Penetrating the Formula

source: iclipart

A few years ago, a friend of mine turned me on to these sci-fi novels that shall remain nameless here. Set in space and with a female protagonist, I threw myself into the series with fervor and glee.

Soon a romantic element was introduced, and although romance is not my thing I was willing to tolerate its intrusion as long as that did not dominate the story.

To my surprise, “romance” was hardly the correct label for what passed as a relationship between these characters – especially because their carnal relations more closely resembled the legal definition of rape.

I want to blame Ayn Rand for this trend but I don’t know that she was the first to write in a rape scene and pass it off as some sort of relationship. It certainly was the first time I read such a thing. I chose to disassociate the rape scene from my reading experience and I cannot say that it ruined The Fountainhead for me, but the shock of it has stayed with me my entire adult life.

As far as the writer of the sci-fi series, I also read another of her fantasy series and she repeated this habit.

I was horrified. (And no, I will not add to the ridiculous discussion on the subject of sexual assault that passes for political discourse these days.)

Yet, as offensive and baffling as this idea was to me, what turned me off to her writing eventually was the increasingly annoying and ever more frequent and glaring typos in her books. It was like she couldn’t write that drivel fast enough for her publisher to actually copy edit the shit!

Don’t get me wrong, the stories were fun. And I suspect that they sold precisely because they were quick and fun reads. Who doesn’t love a quickie?

I bring it up because there is an ongoing conversation at Kindleboards and at countless blogs about the success of 50 Shades of Gray.

Craig Ferguson summed it up perfectly. He said he doesn’t mind sexy bits in his literature as long as what precedes it includes clever words.

The Shades of Gray series is notoriously badly written, by all accounts, and yet remains in the bestseller lists for print and e-books alike (with no signs of going limp, if you’d pardon the vulgarity).

It turns out that most readers don’t give a flying fuck. Apparently this Reading Elite that constantly complains about the quality of e-books are not the same majority who actually buys them, because only the Grammar Nazis and other writers seem to be offended by the spanking E.L. James gives the English language.

This makes me wonder whether I should deliberately allow typos and run-on sentences to remain in my work; throw in a bitch slap and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, and KA-CHING!

If only life were as easy and submissive as Anastasia Steele. Actually, that wouldn't work for me... I prefer my life to come with a little more kick. Sigh, I'll stop now.

My Brain Has Gone All Euro!

August has hit me like a ton of bricks. I don’t really have an explanation for it other than I have been stunned into inaction.

All creativity has not exactly stopped but rather slowed to a quantum level. Ideas are not roiling so much as simmering.

It’s not exactly a matter of staring blankly at a white page with nothing to say but more a matter of having no desire to open the page and get started. There’s a to-do list foremost in my mind. What is missing is the drive to start checking things off.

It feels as if my brain has simply sent itself off on a late summer holiday, given up on the idea of getting anything else done and left the rest of me to hold the fort.

That’s right: my brain has gone fishin’ till autumn arrives!

In the meantime, I doodle the imagined faces of the heroines of the upcoming Because She Was A Woman, my volume of a dozen vignettes. Pictured above is my first try at The Poet, the lead character in a heartbreaking piece about love, life and poetry. I’m thinking of including the art work in the paperback version.

That’s probably the most I can manage until September arrives and my brain returns…

Expanding Horizons

One of my goals in this self-publishing experiment is to write in as many genres as I can. Of course, I realize that I will not achieve success in all genres – not for lack of trying, but because I have no frame of reference for some things, like romance (unless it is tragically comedic in nature).

The latest experiment, of course, is Chronicles of Ash – a steampunk-inspired fantasy. Why steampunk? It is not the most popular genre but it is an interesting amalgamation of sci-fi, speculative fiction, and fantasy.

It’s not just robots and steam-powered gadgets; it’s also the Victorian/Edwardian politics and mores – the glitzy exterior and its dark underbelly. It’s about turning history on its head and having your way with it. It gives you the opportunity to release esoteric characters that get minor play in the history books and give them a starring role. It’s about making the familiar strange and the strange oddly familiar. It’s a play on words based on a play on your perception of reality.

