I have not read 50 Shades of Grey yet. I have been too busy getting Dracula Unleashed (Book Three of the Blood Wings series) into some kind of order. But naturally, I have an opinion about the nasty, denigrating comments about books that women like to read.

I have touched on these themes before in my Defense of Twilight posts, (here, here, here, here, here), but they bear repeating.

In no particular order, I want to point out the following things.

1. Women are not stupid.  
 Some critics think that the people who read 50 Shades are going to jump right in and start doing unsafe sexual practices, such as untutored BDSM. There are millions and millions of people tying each other up and spanking like crazy without having been to a single workshop at a leather conference and somehow they survive. Guess what. We do know how to do research.

2. Women are able to separate fantasy from reality.  
 Teenagers who watched the Batman series in the late 1960s did not try climbing up buildings crouched over with a single rope.

3. Women are not illiterate.
50 Shades is considered to be horribly written, with cliches and redundant phrasing. Here's a little rebuttal from Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, pg. 129:

Women always write in the vernacular....

In the vernacular, it is...hard to be "classic", to be smooth, to be perfect. The Sacred Canon of Literature quite often pretends that some works can be not only atemporal and universal (that is, outside of history, a religious claim) but without flaw and without perceptible limitations. It's hard, in the vernacular, to pretend this, to paper over the cracks. It's also hard to read the vernacular as Holy Writ...

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art.

4. Women's sexual fantasies and arousal are important.
Portnoy's Complaint is considered Great Literature. Susie Bright gets told to shut up. Say no more.

5. Ultimately, it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS what a woman reads.
Adult men can read comic books, war novels, spy novels - anything they want, really. Because it is none of our business what they read. Same for women.

Will I read 50 Shades of Grey? After I meet my deadline, for sure. I'm sure parts of it will annoy me and others will get my motor runnin'.

Just like any other novel.
 

Story Basics Part IV: The Herald Archetype

I've written about big penises, Turkey, Muses, and International Woman's Day.  I figure now is a good time to get back on my subject of Archetypes and how they are used in literature.

When I think of the Herald, I think of the character Mountjoy in Henry V. Mountjoy is the carrier of news and challenges. His appearance means things are about to change, that a new energy is going to shake up the Hero's life. This archetype is so important that the God Mercury (Hermes in Greek mythology) was the Deity of messengers.

(I obviously have a weakness for the Herald archetype ;).

The Herald announces the need for change (also known as The Call to Adventure) and provides motivation. This role is not always filled by a person, but can be a wonderful character when it is, especially if the Herald is mixed in with another archetype. Often, the Herald is filled by inanimate objects; hurricanes and storms, a telegram, phone call, or television broadcast, perhaps a letter. Sometimes a Herald is negative, a message from the antagonist. The Herald can be also be positive or neutral.

Story Basics Part IV: The Mentor Archetype

The name Mentor comes from a character in the Odyssey. Telemachus, Odysseus' son, goes on a quest to find his father. The goddess Athena takes the guise of Mentor (a human male) to give Telemachus advice, training, aid, or necessary gifts to finish the search.

The Mentor is a very rich archetype. Joseph Campbell named this role as The Wise Old Man or Woman. The Mentor's job is to represent our highest selves, the part of the heroine who is wise and far seeing.  A mentor decides if the heroine has earned gifts to help her, or can act as her conscience. The Mentor motivates and initiates the heroine, too.

Mentors can be kindly  parental figures or they can be dangerous, teaching the Heroine through hard knocks. A Dark Mentor is one who starts a character on a tragic arc, leading her into danger or destruction. Fallen Mentors have lost their own way, and part of the Hero's story is to make the Mentor pull herself together. There are often multiple Mentors in a story, as well.

After all, James Bond not only has M, he has Moneypenny and Q to help teach him what he needs. Arthur has Merlin, but also his brother Kaye, his father, and even his half-sister to teach him lessons.

Mentors can be funny, mystical, young, old, or even part of the Heroine's inner landscape as a memory or code of honor. They can show up in the beginning, middle, or end of the story. Don't get stuck thinking your Mentor has to be Obi Wan with a beard and a nifty sword. Anyone and anything can teach your Heroine what she needs to know.

