A group blog for romance authors who love animals and incorporate them as characters in their own right or use them as inspiration for male protagonists (or antagonists) in their books
This past weekend The Hub and I went down to Portland, OR, where he had lunch with his cousin Jonathan and I went to the Readers' Luncheon, sponsored by the Rose City Romance Writers. The speaker was Lucy Monroe, and she was fabulous, as alway. After lunch (and Luncheon), we headed back north to Seattle. The trip going down (at an unspeakably early time of morning) we couldn't see much, thanks to the thick fog that blanketed the route, but on the way back home? Wonderful. Scenic. Mountains!
At this time of year, most mountains are covered with snow, and yes, there is a certain sameness to them because of it -- but the snow is gorgeous, particularly when the sunlight hits it just right, and the entire mountain glows. That was the case with Mt. Hood, seen here without that glow, but quite handsome, nonetheless:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood
What we found remarkable is that with all the times we could have seen Mt. Hood in all its glory, we'd never seen it like that, whether because of pollution or weather or stress (if traffic's bad, do you notice anything else? I thought not).
Farther north, we saw a mountain with an amazingly rounded top. Never seen anything that before. Until we realized it was Mt. St. Helens, and we'd just never seen it from that particular angle. The image of St. Helens here is clearly not rounded, but it sure looks as if the top's blown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._St._Helens
I was in Seattle in 1980 when St. Helens blew. A fine layer of ash fell on my mother's yard, but it quickly disappeared. Not so in Yakima, in the middle part of the state; the wind must have been just right, because the town got something like six inches or more of ash, and it was not nearly as easy to get rid of, but it had to be done, and fast, because it could suffocate local vegetation and animals. And people, who were advised to stay inside for a while. The mountain's still around, after all these years, and still reminding us that we've got to keep an eye on her.
An hour or so later, we saw the first signs of home. Mt. Rainier is just known as "the mountain" in Seattle thereabouts, because it is omnipresent. It's there when the weather's clear, and it's there when the pollution's high (just murky). The first Japanese who came to this area saw the graceful lines of the mountain and were reminded of their own distinctive mountain, and referred to Mt. Rainier as "the American Mt. Fuji." The angle of this picture makes it look far less like Fuji than it does from other angles, but on a clear day, from the right perspective, it's understandable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier
Where we live, the mountain's not quite visible; we need to go five minutes one way or another to be able to see it. But we still regard ourselves as fortunate that it's close enough to see.
Terry Odell's post on green tech (cerridwenpressauthors.blogspot.com) had me thinking about the technology of tomorrow, specifically tech like "electronic paper," tech as thin as paper and reads like it but something that changes -- imagine a newspaper that holds the information of the Sunday New York Times but is one sheet thick. You turn to the page to whatever you want to read, to the size you want it to be. It's an amazing concept, but when you consider there's a light source just as thin and easy to manipulate, right now (but not marketable due to cost), you know it can't be too far away. The Star Trek (original series) inspired us to expect something the size of a paperback book to read from and write on, and we have something a lot like those now. If that's the future realized, what's the real future going to hold? I'm not sure we can fathom it.
It's not just the far-flung future, either, that this is the case. I remember reading recently that the spy gadgets we were amused by on the TV series GET SMART were the source of inspiration for the real-life CIA. The CIA scientists would see something on the show and try to figure out how they could make a variation for their own uses. (But no cone of silence, as far as I know. After all, on GET SMART, they never could get the cone to work!)
The book I have coming out in July, ECHOES OF PASSION, has a control device that's smaller than a paperback but a little thicker than a sheet of paper, easy to pocket and easy to overlook. It's a coin, basically; distinctively shaped and integral to the plot. Because The Hub works at a mint (where they design coins), I got a chance to see how intricate coins could be, and that was my inspiration.
But once I thought about it, it's not new at all. I have something about that size, something distinctive, a control device. You probably do too. Got a garage-door opener?
Eilis Flynn, www.eilisflynn.com
83 days to ECHOES OF PASSION! On sale at Cerridwen Press at 7.02.09
Every year, I dig out the link to the piece I wrote about April Fools' Day, just to remind myself that having a sense of humor is important. If you try to nurture the child within, if you have a fondness for pranks, if you, frankly, have a juvenile sense of humor and see no reason to grow up, you'll appreciate the article:
Horror yarns may not be what you expect from this blog, but Jack Kilborn's AFRAID is a remarkable gripper which features villainous males who certainly behave like animals (that is an insult to animals) and a couple of animals who behave much better than most of the humans in the story.
