Short Short Story Prompt

Hi!

As you guys might have known, the day job is keeping me pretty swamped lately - there are 27 television series currently shooting in NY, and pilot season hasn't even started, so...woof.  Its great and wonderful, and totally exhausting - and my writing has done bupkis for three months.

Sad face.

I was just invited to a group that does writing prompts - in this case, a key phrase that the writer takes to make a short story of 100-500 words.   I've never been good at micro shorts, but spitting out a hundred words in a few minutes in order to keep writing?  I'm there.  It's about what I have the attention span for at this point.

The first prompt was 'What say thee?"

This is what I wrote:

“What say thee?”

“Donald,” I replied, “I say we're in a goddamn Denny's, so put down your axe and quit mangling middle English for five minutes. Okay?”

His face fell, but he dutifully tucked his new, mass produced battle ax gently on the seat. Our waitress came over, popping gum. She gave our costumes the once over, sucked pink latex back between her teeth, and walked away. Donald looked into my eyes, pleading.

“I'm really hungry.” He said.

I sighed.

“Okay, fine. You can keep the axe on the table.”

Our service did improve tremendously.

First Paragraph Review - The Smoke in Death's Eye

I must be mad.  Or have indulged in some bad fish, because I'm at it again.




That's right gang - the first paragraph reviews are back.  For a little while, at least.  I don't think they'll ever be a regular feature again, but if you or someone you know wants to send me one (this time including screenplays!), I'll do it.  Probably not right away, but I'll do it.




Anyhow.  The format will stay the same.  First, the page as I received it (forgiveness for copy/paste directly into email).  Then, the page with commentary.




Without further ado:

The lights, a mixture of yellow and neon blue, splash evil shadows against the walls. I liked that. I lived in those shadows, the hum of the Smoke, a never ending presence.

My target leaned against a scarlet red spinner as he scanned the traffic in the air waiting for his clients. A pusher of the worst kind, he sold 24 hour addiction to the net, the matrix, whatever the mutual illusion we call cyberspace really is, but I watched him because he possessed knowledge I needed. I had to be careful though; he hacked the local cams with his built-in wetware.

Despite the poor lighting I could see him clearly. My TacScreen feed streamed to me by my built-in A.I., Artificial Neurological Analyser, ANA for short, to a chip resting against the back of my retinas. The TacScreen, glowing pale green created the effect of being projected in front of my vision showed he was much bigger than me, at least 6 foot tall, but sickly looking somehow. He wore retro style jeans and a fake denim jacket cut off at the arms with no t-shirt showing off the body art on his torso of a skull and cross bones which glowed fluorescent green in the dark. He wore jump boots fashionably unfastened with his jeans tucked at the front of his boots. His name was Demetrez of mixed race. His dyed blond hair, cut in a Mohican and long at the back, sat atop his face framing pale grey eyes which I assume he was not born with.

And now, the commentary.

The lights, a mixture of yellow and neon blue, splash evil shadows against the walls. I liked that. I lived in those shadows, the hum of the Smoke, a never ending presence.

(Ok, the first sentence bothers me for a specific reason that most people might not catch.  Additive color theory. Yellow light plus blue light equals white light.  Light splashes light, not shadows.  So not only are there no projected shadows, the colors chosen would combine to create pure, white light.  Many people are only familiar with subtractive (pigment based) color theory, so even a sharp editor might miss this one.

I have mixed feelings about the jump from present in the first sentence to past in the next two.  The last sentence feels like it has extra words and unneeded commas.)

My target leaned against a scarlet red spinner as he scanned the traffic in the air waiting for his clients.

(Things I like: the casual use of target, and the offhand comment about the traffic being 'in the air' are great for indicating early and well that we're in science fiction, and our protag may not be the nicest guy.  I stumbled on 'scarlet red'.  Does scarlet come in any other color?)

 A pusher of the worst kind, he sold 24 hour addiction to the net, the matrix, whatever the mutual illusion we call cyberspace really is, but I watched him because he possessed knowledge I needed. I had to be careful though; he hacked the local cams with his built-in wetware.




(Story wise, this works for me so far.  We've got bits of awkwardness with the sentence structure.  My other confusion is 'selling addiction'.  How would selling an addiction, rather than the drug, work?  Were this a hard science or present day/real world story, it would bother me more.  Maybe this universe has a drug that mimics addiction for some reason?  But why?  Or maybe the wording is just off.  Were I paying to read this, I'd need to know very soon.)

