Grimms, revisited

The hubby wants me to come up with a short story that we could possibly turn into a short video. I keep coming back to the Grimms concept because it has such potential to be a serial tale. (Quick recap, Grimms: a woman escapes from Arcadia and begins rescuing other children from the Fae. Some of these children join forces with her, take on fairy tale personas, and form a team called the Grimms, after Grimm’s Fairy Tales). While we were waiting to see Avatar, we started brainstorming about special Fae abilities these kids could have as a result of the time spend among the Fae.

Here’s what we came up with:

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I think this will be a fun story concept to play with.

Tags: characters, Grimms, ideas

More reviews, and a new idea

I finished Industrial Magic, and I still agree with my previous post. Urban fantasy, not paranormal romance. Good, though. I’m definitely going to track down the first one.

I also finished:

Hidden Currents: by Christine Feehan

This seems to be part of a series of unrelated books all dealing with the same characters: the Drake sisters. All the sisters are varying degrees of psychic. This story was about the youngest one, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, who gets to carry on the legacy and have seven (!) girls of her own.

General thoughts: The conceit was interesting, but I think this particular story failed on several levels. It begins with the girl getting captured by this really depraved mega-millionaire, who trades sex slaves on the black market. She is badly abused by this guy, sexually, physically, psychically (oh yeah, the guy’s a psychic, too). Okay, now I understand this sort of abuse really happens, and I think I’m a reasonably sympathetic person who gets appropriately outraged when I hear about it. However, it’s just not something I want to see in a romance novel. Stories like this are supposed to be, first and foremost, entertainment. Abuse does not entertain me. I don’t want to read about it in my free time, thank you.

So then, the girl, Elle, is rescued about three or four chapters into the story (which, by the way, makes the entire back cover blurb completely misleading), by the love of her life (whom she’d given up on) and her sisters’ boyfriends. The entire rest of the story is given over to her recovering from abuse, and rekindling her romance with her guy, Jackson. I hate to say it, but this author has obviously never read accounts or interviewed anyone who had actually been abused. Elle has little panic attacks, in the beginning. By the middle of the book, she’s happily having sex with Jackson and really shows little other sign of trauma other than being a little nervous in crowds. Bullshit. It should have been weeks, months, before she could bear another man to touch her. Hold her. Let alone have sex with her. You just don’t get over that kind of abuse that easily. Epic fail in the realistic catagory.

The story was just interesting enough to keep me reading, but really, not all that memorable. Everything the characters devised pretty much worked, which should never be the case. Elle’s setbacks are almost inconsequentially small, and are quickly fixed. Example: the climax. The sisters’ guys devise a way to defeat the millionaire villain. They execute said plan. Said plan goes over without a hitch. The villain is defeated. Boring, boring, boring! Most of the writing was given over to Jackson reassuring Elle that he really loved her, how he’d never leave, how he’d never let her abuser find her, etc. Elle also did a fair bit of that, too; she’s not going to give up, she believed in the two of them, blah blah blah. Yeah, characters need that, but it really did get old after the twentieth time or so.

Relationships: The book was too erotic for my taste, plain and simple. I finished it, but I did a lot of skimming, honestly. I guess people must like it, though, because there’s an awful lot of it on the market. I can read a sex scene, but seriously, 8 pages devoted to a blow job? *gagging noises* There were, again, a lot of body parts. I’m a grown married woman, so I’m quite familiar with what the parts do. I care more about the emotions of the characters. Also, and this is a personal peeve of mine, but I really hate it when a penis is referred to as a “cock”. It’s just…vulgar, to me. I cringe every time I read it. Let’s just say that I did a lot of cringing while reading this book. I suppose “member” or some other clever metaphor (spear? sword? let’s not go there) isn’t much better. I say, why name it at all? We know it’s there, we know what it’s doing. I’d rather read about how the characters feel inside.

Another problem was that the sex was too idealized for my liking. Even in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles, the author, along with describing the normal sensations, didn’t forget to mention when the heroine’s hair pins were digging into her head, or a bedpost poking her back, or the coldness of the floor. In this book, there’s none of that. The scenes have a setting, but the setting exists solely for atmosphere…it doesn’t actually interact with the characters at all (at least, not after they are getting it on). Even if I was having the greatest sex of my life, I think I’d still at least notice being bent back on a piano. In reality, I think that would be majorly uncomfortable.

