Good Things in All Kinds of Packages

At the beginning of the year, Child Two announced she was going to look for something good that happened to her every day. I thought of this conversation last night when I was watching the very last episode of "How I Met Your Mother", which had a funny bit about the character Marshall only saying positive things about work despite the fact that he had a horrible boss. When Child Two mentioned this in January, we talked about the kinds of things she meant.

She could point out things like "Got a great grade on a test", or "Friend brought me an extra cookie", or "My hair looked fantastic". I asked her what she would resort to on days when things didn't go so well, and we had a really funny time coming up with ideas, the penultimate of which was "I didn't catch malaria today." That would be reserved for extreme occasions, when something like "At least my underwear weren't inside out" wasn't good enough as a positive point.

Things have been more than the usual crazy in our house these days. The BHE is in the midst of shipping out hundreds of copies of a book he's produced that has buyers all over the world -- the printer has made every mistake possible along the way and he's still, after nearly four months, waiting for the third form of the finished book to arrive. My work schedule has been so busy that my own writing is done in odd little spurts that leave me bleary-eyed and leaving notes everywhere. There's a second puppy, and he's like a toddler on Red Bull. We got him to keep the first puppy company, thinking if she saw him getting along with my son, she might get along with my son, which she has not for oh... six months now. She is, instead, on what I think of as Doggie Pot, which isn't helping. So we have one sort of stoned dog and one dog who acts as if he's been sneaking shots of espresso from the Keurig (Note to self: Move the Keurig machine away from the puppy's crate...).

So I've decided this blog is to remind myself of all the good things that have happened so far this year, to maybe help to cope with the bits of chaos:

1. I discovered two new wines. A friend brought over Badger Mountain Reisling in January, which was crisp and clear and made me happy. Then we had dinner at the Red Fish Grill in New Orleans in February, where I had a wine with a kick-ass name: Kung Fu Girl Reisling. Also fresh and simple and awesome.

2. I got an assignment to read a book by an author I hadn't heard of before and it was AMAZING. The story was "Wolf" by Mo Hayder, and it was complex and scary and I couldn't tell how it was solved by chapter three. It's not out until May but when it is and if you like mystery, run. Run like heck to the bookstore and plan on not sleeping.

3. There was a trip to New Orleans, during which my daughter's culinary leanings turned into a personal tour of the kitchen with the executive chef at Emeril's. Then there was... well, New Orleans. We walked (a lot), we ate, we listened to street music, we bought hats, we went to ComicCon. My husband's neighbor at the show was Vera Baby, and you have no idea how much a man loves you until he is seated near Vera Baby and is not gaping at her and her very (ahem) interesting costumes. She and her assistant were really nice, too.

4. We had a ghost hunting weekend. Not so sure about finding ghosts, because we were ghost hunting with about 80 other people, but I was on a road trip with one of my best buddies and there were Twizzlers. Who wouldn't have a good time?

5. I reconnected with a LOT of old friends in March. I was reminded that the best friends of all are the ones you might not see all the time but that when you do, you pick up right where you left off because it's always been that natural, that close, that good. I've been friends with the Nancys (yes, that's how you plural Nancy; don't give me grief because I get paid to know stuff like that) for 37 years and I love them both more now than ever. And the Laura, of which there is only one, which is really all I need.

6. I was cleaning out the linen closet (to avoid dusting, actually) and found a whole bunch of old letters and cards from friends, old boyfriends, and family members, and they reminded me why it was good to be alive, good to laugh, and good to love. If you ever want perspective on your troubles, find letters from when you were 17 or 25 or even newly married, and realize that troubles come and go, and change, and sometimes you can laugh about them after, even if you might cry a little bit first.

So tell me: What do you count as something that makes a day good? What have you discovered -- new or old -- that makes you happy? Surely there's something you can think of, right?

Or if you can't, if you're really just having a bad day, just go with: "At least I didn't get Malaria."

***

OH! DAMN IT! I almost forgot! Best thing of all -- I have finaled, inexplicably, in the New England Romance Writers' First Kiss Contest. That quirky scene in the closet made it past the first round. So there you go. Another thing to be happy about.

When Would You Walk Away From The Hero?

