Parnell Hall on booksignings

One of my critique buddies sent this (thanks, Jane!) I got a giggle fit when I watched this.

One question that I am frequently asked is what favourite junk food I consume while writing. Okay, that’s harder to answer than one might think. An author has to be careful about how she presents herself. Anything that readers might find odd or distancing should be carefully avoided.

This applies in the general as well as the culinary sense. For instance, one should never admit to black magic blood rituals even for research purposes. Similarly, training poisonous spiders to do circus tricks might be seen as off-putting. While junk food is a more innocuous subject–barely on the scale of, say, raising zombies–people have strong loyalties to their fast food. One does not show the burger disrespect.

The truth of the matter is that I don’t eat while I’m working. For one thing, I’m too deep in concentration. For another, what I’m writing is often pretty out there: demon slime, severed limbs, and werewolves with the munchies. Yum yum.

Okay, so maybe that’s not what the well-meaning questioner wanted to hear, but what can I say? I could lie and claim that I have a bag-a-day cheese curl habit (yeah, man, I’m strung out on the orange dust!) but I prefer my junk food, when I let myself have it, without thoughts of mangled body parts.

Then there’s that whole nutrition angle. My books are about slayers and sword-swinging warriors. There’s something about having all that frequently-naked rippling muscle frolicking through one’s imagination. It makes one think fondly of vitamins and sit-ups. And carrot sticks. Graphically, and not just for the crispy crunch.

So how do I answer the junk food question? Honestly, I like slow food. Organic, locally grown, made from scratch using traditional methods. Cuisine is an art. Sure, that makes me sound a bit like one of those snobby, opera-loving, cat petting movie villains, but whatever. At least I’m telling the truth. Plus, I like cats and classical music. And I hate cola. So sue me.

Admitting that is far easier than trying to explain the demon slime and carrot sticks. And it’s never right to lie to one’s readers, even about the small things. I respect them too much.

For those who want to know all about the real Sharon Ashwood: it’s simplest to just read my books, because that’s where I live.

Unchained: the Dark Forgotten. Out July 6. Guaranteed action-adventure, monsters galore, good jokes and hot sex. After that, who cares what I eat?

One of the reasons I love cats is that they never make mistakes. If they’re prancing along the window ledge, misstep and do a belly flop to the floor, they pretend that they meant to do that, dammit. They pick themselves up, lick a paw, and sashay off to the next adventure. As an approach to life, I’ve met worse.

In writing, one has to decide when a mistake is a mistake. I’m not talking about grammar/spelling/punctuation, because when two or more copyeditors are gathered together, there shall be clashing opinions, none of which coincide with mine. The real blunders come on a much larger scale, such as when the plot goes to pieces. I often have a terrific scene in mind and will commit all sorts of logic errors just to get there. Or, I write the book how I see fit and find afterward that the result appeals to me and no one else. Most often, I commit the error of overcomplicating things. I do like my subsubsubplots. I also like shades of grey. I don’t always care about how conventionally sympathetic a character is. I’ll take “interesting” over “nice” every time.

Hence, I do a lot of rewriting.

Why do these things happen? Pull up a chair, would-be writers, and learn from the error of my ways:
1. Think through a scene (and a book) before committing it to paper.
2. Remember your audience. Who are you writing for?

With regard to #1, an outline can look better in a notebook than it does in action. Once you’re into a story, it can become evident that your brilliant plot twist was the product of that third glass of Shiraz. Unfortunately, backing out of a bad idea and slashing gobs of pages is sometimes necessary. Or, you can take the cat’s approach and act like you meant it. After all, stories are all about the motivation. Convince yourself, convince the characters, and sometimes it all works out.

With regard to #2, know the expectations of your genre. I struggle with this because I dislike the entire concept of slotting books into pigeon holes, and yet that’s the reality of the marketplace. Trying to be innovative can work, but it can also mean rewriting the entire book back inside the genre boundaries to make it marketable.