Afraid by Jack Kilborn is a horrifying book with a particularly satisfying ending.
I like cozies. I might as well be honest about that. Also happy ever afters. Further, in the interests of full disclosure, you should know that I read AFRAID by Jack Kilborn (with a view to a review) because Joe Konrath dared me to do so. He has a thick skin, and a strong stomach... and anyone who reads AFRAID needs both.
This is not a book to take on a fishing trip, especially if you've left your loved ones at home, alone. In fact, this book ought to come with a free membership of the NRA. You'll want your Brinks alarm turned on, and a loaded shotgun under your mattress if you read AFRAID in bed at night. You might want one of those panic button pendants, too.
Be warned. It is gruesome. AFRAID is the sort of book to be read aloud, in a large group. Maybe journalists who need to be kept up all night --for a slow-to-break story on Airforce One, for instance-- or secret types on a stakeout, would get a bang out of AFRAID.
The villains are seriously, SERIOUSLY, nasty. My own most horrible villain (Insufficient Mating Material) rendered his victims insensible, had his wicked way, then took a small plug of pubic hair for a souvenir. Jack Kilborn's baddies do a great deal more than that. You get a sense of the horrors to come when a faceless bad guy sits on his first victim's bed, and when she asks what he's going to do to her, he says "Everything."
And that's just page 7.
This book contains some sick stuff. Nothing is off limits. Think Hannibal Lecter times five --or six by my count-- with the absolute might and force of the US government backing them up...or at least covering them up.
The pace is relentless, the characterization --unfortunately-- is excellent. You will care about these people. No one deserves to die the way so many do. The writing is crystal clear, like carved coal, dark, sparkling, with more than an evil glint. There's no silliness, no messing about, and nothing strikes you as implausible at the time, even if some of the violence is over the top.
You won't want to put down this book until you reach the last line. It's a good last line. Really good. Yay for the animals!!!
There isn't a "bright" blue scrotum in my book. There's a "glorious blue scrotum". Can you find it?
In this scene, the villain --who is known as The Saurian Dragon-- has decided to convince an alien king Viz-Igerd that his queen is committing spectacular adultery. To that end, he has doctored a radio transmission from the man, Grievous, much as it is alleged Mr John Gibson's remarks were doctored
The Dragon considered. Grievous was a memorable character, and it was dangerous to underestimate an enemy. “The same, I think. But I cannot be positive. Dirty-pink Earthlings all look alike to me.”
“They look like Djinn!” Viz-Igerd agreed, blind drunk. The King seemed struck with the physical similarity. This was not the first time His Majesty had commented. Presumably, the splendid idea of breaking intergalactic law with one of a billion human women had taken root.
“I hope you can still hear me, Your Imperial Highness. I have to say that I would not have thought it of Princess Electra....” Tarrant-Arragon’s man appeared to continue his report without a pause. The editing had been smoothly done. “…There’s no way to put this delicately. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Bunking… both of them.”
The Dragon narrowed his eyes, watching Viz-Igerd carefully. The re-use of “bunking” had been a calculated risk. It sounded sufficiently like ‘bonking’ for his seditious purposes.
By now, at least three official transmissions were curving their way around the space-time continuum at different speeds, and in different directions, all making reference to Electra-Djerroldina enjoying unlawful carnal knowledge of someone. Or not. The flow could not be staunched. The only sensible course was to goad Viz-Igerd into such a blind fury that he’d never take a rational moment to consider that ’Rhett would be the more plausible lover.
Other auditors would hear accurate versions, of course. And Viz-Igerd’s mind could always be wiped with Djinncraft, if exploratory mischief-making turned out not to be advantageous.
“Dragon! What is a Fust-er-Cluck?”
That one had obviously been festering in Viz-Igerd’s imagination for some moments.
“Where that human comes from, it means an orgy,” the Dragon mistranslated. “That is, various clumsy sex acts performed in rapid succession, with the greatest excesses condensed into a relatively brief time.”
He glanced at his victim. He refrained from discussing how many participants were required for an authentic orgy, as opposed to a Volnoth “Orgy of State,” where only the King copulated with the Queen, although they both watched multiple goings-on. Amusing as it would be to torment His Majesty, he did have to protect his only son. ’Rhett had to survive. He was the succession plan. ’Rhett would be the next Saurian Dragon, and all the sooner—perhaps— if he wanted to avenge Electra.
Yes, the Queen might have to be sacrificed. However, a show trial without a named co-conspirator might be difficult to orchestrate. Fortunately, he’d identified a satisfactory scapegoat in Prince Thor-quentin. No one cared about Thor-quentin.