Let's get this out of the way: I am not a Feminist. I believe in equal rights and self-esteem and basic mutual respect between the genders (and that means all of them). I believe in holding the door for the person after you, no matter whether they are male or female, young, old, hairy, bald, snooty or friendly. I think it doesn't hurt to be nice to other people on a regular basis, because maybe they'll pass it on to someone else. Maybe you'll change their day for the better with your little gesture. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, an aunt, a niece -- and I don't want to pass on any negative "-isms" if I can help it.

I also happen to think that people learn from what they are exposed to. I do not mean this as a generalization -- surely not everyone who watches horror movies decides to turn into Freddy Kreuger just as not everyone who reads a biography about Mother Theresa gives up their corporate position to go take care of the poor in third world countries -- but I think, in the absence of seeing different aspects of different subjects, impressionable people might feel certain behaviors are normal and what they should aspire to or expect from life. 

Recently I've encountered some "romance" stories with couples -- the hero and heroine, and sometimes even the supporting characters -- who made me cringe. I thought, "Would I want my niece to read this? My son? My daughter?"

The answer was a resounding NO.

This made me wonder -- have any of you ever encountered, or read, a character or even a real person you just had to walk away from? Someone you wanted to tell the heroine/hero to run like hell from? Someone you wouldn't want to introduce to your friends or family? Someone you wouldn't want to be with? And if someone you loved was exposed to this person, how would you deal with it? What are the boundaries that would have to be crossed in order to make you take action?

Real life example: I was dating someone a long time ago that seemed funny and warm. He had a decent job and a home and southern gentleman manners. One day I walked in on him, after being invited over, to find him beating his dog with a bat. I never found out what the dog did to enrage him, but it had no impact on him at all when I shouted for him to stop. On an upswing, I reached out for the bat and grabbed it, and he turned and growled at me to let it go or I would be next.
I do not know where it came from because at the time I was not the most confident person. Those of you who know me personally know I'm not exactly linebacker-sized. I'm more the opposite of linebacker-sized. Maybe it was that I was terrified and upset for the dog. I looked him right in the eye and bluffed. I growled back, "Oh, you really don't want to do that."
And apparently, he did not. Maybe he suddenly worried that I had some inner ninja he hadn't counted on. Maybe he thought with a growl like that I would be willing to act physically and kick his scrawny (okay, at the time I didn't think it was scrawny, but in retrospect...) ass. That was it for us. Everything that had come before was null and void and that sort of cruelty, that threat -- wow. I just got out.
I heard the dog went to his ex-wife. I will never, ever, forget the look on his face when I grabbed the bat. For a long time I wondered how I'd missed signs in how he'd treated me before that. For months I had nightmares about letting go of the bat, and what could have happened when I did.

The heroes that have recently put me off have controlling, demeaning tendencies that their authors have somehow packaged as romantic. Characters do have flaws and secrets, and sometimes those elements drive the story and make you feel for them. But when does behavior go over the line and make you want to sit down with your niece, for instance, and say, "Look. Don't ever let someone treat you like this. It is not romantic and it is not respectful and it is not an example of how people who love each other should treat each other."

Examples extracted from text:

"Shut up and just take off your [article of clothing] like a good girl."

"I am not giving you the key (this said to a newlywed about their home) until I can trust you to behave."

"Why are you so fat?"

"You're going to wear what I like and you're not going to give me any [expletive] about it. And I will know if you take it off and you will be punished."

Heroes insist on carrying their heroines everywhere, and not always because they've been injured. Or they have the heroine's friends spy on her and report back. They begin as attentive and overwhelmingly romantic, too good to be true. The story becomes so focused upon the couple that friends and family are slowly eliminated from the picture.

Does anyone know the classic beginning signs of emotional, physical, or sexual battering? Would you want someone talking to you, or your friend or family member, that way? What would you do?

So there are things I want to know:

Have you ever encountered a character that you could not stand? Are there characters in classics or bestsellers that you couldn't believe other readers thought were wonderful but that you wished had never been published?

Have you ever encountered someone like that in real life and what did you do about it? Have you encountered someone like that and not done anything?

I am truly curious about how people feel about certain kinds of actions within relationships, both real and fictional. I wonder how we help or teach those around us to understand that some forms of behavior -- negative, disparaging, physically or emotionally uncomfortable or hurtful -- are just not right.