Story Basics Part IV: Archetypes and Joseph Campbell

Last year (to the day!), I said I would do a series on various archetypal thought systems that can inspire a writer. Today (and until I get done with it), I'm going to discuss Joseph Campbell's breakdowns according to Christopher Vogler .
Vogler names the most useful, basic archetypes for writers:

• Hero
• Mentor
• Threshold Guardian 
• Herald
• Shapeshifter
• Shadow
• Trickster

First things first. According to Vogler,

The concept of archetypes is an indispensable tool for understanding the purpose or function of characters in a story. If you grasp the function of the archetype which a particular character is expressing, it can help you determine if the character is pulling her full weight in the story. The archetypes are part of the universal language of storytelling, and a command of their energy is as essential to the writer as breathing.  (p. 29, emphasis his)

It's very easy to call character A the Mentor, and that is her only function - to mentor and educate the Hero, then to let her go into the world on her own. But in order to make a story character interesting and three dimensional, the Mentor will most likely play many roles, just like real people. Someone can give you excellent advice one day, then the next tie your shoelaces together. This person has embodied both the Mentor and the Trickster/Shapeshifter archetypes.

For the next few days, I'll breakdown each individual archetype. This is going to be fun!

Story Basics, Part I

My friend Opal Mirror and I have had an interesting conversation since my post on Catching Up On The Classics.

He says he likes to write setting, but has trouble with narrative and character development (whereas I'm all over narrative, but setting is ridiculously hard for me). So, for both of us, I thought I'd go over some concepts and see if it helps us (and you, too).

Character development - creating a fictional person who is as confused and searching as a real person - isn't easy, but there are some tools to help you on your way.

The first tool set involves basic questions such as:

1. What does the person need to learn?  Humility? Self-Confidence? That his uncle murdered his father and then married the widow?
2. What are her flaws? Is she a careless listener? Is he greedy? Hamlet had some serious focus issues, for example. His job was to kill his uncle, not everyone else!
3. What is her greatest fear? Gertrude did not want to face the truth of her actions - that she had committed incest by marrying her brother in law.
4. What is his best quality? I always thought Hamlet's best quality that was he didn't take the ghost's words for granted - he had to investigate and prove the truth to himself.
5. What is the price she will have to pay if she doesn't learn the lesson(s)? Since it took Hamlet so long to learn what was going on, he left behind a trail of innocent dead.

These are just ideas to start the brainstorming process. More character tools to come!

Inspirational Quotes.

Every one has quotes they pin up on their wall by their desks. As we close in on American Thanksgiving, I want to highlight the most important gratitude of all - that of love.


For one human being to love another:
that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks;
the ultimate, the last test and proof,
the work for which all other work is but preparation.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

"Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire."
-Teilhard de Chardin

The subject tonight is Love
And for tomorrow night as well.
As a matter of fact I know of no better topic
For us to discuss
Until we all
Die!
-Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love."
-Leo Tolstoy

"Any thought that is not filled with love seems unholy."
-André Gide

"Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who treat you spitefully."
-Jesus Christ

"Right now, we are appearing as the very light of consciousness, alive as love, although we may require some training, like an artist would, to fully offer our self as love's gift."
-David Deida from "Waiting to Love"

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
-Thoreau

"When I love, I love so much, it's dangerous."
-Nicole Kidman

"To love is to tilt with the lightning, two bodies routed by a single honey's
sweet."
-Pablo Neruda

When I think of you,
fireflies in the marsh rise
like the soul's jewels,
lost to eternal longing,
abandoning my body
-Izumi Shikibu

Pillowed on your thighs in a dream garden,
little flower with its perfumed stamen,
singing, sipping from the stream of you --
sunset, moonlight -- our song continues.

-Ikkyu Sojun

Found on the Internet

The amazingly talented Lindsay Samuels created an amazingly wonderful website called LibraryScienceDegree.org.


I admit to busting a gut when I read her 50 Most Hated Characters in Literature entry. I adored her Top Ten Fictional Feminist Icons of All Time, too.

I am now inspired to go figure out my own fictional feminist icons. What are some of yours?

Go, read, enjoy!

My favorite titles.

I wanted to talk about my favorite books on writing. Every author has her go-to's for inspiration and help, and here are mine.

How can one live without Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing?

People love to denigrate our genre. This book gives an insightful and quirky look at how much and how little attitudes towards women's words have changed. It taught me just what kinds of horrible internalized sexism colored what I wrote, how I viewed other women, and worst of all, what I did to myself.