A lot of this stuff I don’t regard as mistakes per se, but as choices. An author can choose to be commercially accessible or not. He or she can choose to adhere to today’s favoured structure of story writing–or not. That doesn’t make it bad writing. Much literary fiction goes in the opposite direction and is well-respected.

The down side of there being so many “how to” resources for writers is that the concept of right and wrong storytelling techniques has become firmly entrenched in the hearts and minds of the commercial writing and reading community. The debate over accepting first person point of view is a typical example. It’s not exactly radical stuff, but it’s been a hard sell with many readers. Experimentation is rare. Have we, as writers, followed “the rules” to the point where we’ve trapped ourselves?

Any amateur can slack off, but fine procrastination is an art. Social networking, blogging, family visits, and housecleaning are obvious slacker favorites. Pausing to do laundry because your lucky writing shirt—the only one that can possibly be worn for the next scene—is in the hamper? Coming up with something like that requires a little more thought. It’s incumbent on us as professionals to hold a higher standard of work avoidance.

I always draft my plots on large pieces of newsprint. I can say with some pride that I successfully wasted at least an hour wrestling the roll out from the back of an overpacked closet. The fact that my cat was helping accounted for twenty of those minutes. Pets are some of the best procrastination tools ever, and I’m not too proud to employ every strategic advantage.

And then there’s the research excuses—every so often a chapter can’t possibly progress until you ferret some obscure fact out of the ether. When things aren’t going well, those occasions usually become too numerous to mention. I mean, I really needed to know every how many buttons an eighteen-century infantry captain’s coat had, right?

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we do this especially when we can’t afford the time?

Elaborate procrastination schemes can be part of writer’s block, or caused by something as simple as a bout of laziness. More often than not, I find it’s due to being a) tired and bored or b) the story’s stuck. Discipline can solve the first. The second is most often a symptom of sloppy thinking. The story gets vague and hard to manage, and I’m not quite sure why. When that happens, there’s usually something I haven’t thought through—either character or plot. That’s when it’s time to back off and do some basic writerly homework. A solid ten minutes of diagnosis and repair can prevent days of dancing around the problem.

Unless, of course, a vacation is the point. When that happens, I think it’s better to just admit you’re going AWOL and ditch the guilt.

What are your best procrastination techniques? How do you break through them?

Getting stories from my head onto the page is a bit like sitting on the couch trying to describe a movie as it runs on TV. That’s how I see books: as a film. I can start and stop and re-direct parts, but it’s always a case of trying to capture live action on the page.

The goal is always to try and crawl into that movie and participate: To feel what the characters feel, to use all the senses, and to never, ever skip over part of the scene just for convenience. Trimming can come later. It’s all about faithful recording. The better recorder I am, the better book I write.

This has its drawbacks. For one, I may not feel like getting gnoshed on by a vampire that day. Or crawling in slime. Or losing the love of my life to a demon-driven pestilence. It’s exhausting. It’s also part of being a writer, so Plucky Author just has to suck it up and feel the pain—‘cause if the author doesn’t, neither will readers.

The other difficulty is, no matter how good one is at slinging adjectives, translating what one sees on the mental screen is never seamless. The perfect, ideal book I imagine is always more fabulous than the reality of the book I write. So how do I combat this?

Experience generates knowledge, so I look for appropriate tactile adventures. Perhaps I should say adventure equivalents, since I don’t actually know many werewolves and slime demons. So, I bumble about studying the viscous qualities of household cleaning products, considering whether toilet bowl cleaner would drip the same way as ectoplasm. Ditto with half-melted jello, cake batter, and the stuff that goes into the car radiator. Anything is fair game when researching something that doesn’t actually exist.

As far as demon-driven pestilence goes, I’ve always imagined flu season combined with a really bad hangover. Zombification might be equivalent to an all-day policy development meeting. I know I’m ready to eat brains by five o’clock.

All that being said, it’s gratifying when a scene finally comes out really, really close to the mental movie. When I’ve got the atmosphere, the emotion, and the sense of urgency just right. That’s when I do a happy dance and thank the Word Gods for their inspiration.