Please let me know what you think. 

Making Lattes out of Language

Years ago, part of my training at a major coffee retailer was to understand coffee as a process -- how it went from bean to that seemingly essential liquid that many of us need to get through any given day.  From its early harvesting, as a bean from a plant, or (ew) as digested material from an animal that had eaten the beans from the plant, it went through several steps until it became the processed grind that is now the root of all lattes.

I wondered on a semi-regular basis who had come up with these steps and how: at what point did someone say, "hey, let's take this mountainside bean, dry it in the sun, sort it by size, color, weight, origin, then mash it up, then put it in not-quite-boiling water for a certain amount of time, then add cow juice and sugarcane, then ...." Coffee's been around a long time -- how did it go from something chewed on as a stimulant to being combined, in its liquid form, with caramel syrup and whipped cream?

The process evolved over years and years, from the first guy who experimentally gnawed on a bean and found it made him feel more energetic, through many stages and many people later -- all the way to the eventual group in a conference room discussing the addition of pumpkin spice or peppermint syrup for the holidays.

Sometimes I feel that way about words. Lately in my profession, I see a lot of words that are simply not in any dictionary I have access to. People are making stuff up, changing the way words are used, making language evolve.

Admittedly, sometimes I get an education. Lost in Brooklyn on Sunday, we drove through some pretty sketchy areas. We wondered about "tenement". For the record, it's a 14th-century word. It's Middle English from Middle French from Medieval Latin, the Latin term "tenere" being the root, and meaning "to hold". "Tenement" came to mean "property held from one person to another".  Last week I had to copy edit an historical romance, where one of the heroes complained of his "bastardy". Since "bastard" is still a fairly common term, you might easily derive the meaning: This is a 15th-century word, indicating the quality or state of being of illegitimate birth. 

But what about more recent additions to our language? Here are three I've encountered: 

Badassery -- this refers to when someone is tough, full of bravado and able to back it up with physical or psychological superiority. "His badassery was legendary: he could take on any guy in the bar with his right  hand and win without even spilling the beer in his left."

Defecacious -- this term basically means one is full of feces, or the state of being a bullshit artist. "Dude, you are such a liar -- that's totally defecacious!"

Ballin' -- Now I know that some people will say this term has been around for a long time. It has; but it is the evolution of its usage that causes me to list it here. Rather than its implied sexual indications, the term is presently used as an adjective to mean something that's interesting, relaxing, or just great to be a part of.  "It was a ballin' party, especially after they handed out the Jell-o shots."

In our house, we've recently made up one or two: There's "frenchtoastinated", which is the pleasant state of being after you've been served some delicious, hot, egg-battered toast, usually on a weekend, with or without syrup and butter or jam or cinnamon. This is similar to the joy of being "waffleinated", except it's better because you don't have to clean the waffle maker afterward. 

I also sometimes use the word "shdrool", for which I must credit my ex-boyfriend Steve, who wore Capezios (so you know how long ago that was) and liked to name lobsters and let them "play" together on the kitchen floor before tossing them into a pot of boiling water and then serving them whole. I still have an aversion to eating anything in a shell, previously named Spike or Lucy, that might make me feel guilty about it by seeming to be looking at me, but I kept this word. It means, in essence, "extraneous stuff". He used it most frequently to tell me, when we got into his battered Mustang, "There's plenty of room for your feet if you just push the shdrool to the side." 

Usually that "shdrool" involved discarded and smelly coffee cups. 

So, language evolves and changes and adds on. What words have you discovered lately? What words have you just plain made up?

Addendum: I have been reminded, off-post, of the word "scrudja". I've asked my reminderer (yes, I made that one up, too -- take that, etymologists!) to give me his definition. But what do you think? Prize to whoever comes closest in a comment, and to whoever comes up with the most unusual guess. 
 

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

 INSTANT DISCLAIMER: This entry is not about Christmas. 

It's about the recent trip the BHE* and I took to Italy. It's about the wonderful people who hosted us, the beautiful region we visited, the memories we made. I think I've left a little bit of my heart there, and I want to go back. Now. 

