October 2007 Archives

Some more interesting facts I learned about Catherine de' Medici while researching THE BLOODIEST QUEEN:

Catherine was Mary, Queen of Scots' mother-in-law. In fact, when Mary was five, she left Scotland and went to live at the French court, where she was raised by Catherine and her husband, King Henri IV. (That's Mary's portrait at age twelve, BTW.)

So, a little multiple choice pop quiz for you, just for fun:

Catherine and Mary, Queen of Scots

a) adored each other so much that Mary called her "my true mother."
b) despised each other so much that Mary, at her tender age, referred to Catherine as "that shopkeeper's daughter"
c) disliked each other, but were publicly polite to each other.

Answers below. Next fun fact:

Catherine's rival for Henri's affections was Diane de Poitiers, whom Henri openly adored, even though Diane was nineteen years his senior.

Catherine and Diane

a) got along quite well, actually; Diane was Catherine's lady-in-waiting, and lovingly nursed Catherine through many illnesses;
b) hated each other so much that Catherine refused to enter a room if Diane was in it;
c) were extremely fond of each other, to the point that historians believe the two women may have had sexual relations with each other.

And the answers are:

I stumbled upon two this week that are worth checking out: Melisende's Women of History and Scandalous Women by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon.

The fires in our area are all under control now; the air is breathable again. A good thing, since my itty bitty baby puppy is now forty-seven pounds and desperate for some major outdoor exercise.

For the kind souls who have inquired about the raging California fires: We're okay where we are. Others aren't so fortunate.

In our area of southern California, it rains only during winter months; we don't see a drop all summer, so unirrigated green things become dead, powder-dry brush. This past week the humidity slipped to 8% -- which means that I can touch my car and actually see a spark of static electricity. Combine that with Santa Ana winds (two nights ago, gusts topped out at 100 mph), and you can see why fires are popping up all over the area.

Our local firemen, bless them, have managed to put out all the small brush fires that started in neighboring hamlets and on the outskirts of our town. However, Piru (40 minutes away), Malibu (an hour away) and San Diego (5 hours south of us) are all disasters. Fortunately, the winds are supposed to ease up today, so I'm hoping things improve. Night before last, it was raining ash -- it looked like grey snow coming down.

In the meantime, I'm fortunate enough to be working undisturbed on THE BLOODIEST QUEEN (well, except for a couple of power outages -- but I work on a laptop with great battery life). But I'm thinking of all those who are suffering now as a result of the fires.

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Meet my good friend, Sherry Gottlieb. After being friends with Sherry for more than a decade, I finally turned to her for advice on my latest book (in frantic progress), THE BLOODIEST QUEEN.

What an idiot I was to wait.

Sherry, you see, is a Novel Doctor -- that is, an editor who is skilled at helping aspiring novelists bring their work up to publishable quality. (She was also owner of one of the world's most famous science fiction bookstores, A CHANGE OF HOBBIT.) I'd always suspected she was pretty good at what she did -- after all, her own novel, WORSE THAN DEATH, was published by St. Martin's Forge, her other novel LOVE BITE was made into a movie, and her non-fiction book, HELL NO, WE WON'T GO! about Vietnam War draft resisters was nominated for the PEN West USA Literary Award.

But Sherry and I have always been busy, off doing our own things, and somehow I never nailed her foot to the floor to make her read my work. She was always swamped with editorial work and her other businesses (she also runs a resume-writing service), and we never connected.

I'm so glad we finally did. THE BLOODIEST QUEEN will be my thirty-third published book; I've grown lazy and jaded and had thought there was little anyone could teach me. (Hah!) I went to Sherry just to see her reaction to a particular scene -- whether I was able to pull off a fast one on the reader or not -- and wound up being blown away by her editorial acumen. She understood all the nuances of the scene in question better than I did -- and pointed out exactly what wasn't working, and why. She then gave me a suggestion which was nothing short of brilliant in terms of making the whole thing work beautifully. (And then gave a dozen other suggestions which will make the book *so* much better...) Long story short, Sherry's going through the entire manuscript for me. And she's going to be my best pal during the writing of the next book, too.