Despite the poor lighting I could see him clearly. My TacScreen feed streamed to me by my built-in A.I., Artificial Neurological Analyser, ANA for short, to a chip resting against the back of my retinas. The TacScreen, glowing pale green created the effect of being projected in front of my vision showed he was much bigger than me, at least 6 foot tall, but sickly looking somehow.

(LOVE this.  I've seen way too many lousy stories with the 'even though it was dark, I could see' bit.  The why immediately follows the statement, which is great.  There's more stumbling over the name - the Artificial Intelligence Artificial comes off as a little silly, as if the writer weren't sure of the term.  I'm not sure why a visual aide of this type would need to have it's own consciousness, which is AI.  I'd recommend dropping the AI portion of the description, unless this neural net functions as the wise cracking sidekick projecting snarky comments directly to the protag's brain.  More awkward comma placement - this will need a good edit, but shows a lot of promise.)

 He wore retro style jeans and a fake denim jacket cut off at the arms with no t-shirt showing off the body art on his torso of a skull and cross bones which glowed fluorescent green in the dark. 

(Eeek. Run on sentence, for one.  The second thought is info-dump.  A small one, but how important is this list, and what part is significant to the protagonist?  If this outfit is normal, how much would he notice?  I do like the glowing tattoo.)

He wore jump boots fashionably unfastened with his jeans tucked at the front of his boots. His name was Demetrez of mixed race.

(His name was 'of mixed race'?  Somehow, I think this is more awkwardness.  We've also been told he's wearing jeans twice - not needed.  Personally, I think the second mention works better, and the first should be dumped.  As always, these parenthesis are just my opinion.)

 His dyed blond hair, cut in a Mohican and long at the back, sat atop his face framing pale grey eyes which I assume he was not born with.

(I'm guessing that this is a spelling hiccup, unless there's a new hairstyle.  The Native American tribe that the haircut is named after is Mohawk.  Completely different.  It could sprout on top of his head, but the 'atop his face' makes me think of one wicked unibrow.  This whole bit could use rewriting.  I like the mention of the eye thing, though I'd want an explanation fairly soon.)







Thank you,  Jorge Salgado - Reyes, for offering your first page, and I hope this is helpful to you.

Your old writing

People often ask about one's old work - if they can read it (I'm not that evil), what it was like, how long you've been writing. Not one writer has ever sprung fully formed from the first sentence - we all have trunk novels, stories, and whatever else is formed of words on paper, in varying degrees of awfulness. Through a series of moves, my old work is long lost, and mostly forgotten.

I can, however share this 'gem' from memory:


My best friend and I were huge ghost story and Twilight Zone fans, and decided to become 'rich and famous' or somesuch by writing our own. (We were six or seven at the time, I suspect 'rich' included such things as getting our own pony.)

The memory is a bit fuzzy, but I believe the story had to do with a woman reading about a train crash and then perishing a few hours later the same way. Nothing wrong with the basic premise - the writing?

All I can clearly remember was the debate about the title, remedied by using both ideas. This masterpiece was called:

'The Fantom book of Fate/The Phantom book of Phate'

We thought the spelling change was terribly clever, but couldn't agree on which to use - so of course we used both.

I suspect the rest of the writing was equally inspired.

Confessions of a literary voyeur

I love reading other people's blogs - mostly informational blogs: GalleyCat, ERECsite, Miss Snark, The Evil Editor

Sometimes, it'll be things like Forgotten New York, or the tidbits of obscure history from Cracked.com - interesting pieces of history and the human condition that may spark stories of my own, or introduce me to places that I can actually go visit and find out more about on my own.

Lately, most of my online reading has been personal blogs and anecdotes from complete strangers.  It's as though a million characters have opened their windows in this immense apartment building, graciously allowing the peeping tom outside a peek into some pastiche of their life.  More than allowing, I suppose.  They set out the fine silver and china, for many, painting ideological portraits of memories.  Others bring out the heavy metal posters and toss the mattress onto the floor (which you suspect was perfectly well made only moments ago) and sensationalize some event until it has all the believability of a morning talk show guest.

The ones that get my attention the best are a balance.  They don't so much sugar coat events as find that soft spot that makes us still love crazy Uncle Jemmy (not a real person) even though he pours Bud Light over his corn flakes every morning.  The trials and frightening parts of life are matter of fact, often responded to and written about with the wry humor of a survivor.