My husband is an illustrator. Several years ago he was one of the original artists who created imagery for a then-fledgling card game called Magic: The Gathering. The people who played this game created a worldwide phenomenon and collected cards not just for what they could do for them in terms of winning the game, but also for the unique and fantastic qualities of the artwork. The cards were produced in many languages and fans collected them into the thousands, and even now some of these cards can fetch amazing amounts of money in re-sale value. It is no exaggeration to claim that the lives of these early artists were irrevocably changed, in terms of fame, financial gain, and even in the directions their art later developed.

Fast forward two decades. The BHE was invited to go to a tournament in a place called Viareggio, a coastal resort town in Tuscany. I visited Italy years ago, and it was on my bucket list to get him to Florence -- a place I remembered fondly for its beautiful light and history and artwork. He would have to sit at a table for three days in Viareggio and sign autographs and create art alterations on cards for several hours a day. I might have begged, without him even finishing his explanation, to stow away in his luggage if necessary. Viareggio, according to Google maps, was twenty minutes north of Pisa and about an hour from Florence. When he mentioned to his host that I wanted to come along, the reception was incredibly gracious.

We took Italian lessons. I made lists of things for our children to do (or NOT do, depending upon the situation) while we were gone, including such statements -- in red -- along the lines of "Do not let the tortoise die. Remember to feed him".  I packed less than I might need to leave room for returning with Tuscan wine and olive oil, and picked clothing that would be comfortable on me and great cushioning for bottles that would be tossed around in my suitcase by airport handlers on the ride back. I tried to figure out train schedules and how to buy tickets online for the Uffizi museum. We listened to Pimsleur recordings for more Italian. I learned how to say, "I am an American and I don't speak much Italian" and finally, at the last minute, literally minutes before the car came to get us for the airport, the most important question for a 52-year-old traveling woman: "Where's the bathroom, please?"

What follows are some of the pictures I took of the places we went. Because he had to work sometimes until early evening, we saw some things at night -- very romantic and a very unique experience. We saw, for instance, the Tower of Pisa in the dark, all lit up in its majesty. We and our new friend Roberto were almost the only ones there. If not for the roving police, we might have touched it. We saw the walled village of Lucca and walked in the fog atop the parks there under streetlight, and roamed past ruins and cathedrals and ancient doorways, on stones laid by workmen hundreds of years before. We ate amongst the celebratory students in a piazza at Pisa, at a trattoria in Lucca full of boisterous friendly people. We talked with Roberto about the schools there, and employment problems and food and history. Roberto was a graduate in Physics from the University of Pisa, but he is working in England to earn a living, since there were no teaching jobs for him in Italy. We ate wild boar and chick peas and drank wine.

On the third day, Roberto's family invited us to lunch. I found myself speaking remnants of French, which I hadn't needed since college some 30 years ago, with one of his cousins, who was fluent in Italian and French. She translated between me and Roberto's mother, who was very sweet and welcoming and gentle but did not speak English. There were at least five courses of many kinds of fish, and despite the language barriers it was wonderful. Our Italian lessons (okay, our comprehension of our Italian lessons) left us only understanding a few words here and there, but listening, just listening, to the ebb and flow and emotion and joy in the conversation sometimes was enough. I remember at one point one of the women, in a flurry of Italian, stopped and looked at me and said, without any accent at all, "New York Cheesecake" and made a face of ecstasy. Who needed a translator with something like that between us? My husband is still missing the smoked swordfish. 

Throughout our time there, we were treated so beautifully by Michele, our initial contact, and some of the other organizers, Stefano, Megghi, and Simone, as well as a wonderfully warm receptionist at the Hotel Marchionni. Every day they did all they could to make sure we were happy, and their English was far better than our Italian, yet they never made us feel uncomfortable about not being able to speak in their language. I spent a lot of time looking up words in my phrase book, but I couldn't learn quickly enough. Even after the tournament had ended, they went out of their way to guide us and take us around. 

Michele took us up to Cinque Terre, to a little town near the lower point of five towns called Riomaggiore, which was his home. It was the most breathtaking day of all. We, along with another American artist Rob, and Stefano and Megghi and their puppy Muttley, ate lunch and took pictures and climbed all around the walkways in the cliffs and over the rocky inlet ("No, honey, you can't go into the caves"). We watched the moon rise and the sun set. We listened to the clock tower bell and talked with the old fishermen. We thought about moving there.