Written language is a medium, to translate the movie from my head into yours. The better job I do, the more information you have to recreate it. Of course, your experience will influence the translation on your end. No two people experience a book exactly the same way. That’s part of what makes the process so interesting.

When you read, do you see it as a movie, or do you experience the story some other way?

I sat down last night and wrote a scene of the new book, which is under the working title ICED. Why that title? It’s a winter book, for one thing. It’s also about people and societies being frozen in their way of thinking. It’s also about murders.

I’d written a “test scene” before. I’ll usually do that–throw the characters onto the page and see what happens. It helps me get a feel for the dynamics. Version 1.0 has its good parts and I’ll keep about half of it, but there was too much that wasn’t worked out to really make it fly on its own. This new scene was the real thing, all the characters’ strengths and weaknesses in place. Of course, the beginning wasn’t where I thought it should be. It never is.

Who will be back? So far, Perry, Lore, and Errata have made it through casting for major roles. Alessandro needs to be in it later on as well as some folks from UNCHAINED.

In the world of the paranormal romance, demons are growing nearly as popular as vampires and were-critters. Whether this reflects a desire for the badder bad boy, or just for an alpha hero that doesn’t require plasma slurpies or a chew toy, we seem to be in a Dantë-esque surplus of the demonic. I’m guilty of adding to the horde: the hero of Scorched (Signet Eclipse, Dec 1/09) has his own brimstone moments. It’s not that he’s a bad guy. He just tried to pick up the wrong girl in a bar. It happens.
And, where there are demons, angels (fallen flat as my last souffle) are not far behind. I’ve noticed a flock of the ex-angelic gracing romances these days. Not surprising: Entities finding their way across the old good/evil dividing line is an interesting subject, no matter where they start out from. Romance is often about redemption and, if love is the agent of change, it’s hard to find a reader who doesn’t root for a hero who, after a suitably rocky start, turns out to be good. Not so good he can’t adore his woman’s earthly charms, mind you. A few rough edges have to stay. Otherwise, they won’t fit into our human lives and families.
I’ve often wondered, though, about the practical side of paranormal romance. Case in point: what about the subtle but pervasive sulphur smell clinging to the carpet and drapes after your demon sweetie has invited the boys over for poker night? Will Febreeze take care of that, or do you need to exorcise the rec room yet again? And then there’s that gross head-spinning thing he always does after a few drinks on New Year’s Eve. That never goes over as well as he thinks it does. Boys will be boys, whatever the species.
There could be rocky moments in these happy-ever-afters. Nevertheless, we live in hope. The animal rescue societies can’t hold a candle to the vast number of fanged, furry, and feathered we romance writers have rehabbed and found forever homes. Fortunately, we don’t require a mandatory spay/neuter program.
Collectively, we’ve done good work rescuing the noble lover from grave, pit, and dog pound. However, domesticating the demonic does have a “farthest frontier” feel about it. I mean, after all the ectoplasm and belching of flame, after we’ve redeemed all the bad boys in hell, what next?
Anybody find sea monsters sexy? I mean, we’re talking lots and lots of flexible tentacles here …

I’ve taken some time off the day job to shove Unchained closer to the finish line.  This book has had a very disjointed writing process.  Part of it was finishing up with school - I kept having to stop and write an assignment or exam.  I had a few other writing commitments to take care of.  Then, there is promo for Scorched, and the whole living as a functional adult problem.  Good for practicing multi-tasking, bad for writing.

So, I had to set some time aside and give it priority.  Yesterday, I made the mistake of going to email first, and that held me up until about noon.  But, I wrote a complete chapter after taking a walk.  I had one of those insights that I really only get partway into a long work - a real sense of what’s at the bottom of a character’s personality. It cleared a lot up for me and I think will make the story a lot more understandable for the reader. Ashe is a fairly straightforward gal, but even she has her blind spots.

If all else fails, always ask the vampires what’s going on. They always seem to know.