When writing fiction, it seems part of the difficulty is making the story compelling and human.  Creating fully dimensional characters with strengths, weaknesses, talents and foibles.  The more information you have to draw from, the easier this becomes.  Writing convincing fiction is difficult from a vacuum.

Don't plagiarize,  but do open your eyes and ears to all different kinds of stories, from all sorts of people.  The only way to make your imaginary characters feel real, is to make them 'real'.

Sick :/

Sorry I haven't been up and about in far too long.

Post summer madness, I jumped onto another feature.  Yay, more work, right?

I promptly jumped right back off after the most severe case of the flu I've had since I was a child.  Two weeks later, and the view of a real meal is still making my stomach leap around like a gymnast with Tourettes. Ugh.

Filling time when you're that sick becomes it's own challenge - the lack of focus makes writing or drawing darned near impossible. I tried anyway - the results were promptly deleted.  I orally expelled more interesting things than what came out of the fried brain pan.

So I surfed the web.  Read some Hugo winning short stories - oh my. Science Fiction has come far.  The past years winners were lyrical, engaging, heart - wrenching character based works that leave you with that fuzzy headed 'WOW' at the conclusion.

Lest you think I'm over focused on work:

http://accidentalpenis.com/

Because life is no fun without a childish giggle here and there.

From The Science Fiction/Anime/Other Stuff con...

Just now realizing how much I haven't talked about that has gone on this year - I should be mummified in the begonia and beluga whale stick on wallpaper additions that we've been systematically tearing off.

(Have I mentioned the metallic gold paisley wallpaper in the kitchen? It looks the way migraine induced nausea feels.)

Due to the fates, four winds, and whatever other fortunes or happenstance one chooses to believe in, the SO and I live in a cultural null. There are too many people for it to be a wasteland. Interesting activities often seem limited to those with deep pockets, or those willing to make their own fun. (For instance, we have a few theater spaces. One for the wealthy, one for a childrens' educational group, and one that's an affluent community theater with grand delusions - would you pay $35 to see the local high school kids put on 'Oklahoma'? Me neither.)

The demographic is seems to be bent toward those with either enough money to have fun elsewhere, families/family entertainment, or the dive bar scene.

So, finding out that one of our colleges actually puts on a SFF/Anime convention was exciting. I'd never been.

I convinced Significant Other that we should attend. A whole weekend of . . . something, for about the price of a movie ticket. (And if it really wasn't fun, we were close enough to home that it wouldn't be a big deal.)

The convention was tiny, for being in it's 10th year; and not organized particularly well. Not sure why - perhaps the cycling of students every four years has a bit to do with it.

However, the few speakers that were there, were great - particularly Alisa Kwitney, I attended both of her well designed workshops. And got an eyeful of the desperate and clueless while I was at it.

Free advice - if you've done nothing, listen to the speaker. I can't even fathom why some of these people were going on and on about the ideas for comics that they hadn't started writing (strongly implying that this poor woman should suddenly make them rich and famous), artists who couldn't be bothered learning how to draw who wanted jobs at major comics publishers...one guy was convinced that his D&D game would be the 'most amazing' comic EVER.

When asked what series' they followed, each and every one of these people responded with blank, glassy eyes - I'm pretty sure more than one started drooling.

How can you even PRETEND to want to be part of an industry that you have zero clue about?

What followed were excuses - not having time or money is the big one.

You MAKE the time. If someone claimed interest in being a novelist, but never read, what would you say?

As for the money, there's this amazing thing called a...wait for it...

LIBRARY. They carry graphic novels.

That doesn't even begin to touch the plethora of completely free online comic series that you can follow - which requires little time, and NO money. You don't even have to leave the house!

The artist's alley was similar. There were only four tables.

One had a promising duo.

One had a girl who made felt hats - so she really is her own thing, and not relevant here.

One was overly dodged and burned tracings of anime characters (sadly, that one seemed the most successful).

The last, had a sour, bitter, glaring girl with some rumpled doodles of chibis - they screamed of a lack of effort, and she seemed uninterested in being polite, and pissed off that no one was buying lousy art - no matter what the price.

Why are people completely delusional?

This stuff takes WORK. More than anything else. Ideas are easy. Heck, I get and discard at least 100 before my first cup of coffee. A few (like this blog) I kick around for a while, and then decide to do, or not.

I try to draw every day. I'm not improving as fast as someone more dedicated, and I know that.

I do write every day - not here, but I have several (seven) different projects, and I work on one of them every day. Even if the results from each day are not stellar, I just keep grinding away at it.