“I imagine that your Queen and the vigorous young Great Djinn Prince are thoroughly enjoying the rut-rage.” He turned the screw, while gesturing blandly to the hologram, where the messenger was still speaking, and trying to scrape invisible dirt off his footwear. “It would be Electra-Djerroldina’s first rut-rage, would it not?”
Poor Viz-Igerd, unable to control his embarrassment, was displaying his… displeasure to hear that his queen was creatively fornicating her way to Earth. There was some species of primate on Earth—the name of it would come— that had a boiled-red face that turned redder the angrier it got. It seldom had to fight. The facial reddening was threat enough. Ah, yes! The red uakari. That was it.
Then, there was the ridiculous vervet monkey from somewhere on the African continent, which came with a violent red tallywhacker, shown off to great advantage—to those easily impressed or demoralized by that sort of thing— against a glorious blue scrotum. The Volnoth threat-to-mount had nothing on the vervet for sheer outrageous… cojones.
The Dragon discovered that his urbane finger steepling had turned to pantomime- villain hand rubbing, and stopped himself.
“Anyway, Sir,” Grievous continued, “it seems your sister can’t get it off… without… bunking… Prince Thor-quentin…”
“Bun-King?”
“Need you ask?” The Dragon sighed expressively. He’d never thought of phrasing it quite as Viz-Igerd did, and his unruly mind filled with a crinkly bed of lettuce, three kinds of runny cheese, man-handled meat, and all the trimmings. “…And, Prince Thor-quentin is proving a right bugger.”
“What is a bugger, Dragon?” Viz-Igerd’s voice sounded choked, which was not altogether surprising, given the way His Majesty was twisting the chain of office around his neck, like a panicked Earthling bureaucrat “social” worker trying to loosen a knotted necktie.
Some of us push the envelope... Some of us push it one bathroom fitting too far, no doubt.
The Male
JA Konrath is going to be on my Crazy Tuesday internet radio show at ten a.m. Eastern Time on March 3rd on the strength --and I found it very strong!-- of his werewolf story S.A. which begins with a most unhappy --but healthy-- gentleman crossing a snowy parking lot, carrying a semi-see-through, blue plastic box containing a large stool sample. In fact, it's not a sample. It's the whole enchilada.
He's taking this vigorous specimen to his doctor because there's something unusual about it. There are coins in it. Now, it's nothing like that health insurance advert where the patient has money coming out of the wazoo, as the western oriental ER surgeon explained when making one of those mandatory predetermination phone calls.
The coins are small change. The doctor's advice about unhealthy midnight snacks is... priceless.
After a thorough rectal exam which brings to light many strange things and leads to some unpalatable conclusions in the mind of our hero, he waddles off to search the internet for clues as to whom he's been eating when the moon is full.
The Animal
Just when I thought I'd read every dragonish permutation of bad people tasting good (or bad), or good people tasting bad (or good), JA Konrath comes up with a fresh twist.
This story is a riot. I laughed out loud three times in the first three pages. Of course, there are certain bathroom words that will make me laugh out loud. One of them is poop.
The would-be sci-fi writer in me appreciated the elegance of JA Konrath's solution as regards mass. The hero has a mind-boggling telephone conversation with a were-squirrel... who collects nuts... and he asks both questions that spring to mind, much to this reader's delight.
I'm not going to tell you what "S.A." means, because I enjoyed guessing for as long as the mystery lasted.
However, I came not to praise J A Konrath, but to talk about craft. Poop struck me as a brilliant place to start, when one is creating a convincing introduction to a bewildered werewolf's world. Done right, starting with the scat is an excellent short cut to world-building.
I'm not a gentle reader. I don't suspend disbelief easily. I'm not programmed to trust my author, no matter how outrageously funny he is. Not at first, anyway.
I can give a turd the benefit of the doubt for several reasons. For a start, the narrator is embarrassed about it. That's believable. He's also frightened. He's not Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs), so he's probably not inclined to put it through a sieve. A few details suffice.
If there are bits of teeth, chips of bone, coins, buttons, a crucifix, a clump of dead man's beard... I get the picture. I don't worry about the force of a werewolf's bite, or his stomach capacity, or the inhuman speed of his digestive processes whereby the indigestible evidence of his midnight feast ends up in his morning toilet bowl.
There are a lot of ways you could go with an opening premise such as J A Konrath's. Much would depend on your editor, your length, your genre. If the requirements are heart pounding, action packed, humorous, romantic Horror, for instance, there is a limit to how many Tom Clancy-like factual briefings can be included in a 50 page submission.