On the logo for Amapola Press, the words “Expand your Horizons” appears as the motto for the small press. This is meant to be true for my readers as it is for me. I want to be able to discover new things as I embark on all these fantastic journeys.

Another one of my goals is to include at least some Latino flavor in my writings, simply because it is largely what defines me and I think everything is better with a little Latino flavor.

For this reason, one of the characters in Chronicles of Ash is a Latina. You can get a feel for her sassiness in an excerpt now running at Tiki Tiki blog (with a special offer for readers). In it, Pilar is the longtime housekeeper, companion and nanny for Ashleigh’s family on Earth before Ash is transported to the strange new world, and she is having a conversation made up entirely of facial expressions and what we refer to as The Look.

The Look is something most Latinos are familiar with, and while most married couples of all racial make-ups have a similar shorthand; Latina mother figures have perfected it to a whole new level and an art form.

I am not at all concerned about perpetuating the stereotype as Latinas as servants. Pilar is an intelligent, dedicated professional, and an independent and strong-willed woman who has never lost her identity to her duties but who has a passion to perform her responsibilities in the best way God allows her because she knows the influence she yields.

So how do I ensure that Pilar doesn’t become a stock sit-com character? Her planned role during the nine-book series will change too, as Pilar has big things coming for her as does our heroine. More importantly, she needs to be a whole character, three-dimensional.

Of course, you want this of all your characters, but I feel a great responsibility for the Latino characters I introduce because it is imperative that I show them in all their glory, which varied and delicious, just as in real life (but bigger and more fantastic). 

A New Fantasy

UPDATE: 

The e-book is now available at Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/210775

A free excerpt can be found here: http://amapolapress.weebly.com/freebies.html

The title will roll out to other online retailers during August 2012, and Amazon will carry both e-book and paperback versions.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The introductory volume of Chronicles of Ash is almost ready to be set free into the world of e-books!

Planned as a nine-book series, the fantasy is a steampunk-inspired series of stories of Ashleigh Peters, a young woman from Brooklyn that finds herself sucked into another world.

This New World is both strange and awfully familiar, and Ashleigh often wonders if she is in some sort of coma, the victim of drug-induced dreams.

While the series introduces some familiar characters, they turn out to be not what we assume them to be, and to Ashleigh it all feels like some sort of extended “masquerade-slash-operetta.”

In Vol. 0 – Ash to Ashes, the action begins well into our story as Ash, her attendant and an old lunatic simply known as the Maestro test a human flying machine from a cliff in Eleusis. The chronicles then flashes back to Ashleigh’s last days on Earth and we meet her family, learn of her life in Brooklyn and what she leaves behind as she is transported to this new world.

As the story begins, we get the hint that Ashleigh’s travels may not have been a fluke of nature, that there is a reason, a force guiding it. This fact is what propels the series forward, and as her chronicler points out, puts into question whether Ashleigh is some sort of savior or an agent of nefarious forces.

The series is both a travelogue and diary of Ashleigh’s life as she unravels the mysteries of Eleusis and how she came to it. Will she ever learn how or why she was brought to this New World? Will Ash be accepted or condemned? More importantly, will she ever find her way back home?

Chronicles of Ash is the continued experiment in trying to publish in a variety of genres. 

Shades of Sexy without Sex

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net "Sunbathing" by Graeme Weatherston

New Yorkers have been hit with four consecutive heat waves that have been absolutely brutal – especially at our house because we don’t enjoy the lovely luxury that is air conditioning. In my next life, I will *demand* central air or I’m not coming back. It’s just not worth it, screw psychic growth without AC!

I used to love the heat. I grew up in the Tropics; heat it came with the territory, literally. I worshipped the sun. Now not so much, I’m an Indian summer kinda girl now… where a bikini was sexy to me once, a shawl makes me hot now.

Sadly, these infernally hot days were full of idle haze because I was barely capable of reading or writing as my brain wilted and shrunk. I was vaguely coherent. So I am behind on a lot of things but even as I slowed down to an epic crawl, there is a lot of exciting things going on, many satisfying on very deep levels.

eFiction Magazine has splintered into genre categories (see Doug’s Kickstarter and lend him a hand, it’s a worth project). I’m helping out as a reader, reviewing submissions for the fantasy, noir and horror online magazines and some of the stories – which I expect we’ll publish in up coming issues – are fantastic! Some are really promising new talent and some expert word weavers are keeping the short story alive. If literature is sexy to you, you might want to get in on this (there's a link to the right to subscribe).