And that is what will separate those who do, from those who follow around someone who has had success, believing that it is somehow luck, and expecting that they are entitled to something, just by virtue of existing.

Don't be that idiot. I hope those people eventually pull their heads from their nether regions. Having been friends with people like that, they often don't. But I can hope. They forever blame something else for their lack of success, rather than their own lack of action.

Do something. Fail at it! Before every success are tons of failures. Learning experiences. The only true failure is doing nothing.

Happy New Year! Goals and re-assessment

Hi guys, and happy new year!

First, I really have to thank all of you guys who follow and read this blog - it's great motivation to keep going on it.

Looking back over the year, I'm seeing one of my own issues as the 'scattershot' method - there are lots of things I want to accomplish, and I bounce around from one to the next without much rhyme or reason.

The real reason? I see something that inspires me, then 'woosh', I'm off and running in that direction until I see another butterfly. How on earth does one get around this problem when having so many interests?

I'm not sure. Maybe my short - term goals were too short term, and likewise with the long ones. So, I'm setting some new goals for myself this year, hopefully the clearer terms will make them more achievable.

1. In three months, I will have a freelance gig doing art with a gaming company. The two I'm interested in working with are WhiteWolf and Wyrd Games.

2. Now that the heat is not an issue in the house, the SO and I will take one day out of every weekend together and get out of the house to do something. That something will not consist only of driving to a local restaurant to eat.

3. By the end of this month, my Shoggoth manuscript will be 100 pages or more. It does not have to be perfect, or completely finished, just longer.

4. By the end of this week, I will have joined a gym. I will commit to going there twice a week whenever I am working from home.

5. I will bring my shiny new camera on all weekend outings with SO. I will NOT obsess about taking proper stock photos - rather, I will enjoy taking pictures. If some work as stock, great.

6. I will write at least one screenplay page every day, no matter where I am.

7. I will draw something every day, even if it's just doodling.


What are your goals for the year?

Useful terms defined: #1 Checkov's Gun

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
— Playwright Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)


Often confused with foreshadowing (which can be about practically anything) Checkov's Gun refers to specific items to which you call attention while writing. You can leave them alone for a bit, but be darn sure you use that element while it is at least a dim memory in the reader's mind.

In fantasy, this is the amulet that grants a power, the hithero useless sidekick that does something brilliant, etc.

Putting the work away for a while

I was cleaning up an older short I had written for submission, and much of my original perception of it had changed.

The dialog was far stronger than I remembered (go me!) and flowed believably and beautifully - what a thrill!

On the other hand, the descriptive and action passages clunked harder than an engine with no oil - right before it throws a rod, leaving you stranded on the side of the interstate at three a.m.

When I originally wrote this piece, I was under the mistaken impression that both aspects were decent, if not glowing. Surprise...

It's always a good idea to put that piece away for a little while after you write it. The good bits are never quite as good, and the bad never quite so horrid, as they first appear.

Harlequin puts on the Evil Clown Mask

Holy Moly, do interesting things ever happen when you're off doing something else!

I just popped into (onto?) some of my favorite writing forums and message boards, only to be confronted with the Harlequin Horizons thing.

What is this thing?

Romance giant Harlequin is putting out a new line, called Horizons. That itself odd (publishers run new lines all the time), but the details?

Harlequin has partnered with Author Solutions (that's vanity press AuthorHouse, guys) and this ENTIRE line is going to be pay to play.

Hoo Boy!

For only $1500, give or take, any writer can now say they've been published by Harlequin, regardless of whether that manuscript is publishable, or even functionally literate. (That's the beauty/horror of vanity presses, innit?)

Of course, these books will not be on the shelf at your local bookstore - like any other vanity printed manuscript, all sales are left up to the writer.

Which is a HUGE stain on Harlequin's reputation. Do they want to remain a legitimate publisher, or become yet another vanity press?

Update: Apparently the backlash was violent enough that HH changed it's name to DellArt press. Smart move guys - I bet the RWA would have had fits about a thousand vanity press writers claiming Harlequin publication!

For more conversations about the entire mess:

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/want-to-self-publish-how-about-harlequin/

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=162391&page=1

For the vanity site:

http://www.dellartepress.com/


They also seem to have taken a cue from other vanity presses by using a name that could be confused with a standard publisher (Dell) which is still incredibly underhanded - but at least Harlequin gets to try and dust off its reputation.


Update/Edit:

Even the New Yorker got in on the scent of this rat:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2009/11/harlequin-hacks.html

There and back again, part 1 - preparing...