They took us to dinner at Simone's wine bar, where Megghi's mother had made a perfect lasagna. Now I know what I've got to do better with my own. The artists worked at heavy wooden tables to finish up cards for Michele and we drank local wine. Simone picked out some for me to bring back, since who better to trust with a decision like that than an expert? His place was called, of all things, Nebraska, and if you are ever in a little town called Camaiore you must go.  Sit near the fireplace, or in the room full of bottles, and be happy. 

On the last day we went to Florence. I have to say that by that point I had come down with a terrible cold. My husband suggested I stay in the hotel, but I had come all this way. Our discussion over whether or not I should rest rather than attempt the trip was ended by the opera-singing workman on the scaffolding outside our window and his ever-present drilling and hammering. 

Florence was. Here I got to use my (desperate, by that point) necessary phrase -- "Dove il bagno, per favore?" We walked through the Uffizi and through Medici history, saw works by Fra' Filippo Lippi and Da Vinci and Michelangelo and Caravaggio, then went out into the streets and met Michele and Rob and Stefano once more. After lunch Rob and my husband went up to climb around and photograph an ancient fort ("let's just keep going until someone stops us") and I walked through the street market with Michele and Stefano. They bought me dessert and Michele and I both went through our translation lists (he on his phone, me in my book) for the word "almond", which wasn't, in the end, in either place, and didn't ultimately matter since the flavor I'd meant was mascarpone. Stefano found out that this particular bistro served over 3,000 espressos a day during Christmas. We walked through the diamond vendors on the Ponte Vecchio and along the Arno River to the car.  We ate dinner at a little restaurant along the boardwalk of Viareggio, a sleepy little place where no one rushed us out even though it was late. We talked about our homes (Rob is from Portland, but originally Toronto), our work (Michele is an architect), and our families. Countries, and cultures, are not so different as people might often think.  We went back to our hotel for the last time, walking along the street that edged the sea, through chilly December air. 

The fact of the matter is that you can meet some people in your lifetime that come and go, and some that you feel are old friends even in a small space of time. There was a moment at the airport when we said good-bye to Michele where none of us seemed to know what to say -- you realize you have made this connection and you wish it could go on -- and you hope to god it will. If any of them were to ever come to the States, we would urge them to come to us, as our friends, as a new part of our family -- just the way they treated us. 

Like I said at the beginning, a little part of my heart remains there--in Riomaggiore, in Viareggio--with the places and with the people who made it the most wonderful time of the year. 

Merry Christmas With Love, everyone.




*BHE, in case you've forgotten: Best Husband Ever, (c) 2012, Various Milliner, Ltd. What else could you call the man who takes you along on an Italian holiday?


 

Romance Writers, Look... Just... Please... Don't.

Okay, I'm going to start with the disclaimer that I've recently cut my hair short and all of these cowlicks I didn't have two weeks ago are now making me look like a rejected Muppet. So it's possible I'm just having a bad hair day and I'm cranky.
That being said, I wanted to mention some things that I've noticed a few Romance Writers doing that are driving me, and a few other editors from whom I gathered a consensus, up the metaphorical editorial wall. We've come up with a couple of topics:

1. Quit with the hair tucked behind the ear thing already. It's a tender gesture, and many heroines have unruly gorgeous hair (without f-ing cowlicks, I bet). But probably more than 30 of the 40 romance stories I've worked on this year have had a moment where the hero tucks that stray strand or lock of the heroine's hair behind her ear. To this I must say: There are other gestures you could use! How about that little brush of the backs of his fingers against hers, or the gentle nudge of a knuckle to her chin, or the way he tips his knee forward to tap hers? How about he leans in and just whispers by her cheek? I had a boyfriend who used to tuck my hair behind my ear (he also liked me to tilt my ankles a certain way and he later became a shoe salesman, but that's a different story...) and it drove me crazy. So maybe this one's just me, but then again, maybe not...