I believe the Tiki Tiki book project (Latinos at the Beach) might be expanded into something grander and I am really looking forward to confab with the blog’s publisher this weekend and plan out a far more fabulous thing than we intended. How sweet is that? Oh yes!!! It’s always great when plans work out exactly as you hoped, but an even better thing when they open the opportunity to greater things – that is providence. Kismet  is sexy.

Next week, we are going on a party cruise around Manhattan and it’ll be documented in the blog with photos and possibly some video. Dancing, darkness, the skyline: floating sexy!

I added a new short story to the manuscript for Because She was a Woman. I thought I was done, but after several days without actual writing I felt both an urge and a surge. I was pure release. I needed a cigarette after a furious session of absolute abandon. Creativity is very sexy.

The timetable for all new releases starts in mid August.

The next food column is shaping up around tropical fruits. It’s not all bananas and mango. Sex for the palate. (go with it...)

Now if the weather cooperates a little bit and allows my brain continued use for a few consecutive days a week, I’d get so much more done! Fulfilling your passions, now that is awfully sexy.

So Exactly Idle

Not much writing going on lately. It has been a relatively quiet (and at times hot, sticky and painful). I’d write about that but I was barely conscious for the two heat waves… 

I dreamed about ice cream once. That was awesome, but also fleeting.

I also dreamed about skiing: felt the bits of ice dislodge and hit my face, a shocking delight.

Woke up in mid cackle. (I tense up when I see a dusting of snow, imagine the absolute horror of an entire field of the stuff and me propelled to inhuman speeds atop two fragile sticks.)

I enjoyed the momentary feel of brisk coldness, but I was also laughing so hard it took me right out of the dream and back to the infernal reality.

It wasn’t all torturous moans. I made notes to finish The Scent of Honeysuckle. The next project is editing Because She Was a Woman and probably releasing it in the next month or two. Before all that, I’m planning on releasing the intro volume to the steampunk-influenced series.

There’s an end of summer whirlwind coming!

Food Porn Aficionado

I love food.

My friends love food.

Sometimes, for no reason at all, we’ll post a photo of food and pass it around in some mass exercise of giddy fantasy. Food becomes a topic of conversation often, and not just because I’m hawking my cookbooks.

I may get the ball rolling by posting dinner plans, questions regarding ingredients for the next food column, or as a response to the Twitter feed with links to easy and awfully alluring recipes for weekend chefs and brown bagging.

My friends will be the catalyst sometimes as they too post their dinner and dessert creations or particularly good restaurant far. In fact, we’ve been known to even host Food Porn Thursdays were we compulsively post deliriously tantalizing photographs to see who faints first.

More than a few times, one friend has mentioned that I need to be put in touch with another of their friends and I’ll joke that we could form a food porn club.

It happened again yesterday. It started because I decided to write a new food column about chicken livers. I posted the question, “Chicken livers: love them, hate them, no freaking way?” The ensuing conversation included favorite dishes and a mention of folks that ought to be brought together just to discuss food.

It was time to take the bull by the horns and I created Food Porn Aficionado. I added people from my friends’ list and gave them the option to remain or go, as they wish, but knowing that most would love a place to focus their passion for food.

Are we foodies? Gourmets? Some probably would answer to that. Some are home cooks. Some are enthusiastic and adventurous eaters. Some use their oven as storage area and have not boiled an egg in their lives.

What I really love is that we have an international roster of members to start and the discussions promise to be not only interesting but I am sure we are all likely to learn new tricks and expand our horizons, making our palates the happy recipients of the gift that truly keeps on giving.

It is an open group and will remain so for as long as I can manage it. Everyone will be approved. The only rule is to be civil to your fellow members and to enjoy the ride.

Our maiden voyage included a recipe for a beet and feta salad, two beautiful desserts, and dinner menus from both sides of the pond. Members identified their favorite cuisines and this promises to help us all new and exciting items to our repertoire.

I love food porn. If you do too, come join us!