As the leave date for sunny California approaches, I find myself more and more excited - and more and more small details crop up that I've forgotten about.

Not the least of which is that, no matter how extensive your wardrobe may seem, after enough travel, you WILL run out of clean clothes. I was teetering on the edge of acceptable in Ohio, then took another short 'away' job immediately upon my return.

I am now on my last set of socks that doesn't smell like old vinegar. (Why do dirty socks smell like vinegar when you put them back on - or is it just me?)

I've run into some snags or hiccups while uploading files of footage for my documentary - for some reason, the camera and computer don't wish to communicate regarding the long files! Ugh. I'll try a card reader tonight or tomorrow, before I postpone the rest of this issue until I return.

I've transferred most of the 'literary' files onto my netbook, so I can pound out some drivel while on the traveling portions of all these trips.

Can I just say how much I love that little wonder? Ten inches, fits in any backpack, about two pounds, and the keyboard is close enough to a normal size to allow me to write on it! I did try the nine inch model previously - while even smaller and lighter, the Lilliputan keyboard left me typing like a drunken epileptic - jittery and slurring. Not so useful.

If all you need to do is check email and maybe jot a quick note, and space is imperative, go with the nine. If you need a bit more beef, deal with the extra inch and few more ounces; you'll be glad you did.

Word count, and new blog.

Shoggoth is up to 20,400. Not a huge jump, but it's been that kind of week.

Crashed a party at a yacht club. The people were boring, but the food was good.

I started a blog/fiction about a vampire...a most unusual one.

For those of you who know me better, you might have heard about the whole dermatology adventure - turns out, I'm allergic to the sun. Didn't know you could do that. Many colorful jokes were made, of course.

Being the writerly type, it got me thinking - what if that is the first symptom of something else? I think that's the most important question a writer has in their arsenal, the one with the most potential.

So, here's the first entry:

http://bloodandwhine.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/introduction/

(Its also a great excuse to check out different blog features.)

I hope you find Libby an engaging, fun, and human character. She'll probably be posting once a week or so. Let me know what you think. (The link is also in the title of this post.)

Updates, and thoughts on non-fiction writing

Moving forward, slowly but surely, on the cleaning and repair of the new house. There's enough space to set up a small photo studio, which I'm really excited about. (Once that happens, the photo blog may be big enough to be it's own thing - we'll see.)

I started writing a few film making articles here and there, now exclusively hosted on filmmaker IQ; and I wanted to talk a little bit about writing non-fiction.

Part of it is a whole lot easier - there's only development of one character (me, sorta) and I don't have to pull a plot out of thin air, which is a lot of mental exersize easier.

Yet there still has to be a clear thread from point a to point b - an article with no path makes no sense. What I basically do, is pick a topic and figure out how to attack the subject from there. I write how-to's, so they tend to be a low budget idea from concept through execution.

Not to say that its one article on the entire art of making a film - that would be a book. So part of it is figuring out how to keep these articles a 'friendly' size for the web. Tone is also important.

Were I writing for a print outlet, I'm sure my writing style would be more formal, maybe a touch more complex. I'm writing these primarily for new filmmakers, who tend to be younger, and a web audience - so I want to keep things simple, interesting, and moving fast.

I'm also trying to build a 'character' of them. Gimmicky? Probably. But it helps me figure out the tone that I want for these, plus building a web presence of this particular person - who, while also me, can be built up in the head of a reader as someone in particular, while maintaining my personal privacy.

I've a new one coming up, so let me know how I'm doing.

Writing a novel is like...

...giving birth to a herd of elephants. Seriously.

It takes forever, can be painful, it's huge, and if you aren't careful, there can be a big mess toward the end of it.

When you're done, you send your elephants out into the world, hoping to see them again at some point. You think about your pretty elephants (the stuff you're proud of), worry about your mutant elephants (the mistakes that you never notice until AFTER sending the damn thing out), and hope neither of them spreads so much poo that no one wants to play with your elephants anymore.

The gestation period is somewhere around forever. One elephant is about two years - but you're carrying a litter!

They're impossible to ignore. I mean, you have a bunch of elephants gestating inside you - it's kinda distracting. No matter what else you're doing or working on, your thoughts keep coming back to those elephants.

I had more to say, but one of my elephants just kicked. Let me know how your elephants are treating you.

The McBook

The ever incredible Paperback Writer's list of McBooks, and how to tell if you're writing one.

Hilarious!