2. Location, Location, Location, or Sex on a Horse. Second disclaimer: I have honestly only read of people having sex on top of moving horses three times, and of people having sex on a camel once. Personally, however, I think that many times is really too many. If you ride horses, you know that there's a certain rhythm to the different gaits, and two people in the midst of lovemaking will have to really concentrate to match that, not to mention staying balanced and holding on to the horse, since it's a long way down. Having never tried to "go equestrian" myself, I could be wrong, but I do have a friend who damaged her lover just by being overly vigorous on a downward move, and they were on a completely non-moving bed. If nothing else, think of the poor embarrassed horse, having to face his horse friends' snickers the next day. How would you feel if two horses were entangling themselves on your back? 
The point is that if you are going to put lovers in unusual situations, please think about the logistics. I read a story where the desperate lovers were robbing a bank and got carried away back in the vault. I couldn't focus on the romance because I was worried they'd be locked in there by the quick-thinking bank manager and suffocate. One love scene placed the couple on a boat in the windy Puget Sound in early Spring -- I kept thinking "Not on the deck! Not on the deck! Go into the cabin, for heaven's sake, before you freeze off your important bits!" I read one fantasy where the lovers were riding off on a unicorn-like creature. Fine, I thought, maybe he floats. That could work. 
Let's not even discuss camels. 

3.  Just stop talking and do it. Communication is good. Especially between two people who are intimate with each other. Sometimes dialogue can make a love scene, or even just a quiet private moment, explicitly hot or passionate. Good stuff. But speaking during intimate encounters should not derail the tension and intensity a good love scene should have. If your characters are lovers in a romantic suspense, for instance, and they're in the midst of that driving force that takes their breath, neither of them should be thinking, or talking, about the terrorist or murderer they're trying to thwart: "pant, pant --'I really hope we catch Marko the Devilish tomorrow' -- moan, pant..." . If your heroine is a hometown girl working things out with that long lost sweetheart and everything depends on the success of the fund-raising picnic the next day, don't have her express her distracted thoughts, in the middle of their doing something spectacularly hot, of having enough sandwiches on hand in case his grandmother brings her knitting friends along. Even if Gran's sweet as pie and the reason they've been thrown together in the first place -- here's the Golden Rule: No Granny in the Bedroom. Ew. 

4. You said that already. I know this one's hard to avoid, especially since it's virtually impossible to write an entire novel at a single sitting, and also to remember every word you put into your story. But many writers have a tendency to re-state the back story, or elements of their characters' descriptions, again and again. Please remember to re-read your work, from beginning to end, after you've let it sit for a week or two, or have someone you trust read it, so they can tell you if you've written phrases like "He was doing it all for the men in uniform, who deserved the best he had" or paragraphs that start "She had always wanted to help the children of the town by ..." over and over, or even if you've just repeatedly described a character as having "piercing/intense/sparkling (choose your adjective) blue/green/hazel eyes." 

5.  You could have finished this thirty pages ago! She loves him but there's a Big Misunderstanding. He loves her but there's another Big Misunderstanding. She apologizes, and even though he loves her he can't forgive. Then he apologizes but even though she loves him she can't forgive. Both of them spend pages regretting how things turned out. They want each other like nothing else, but then they avoid each other like the plague. There are at least three black moments.
Look. People have conflicts. Resolutions make for stronger relationships. The bigger the comeback from the deeper the black moment, the happier the ending. But don't make your characters bounce too much-- don't make them so intractable or clueless that their actions become implausible, or worse, so repetitive they become frustrating to the reader. You never want a reader to think, "Jeez God, Jake's/Amanda's/Luke's/Chloe's so stupid! How many times can they go back and forth? Why don't they just talk about this?!" Try seeing the highs and lows of your story, keeping in mind whether the peaks and valleys in the relationship help the story progress or just put your hero and heroine through a tangled up obstacle course.

And finally:
6. Stop naming your heroes Luke and Jake. What. You think I'm kidding? You try reading 40 romance novels a year and you'll see what I mean.

Do you have any pet peeves that you've noticed when reading certain types of stories? Are there any plot points or too-often-used character traits that make you cringe or groan? 

Confused by Vampires, or, ee-eye-EE-EYE-OHHHH.....

I was speaking with my colleague Francesca Bousquet the other day. Perhaps you've heard of her: she's an established and respected editor of many genres, a bit of an expert in some areas of the profession at a level I can only hope to someday achieve.  The subject of vampires arose.