Making a Literary Life by Elizabeth See.
A far greater writer than I'll ever be says this:

If everyone who wants to be a writer would read this book there would be many more good writers, many more happy writers, and editors would be so overwhelmed by sweetness they would accept many more good books. So what are you waiting for? Read it! Ursula K. Le Guin

Write Away by Elizabeth George.
From Publisher's Weekly:

Here's a useful book for the novice writer battling the fears and insecurities that attend when she contemplates her first novel....George illustrates her points with passages from both her ownworks and those of numerous writers she admires (Martin Cruz Smith,Barbara Kingsolver, Louise Erdrich, Michael Dorris), this remains more of a how-I-do-it book than a how-to-do-it book. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unlike PW, I'll say that this book is good even for experienced writers. I love her examples - they illustrate her points brilliantly.


I feel that the most important book on my shelf remains Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller. I'm not going to kid you - this is a painful and devastating book, whether you have been a victim of sexual assault or not. But it endlessly reminds me of what I feel is the great gift that romance gives every reader: That her pleasure is central to life, that her consent should never dismissed or belittled, and that each of us deserves to be heard.

Conversations with The Flaming Chef.

Jason Zenobia, the genius Flaming Chef, replied to my Twilight series:

Amazing themes and discourse here. I've always been fascinated by the symbolism of heterosexual romance. Love of "the other" when the other is physiologically different from you, opens up all sorts of neat ideas.

The idea that women aren't whole until they have men to guide them - I always thought of that as a function of pairing up. (Cultural ideas around marriage in particular.) It follows from what you're saying that this dynamic is as much a function of falling in love (or being obsessed) with someone?

(Places index finger on chin. Makes thoughtful little noise)

And to respond!

One of things I like about the quotes I posted last time is that they comment on the necessity of a woman to embrace her animus (as well as her Shadow aspects, to get all Jungian up in here).

Since women are traditionally discouraged from exploring and expressing their aggression and anger, I believe that one will chose a male partner that best embodies her repressed qualities. Being in love with a man can bring insight to those characteristics that she has hidden or been frightened of.

I feel that romance novels, one of the only genres aimed specifically at women and read mainly by women, give us a chance to examine interactions with the different kinds of male personalities and behaviors. Then, we can integrate those aspects into our psyche with a great deal less danger.

Hope.

Emily Dickinson said
hope is a thing with feathers,
delicate, light, and small.

I think hope is giant beast with
fangs, claws, and fur.
It crashes into your life,
mauls and
remakes you in a form
unrecognizable, never before seen.
Then, with a final brutal, ravenous bite to your
mangled face,
sends you out stronger than you were.


c. Linda Mercury

Oh, yeah - just to explain.

Mostly, I'm posting my old poetry because I'm too busy revising Dracula's Secret to come up with anything new for this blog.

Emergency Surgery's first line came to me about three years ago when I had to end nearly thirty-year (fairly loose) friendship. I didn't realize how much of me this person had become until it was over. I felt empty and hollow, and it surprised me how much I missed our interactions.

Oh, Please, Aeneas was a response to the most irritating section of the Aeneid. Can you believe that some old white guy scholars call the scene where he sails away from Carthage to be Aeneas' most heroic moment? Disgusting. I think that part ruins an otherwise fantastic read. I think Virgil must have had some bad dormice in honey that day.

(The Romans had a strange view of yummy food)

So, more poetry to come!

More poetry

I was reading the Aeneid and I got to my least favorite part - Dido's death. So I wrote this as a retort to the unnecessary death of a brilliant female character.



Oh, Please, Aeneas

Dido, Queen of Carthage
Threw herself off a wall
For you?

Yeah, right, Son of Venus.
You and I know the truth.

You’re dick-sizing with Odysseus about the
women you both left behind.
He claims Calypso, the unflagging nymph, begged him to stay, but he tired of her, even after she promised him immortality.

I hear your juvenile response across the centuries.
Oh, yeah? Well, a QUEEN killed herself for love of ME and our lands became mortal enemies until my descendents destroyed her city and sowed it with salt.

Nauseating.
A queen is strong.
She keeps her wits.
Go ahead. Dump her, sail away like the
skulking coward you are.
She will rise, triumphant,
send her elephants trumpeting through your
backyard.
And not until Quintus Fabius will she be defeated,
only after
years of struggle and a waste of power.
You had nothing to do with that victory.

You are so not worthy of a queen’s pain.

You lied, Aeneas.
There was no funeral pyre. You know she
put on her jeweled sandals,
strode through the city she owned.
She wouldn’t let a panderer ruin her proud name.