The Life and Times of the Nauga

This is just so much awesome I can barely take it!

For those of you who may not know, Naugahyde is this durable plastic leather substitute.  Apparently when the stuff was first marketed, there were protesters right and left regarding the animal rights of the suddenly endagered 'Nauga'.

In response, the company assured these rocket scientists that Naugas shed their hides, and no animal is hurt in the creation of the material.

Someone realized that there was an untapped goldmine in there.  So a very clever writer has come up with the complete history and lifestyle of the average Nauga - and you can purchase your very own on the official Naugahyde webpage!

I'm amazed every day, both at some people's stupidity and others' innovation.  We as a species are truly the most brilliant, most cretinous of creatures; all at the same time.  The ultimate paradox.

More Twilight Hilarity - from Cracked.com

I always loved Mad Magazine and Cracked when I was a kid.  My Mom, on the other hand, found such things to be wildly innapropriate, along with PeeWee's Playhouse, MTV, R-rated movies, and soda.  (I didn't get my hands on any of the good stuff until I was pretty much out of the house.)

So, as soon as I got out of the house, I lived on a steady diet of horror movies and strange magazines.  The combination of natural proclivity toward odd, camp and trash, combined with a steady diet of the literary, has made my tastes rather odd.

After years of spending my hard earned cash on such pleasures, I was horrified to find that my favorite magazines were becoming more and more difficult to find.

Imagine my pleasure when I discovered Cracked is not only alive and well, but living on the 'net! And snarky as ever.

To celebrate this discovery, here is Cracked's version of the Twilight screenplay - ten times shorter, and 100 times more honest.

Science Fiction Writer's of America - goldmine of information

Besides being an incredible organization of talented writers, the SFWA website hosts a TON of great articles about writing - from the absolute basics, workshop talks, getting an agent, marketing, productivity - you name it.

Read them.  It'll be the best couple of hours of valuable information that you never paid for.

How come THEY got published??

Everybody(well, every writing body) goes through that moment:

You pick up a copy of the thing everyone is raving about. A few pages in, you want to hurl the book against the wall in sheer frustration - it's bad. REALLY bad. Head crushing, vomit inducing, mind numbingly BAD. Not long after that, you want to cry, because this thing got published. Then you go through the emotional steps...you get depressed, get mad, incredulous...finally accepting that bad books can, and do, get published.

Below are just my own thoughts - to my knowledge, no in depth study has ever been done about any of these.

There seem to be basically three things that will have a less than stellar book on the market.  

The first is a writer with a huge following, that's now pumping out books that aren't as great. It happens, but that first couple of manuscripts still had to be great.

The second, is that there's some aspect of the work that's so strong, it overshadows a lot of the problems. I'd put Dan Brown in this camp. Hated his sentence structure, oversimplifications, weak characterizations, and flagrant disregard for facts and history. But damn - I had to know what was going to happen next. That's what I'd call a weak writer and a great storyteller. And the simplicity of the prose helped keep the pace fast, though I still wish he'd thought a little more highly of his audience.  

The third, is filling an empty niche. I'd put twilight here. Every eight to ten years, there's a new, hot vampire hero for the latest group of teen girls to swoon over (am I the only one who noticed that?).

Maybe even less time.  

When I was a small bit, there was a tv show called Forever Knight. Horribly cheesy. Had the fan base from Beauty and the Beast (another tragic male lead). Though Lestat was around before then, he caught on big in the early 90's, replacing Mr. Knight. After Lestat, came Angel, and then Spike. 

Now those two are still running around, but the bloom is quite off the rose, particularly for girls who don't want to like what their older siblings did - and want something new. 

Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton have been about for a while, but those (especially Hamilton) are not written for a teen audience - unlike Buffy, where teens were the primary target, or Knight, who had more of a Barnabas thing going on, and sex was implied rather than implicit. 

I noticed one other vamp series aimed at kids, but it glosses over the romance aspect.

So there's this fresh generation of newly hormonal tweens, starving for their slightly dangerous, oh so sexy, bad boy with a heart of gold. Enter the ultimate wish fulfillment character, with the ultimate self insert blank slate. Had another teeny bopper bloodsucking hunk hit paper first, that would have been the hot thing instead.

What does all this mean to you? Besides that some luck can be quantified when analyzed far enough, not much. Keep working to write the best book you can, because it's better to rely on strong writing than good timing.

The Queen of Swords

Some of the most amusing, in depth reviews of REALLY BAD books.

Link in the title.