My characters tend to show up full-grown. They walk into my head, sit down, and start trying to boss me around. Usually they come with their names, as well as annoying habits, a fashion statement (or lack thereof), and attitude.

Occasionally, though, you get the one-name guy. Historical writers will be familiar with this phenomenon—they’ll be “Buckingham” or “Fitzcarruthers” and evidently popped into the universe with no first name and, if they’re aristocracy, only a title. It takes me months of prodding before they finally confess to being “Steve” or “Bob”. Captain Reynard (you’ll meet him in SCORCHED) didn’t have a first name until I slapped one his forehead and said “live with it.” He’s still pouting even though I’ve explained REPEATEDLY that a hero with his own book has to make SOME sacrifices. Yeesh. I’m still writing book three, so he’d better mind his manners or I’ll have my revenge.

However, it’s not safe to assume a werecougar or a hellhound or even a witch will have the same naming traditions as a human. Witches take their surnames from their mothers, not their fathers. This had me really confused until I figured out that the blood relationships between my various characters would only work if the society was matrilineal. Suddenly a complex family tree problem was solved. Yup, the author is sometimes the last to know.

Hellhounds, as far as I can figure, only have one name. Lore is just Lore, although there’s no “just” about him. What do you say about a guy who risks death daily to save just one more of his people?

Another upcoming character is Errata Jones, an announcer/journalist/werecougar and a good friend of Perry Baker’s (the werewolf professor in RAVENOUS). An errata is a list of corrections, so she’s obviously playing a joke. I wonder about her real name but, y’know, cats have secrets. She hasn’t given me hers yet.

There are a lot of complexities in naming characters, and I’ve always found that it never pays to force it. If I sit down with a book of names and try to choose one, it won’t stick. It kind of makes me wonder about our parents picking baby names before we’re even born. How many of us feel like we truly fit the name we got?

Cross posted from www.SilkandShadows.com

The topic “favourite paranormal stories that I didn’t write” is a bit ambiguous. Does that mean a story that someone else wrote? Or does the “I didn’t write” mean books that I wanted to write, but never got to? Too many of those to list in one blog!
The topic might also mean my problem children—books written or partially written that will never see the light of day. I have at least five ‘under the bed’ books. My earliest full-length, complete novel was written when I was 16, and it was a coming of age story which I believed worthy of common stock in Kleenex. Enough said.
During university I wrote a peculiar novel about a frat house where some of the Romantic English poets lived and attended classes. I also had John Constable and Eugene Delacroix having a torrid affair. There was a beach-at-dawn duel between John Keats and the narrator. No, I don’t know what I was thinking. Probably exam stress.
Then there was one I wrote when I was incarcerated in Secretarial College. Yes, that’s where (during the last major recession) cash-poor English majors went after graduation and there were zero jobs to be had. We weren’t allowed to wear jeans and had to sign in and out. Absences required a doctor’s note. A come down from cum laude, let me tell you.
I wrote, during the particular hell known as typing class, a comic adventure about a vampire, a werewolf, and a tiger’s eye ring. Writing was my means of mental survival and, what the heck, I was typing, wasn’t I? It was a very hot summer, I was stuck in a room with about forty IBM Selectrics all going at once, and the roof next door was being tarred. Blargh!
While I was clerking at the mall part-time, I wrote another historical involving a consumptive poet, an opera-singing count, devil-worship, a secret baby, sorcery and, oh, a few other odds and sods. It had (she says with a sentimental quaver) my first ritual sacrifice scene.
There were others, plus a boatload of fragments, bright ideas and things that puzzled my editor. Yes, I’ve become much more aware of the demands of the commercial market, but I’m glad I wrote for a long time with no eye to sales potential. I had amazing adventures, made mistakes with gusto, and plumbed the depths of cheesy plots—all with no one (except teachers and employers) looking over my shoulder. Now I can settle down and proceed with more method, less hysteria, and a snowball’s chance of getting another human to read it.
Those old manuscripts had better stay buried, though. Good thing I’m too poor to be worth blackmailing!