I love war room briefings as a plot device!
The werewolf hero's search of the Internet was absolutely convincing to me. As I read (and this might not be such a good thing) I visualized Joe (J is for Joe) googling as if he were his own werewolf. That's the sort of thing I do.
JA Konrath and his new Horror-writing persona, Jack Kilborn, aren't my only guests this coming Tuesday. I shall also be joined by Lori Soard who has at least seven books in four genres in print, and several more books that are out of print. Also, visiting will be Michelle Pillow, who writes in almost every genre under the Paranormal umbrella.
Since this blog is Males and other animals, I figure I would show off my newest "male" This is my Sept 21, 2009 release of One Snowy Knight, 3rd in the Dragons of Challon series.
The guy on the cover is so much like my hero it's rather spooky!
When you open a cabinet and boxes of tea fall out, you know it's time. Somepeople clean their office (which I should do, but that's not my point here) and others their kitchen, but this year, I'm going to clear out my tea collection.
It didn't start out to be a tea collection … it was just tea that wehappened to have a lot of. But I realized that we had had some of that tea since we lived in Brooklyn — and we moved to Seattle in 1989. Yes, that'ssome mighty old tea! So if nothing else, if my office continues to look likea sty, if my kitchen … no, actually, I keep the kitchen pretty clean, that's not a problem … I will do this one thing this year for my home. I will drink all of the tea already in my home and actually end up with no tea that's notactually from this century in my cabinet.
Inspired by this idea, I started a little early, guzzling tea during thegreat snowstorms of December 2008, polishing off three types by the end of the year. (It was cold, and the weather was dreary. But you've already heard allabout that.) There were several boxes of tea that hadn't been opened, even, and I know I bought one particular one at a little shop in Bay Ridge, in Brooklyn. There was also a box of "Chinese-style tea," and that's how it was described on the box, complete with quote marks. Not the greatest, but it's gone, it's done, go 'way now. I also have no idea where I picked that up. I can see now that drinking through all this stuff is going to be tea paleontology of sorts.
Currently I'm drinking Twinings green tea. Not bad, but not great -- but I'm picky about my green tea. There's a liver detox tea and then a morning-pick-me-up tea that's next on my list. I'm not really looking forward to something that claims to be a liver detox tea, but hey, that's the point of this"Tea Project." If it's there, it will be drunk. And no, I have no recollection when the liver detox stuff came into the house and snuck into my tea cabinet.
And that's it. None of this is earth-shattering, but I suspect it may inspire a few of you out there to go look at your own tea cabinet. Little by little the tea in my house will all be drunk. And at the end of the year I will reward myself with something amazing, maybe even some Queen Anne tea from Fortnum & Mason, a lovely English breakfast tea. But not until the end of the year!
For the month: Finished: Novella. It's true what they say, PLOTTING IS GOOD! Should do that more in 2009.
Do: Make some effort to holiday-ize the house. We did! We put up our minitree and dug out our Meowy Christmas Cats Caroling wreath, since clearly we have no shame or embarrassment left.
Plan: Gift purchases for THIS year. Sent out. At least some. Better a few than none!
And since this worked better than I thought it would, for the coming year:
Do: Two shorts and two novels. At least plotting. I could get to like this novella business, too. But it all requires more plotting than I'm used to. Guess I'll get used to it.
Straighten: Office. Seriously, when you have to pick your way throughthe space to get to the computer, it's time to clean and eradicate and straighten. And speaking of computer...
Replace: Computer. Sadly, my 1998 iMac is no longer up to thechallenge of modern-day requirements. It's been a good one, though. Time to do research. Technology has never been something I see eye-to-eye with, so this will be particularly challenging.
Launch: New website. It's up, but not quite done -- a few tweaks needed that my webhost, Bill Hibler, is addressing. The Hub and I have known Bill and his wife for many years, so I have full confidence that I'll be asking many stupid questions. It's that tech thing again. Check out http://www.eilisflynn.com/, and get a glimpse of what's coming in the new year. If nothing else, I have all those eNotes articles I want to put up there. At last count it was something like 60.
Check out Rowena's Blazing Trailers Page Knight's Fork video for Knight's Fork--a romance with a dipsomaniac tiger!
Insufficient Mating Material is now on Blazing Trailers Insufficient Mating Material video for "Survivorman With Sex" aka Insufficient Mating Material!
Mating Net is on Blazing Trailers Mating Net video for the dark and dirty Mating Net!
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