I'm so impressed that I've added a link to Sherry's Novel Doctor page to my sidebar. Sherry charges the going rate for such editorial service -- and trust me, you'll be getting an honest, top-notch professional to look over your work.

If you're writing a novel and thinking of getting help, please consider Sherry.

I've been thoroughly enjoying Dan's posts over at ourboldhero.com -- specifically, the copy-editing page. I got a chuckle out of the Batman/Robin exchange.

Robin: "You can't get away from Batman that easy!" Batman: "Easily." Robin: "Easily." Batman: "Good grammar is essential, Robin." Robin: "Thank you." Batman: "You're welcome."

Batman: "Cattail Lane and Nine Lives Alley. The Grimalkin Novelty Company is on that corner."
Robin: "Grimalkin? What kind of a name is that?"
Batman: "An obscure but nevertheless acceptable synonym for cat, Robin."

Dan's site led me to the delightful Futility Closet, described as an "idler's miscellany of compendious amusements." Indeed it is. Scroll down to read the "Rimshot" post -- a terrible pun. As a child of an inveterate terrible punster -- who back in 1976, got my first (and last) short story published in ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE as a result of winning a terrible pun contest -- I much appreciated it.

Bartleby.com is a must, only the coolest site ever invented for readers and writers. It features a mind-boggling slew of reference titles (we're talking hundreds), poetry anthologies, novels (the classics), and nonfiction titles. You can read anything from Roget's Thesaurus to Bartlett's Quotations to the King James Bible to Gray's Anatomy. Need some free Shakespeare fast? Bartleby.com has it. In fact, it probably has every reference title or classic work you can think of.

So bookmark it already!

For those of you who would yearn to see your own fiction published: here's some more unasked-for advice from yours truly.

I honestly was too shy to contact any writers, go to any fiction workshops or even ask a friend to look over my manuscript before I sent it off to the publisher. I'm of the opinion, even now, that those who schmooze, lose in the novelist's world. It probably pays off bigtime to network obsessively if you want to write screenplays, but if not if you want to write a book. Why? Quality, not "who you know" still counts in the literary world, and agents and editors are always hoping to stumble across a well-written manuscript by a first-time author. It's the work, not the connections, that count. Give up the lattes and gabfests at Starbucks with other wannabe authors and hightail it to your writerly hovel and pen a few pages instead. I really do believe that talking out a story too many times saps the energy you need to write it down, and dilutes your enthusiasm for it.

So how did I break into publishing? Well, I wrote a book and mailed it off with an SASE that I never got back (though I'm not complaining). But FIRST I 1) obsessively outlined the plot of at least a dozen novels I admired in the genre I wanted to break into, because of all my skills, plotting was my weakest; 2) studied WRITERS MARKET and made sure I submitted the novel to the right editor using absolutely perfect formatting; and 3) worked my saucy derriere off making sure the book was as good as I could possibly make it.

I think I got the idea for outlining novels I liked from a book on writing by Lawrence Block. I forgot to mention 4) reading every book I could find on writing by published writers. A few I found useful: The two books by Lawrence Block (TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT is one), ON FICTION by John Gardener and THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING by Lajos Egri. Now that I'm familiar with writing lingo, I love STORY by Robert McKee, but most beginners find the jargon and technical stuff off-putting. It's the most concise, inspired explanation of plot construction I've read.

If you're not a stickler for detail, if you're not an utter perfectionist, then enter a different line of work. If, however, your friends and significant other(s) have labeled you a nit-picker, then novel-writing just might be your niche.

I've been enjoying Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools lately over at Poynter Online. Clark is a journalist with a lot of solid advice about improving prose.

He's collected a good deal of his wisdom on his blog. It doesn't matter whether you've been published, or how much you've written: we all need to review the basics. So here are fifty writing tips, in a convenient list -- and podcast form, too.