And I guess there’s only so many ways to elaborate on “pleasure washed through his/her body” without getting redundant. Really, really redundant.

In other news, I’ve started a 1500 word short story that I might also submit to Writer’s Digest. This is a different contest than the one I sent the Smell of November to, and the possible cash prizes are higher. I had known about the contest, but wasn’t going to bother with it because I didn’t have any good ideas. I had read on Westerfeld’s blog about the concept of a “dialogue spine”, and how you can punch out the bare bones of a story using only two characters talking to each other. Then I remembered the hubby and I tossing around the idea of what it would be like to be a blind vampire. Then I listened to End Transmission by AFI, and I had my character: a blind vampire who is tired of what he is, and wants to die.

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Shades is coming along. Saeli has her Mantle now, and knows she’s a cleric. Trying to decide how to get her to that party without too many extraneous words.

Tags: ideas, Reviews, revisions, vampires

Contest update

Well, “The Smell of November” has officially been sent off to Writer’s Digest pop fiction contest. I should hear something back around January-ish, if I’ve placed. If not, oh well.

Thank you to my friend K and the folks in my writer’s group for their critiques!

Tags: contests, smell of november

Smell of November

A number of months ago, I wrote a short story that I intend on submitting to a Writer’s Digest competition sometimes before Nov. 2. I’m not a very good short story writer…or at least it doesn’t come naturally to me. My ideas for stories can be many and varied, but rarely are they brief. Writing “Smell of November” was a challenge.

Last night, I went through the draft that one of my friends so thoroughly picked apart for me, and revised. I need more people to point out when my prose starts turning alarming shades of purple. I’m on version 4 of the story now, and I definitely think it has improved. I’m going to send it out to my critique group and see what they think. I’ll revise one more time after that, and call it done.

I think that’s an accomplishment. Now, back to Shades…

Tags: editing, revisions, smell of november

Short story idea from an unusual source

The hubby and I finally got around to watching Mall Cop. I’d had my doubts about this movie from watching the previews, which made it look a whole lot more stupid than it actually was, but it was surprisingly good. I really liked how the crooks were named after Santa’s reindeer, and how edgy and modern they were. Young, athletic, tattoos, skateboards, trick bikes, etc. There were points during the movie where I actually regretted that they were the bad guys, because they were so cool.

It gave me the idea of assembling a team of anti-heroes, taking pseudonyms from popular culture, and creating an unlikely crime fighting squad. (Yes, I’m sure it’s been done before, but don’t burst my bubble just yet.) Other than Santa’s reindeer and the seven dwarfs, however, I could not think of any salient characters that come in groups (that aren’t already superheros). My first idea was to create a group of children whose mission is to save other children from getting kidnapped by Faeries…and my first inclination was to name them after Grimm’s fairy tale characters. But then I decided to see if I could come up with something better. I spent a few hours online looking up gods and goddesses from different pantheons all over the world…but the ones that people know are overused, and the ones that people don’t know would take too explaining to make them work.

So, I went back to the original idea.

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I think the next step is to actually construct a plot skeleton for Rora’s rescue story. I may enter that contest of the SCWG, which means I have to finish this before October 15th. *sigh* And I still have to get Shades done.

Tags: characters, faeries, Grimms, ideas

The list

Check out the new “Writing Projects” and “Contact Me” pages up at the top.

I will be updating Writing Projects over time, as stories develop and I create newer and better pitches for them. In Contacts, you will find my Lj, Twitter, and Facebook pages, among other things. You’ll only be able to view the Writing Projects page if you are registered and logged in.

Some of the CSS on the blog is still wonky, but that will get fixed as we experiement.

Tags: 134340, Amphitere's Vision, Briar Rose, Dreamcatcher, EFO and C, Eryndal, Harmony, ideas, Mask of Eldarmarch, Masquerade, Pandora, Shades, Tindaari, Valkaria