Chiefly, we agreed that the legendary traits have lately been screwed with. There are some basic traditional characteristics that define what makes a being a vampire, and based upon our vast combined readings of horror, romance, adventure, and historical fiction, here's what we came up with:

1. Vampires are undead, i.e., they are no longer living in the sense that they have a pulse. They do not have beating hearts, and therefore do not have circulatory systems, and are rather pale and cold to the touch.
2. Vampires do not respire; that is, they don't need to breathe.
3. Vampires can move extremely fast, and are superlatively strong.
4. They cannot go out in sunlight, where they tend to make an unsightly mess by turning into ash, sometimes rudely, right in the middle of an otherwise delightful conversation.
5. Vampires must suck blood out of living creatures in order to survive. Sometimes these living creatures are small, such as rabbits. Sometimes they are large, such as cows, or humans.
6. Vampires, when taking blood from their human subjects, incite great lust in their victims. This, since the most powerful vampires are reportedly the ones of great age and the best victims youthfully luscious females, is an example of the ultimate, albeit unfortunately brief, May-December romance. This, also, despite the fact that early stories of vampires did not portray them looking like Brad Pitt, but more like foul-smelling hobos with cracked skin and no-longer-fashionable evening wear. Neither Francesca nor I has ever read of any instance of aroused bovines, by the way, but we did agree that there might be some extraordinary moo-ing, so really, who's to say?
7. Vampires may be killed by a wooden stake to the heart, beheading, sunlight, or having a blessed cross placed upon their person. Once attacked thus, they are utterly vanquished. If you are going to kill a vampire indoors by any of these methods, make sure you have a working vacuum, since once again -- ash. (This week, since the belt has snapped on my month-old Hoover and we're waiting for the replacement part to come via FedEx, I would appreciate it if no one decided to conquer any undead bloodsuckers in my living room. We already have several days' worth of lint built up.)

Disagreement over the validity of some newer versions of these creatures we've both discovered has created a slight professional rift between Francesca and I. Eventually we decided to open it up to discussion, and we agreed I would ask anyone who read, wrote, or mused about the nature of vampires to perhaps reconcile the following:

1. Here's a biggie (no pun intended and we might as well get it out of the way): how do male vampires get erections? We've both read stories of vampires making voracious love during their conquests, creating incomparable ecstasies that keep their increasingly wan female lovers coming back for more (okay, okay, Fran says that pun was definitely intended). But without a beating heart or a circulatory system, how does that work? We've both read stories written by contemporary authors that mention all of the vampires' blood going south, the heat generated within this particular part of the anatomy. Without a functioning circulatory system, heat cannot be generated. And really, especially if the story's set any later in the year than October and any further north than, maybe, Virginia, or Spain, who wants to cuddle up with a block of ice?
2. (and 3.) If vampires don't need to breathe, and they can move quickly and are in possession of superior strength, how come none of the vampire writers out there have put one of them on a fictional Olympic swim team? You could conquer the sports-horror-erotic-romance genre! You could make the whole team up of vampires, and sell a series! Get going! Don't some swim teams have to use community pools before dawn, before they're open to the public? When it's DARK? Really, it's obvious to me -- I just haven't had time to write it. Somebody, I'm doing you a favor...
4.  Sunlight? Ash? Really? How does one explain Edward in Twilight? Or the vampire I read about recently who spent his nights making love with his human and his days out solving crime? Francesca knows of one story where the vampire drank a special potion that made his skin immune to the sun's detrimental rays. She wonders if his breath smelled like Coppertone.
5. Blood-sucking -- in addition to draining their living victims dry in order to "live" themselves, some vampire stories now indicate that a young vampire can gain strength by overtaking and draining an older vampire of its blood. Some other stories indicate that this practice can cause the younger vampire to go insane. But once again, if there's no blood in the first place -- because they're dead -- how would this work?
6. Neither Francesca nor I want to think about aroused cows. If you are a writer that's thinking this might be a good subplot, please close down your screen, put down your pen, and stop it right now.
7. Personally I'm a fan of the classic death-dealing methods, but I've read of vampires that were dispatched with poisoned blood, golf clubs, electric shock, Italian food (anaphylactic shock due to a severe garlic allergy), and a vampire snake. I really, at this point, would not want to have to face a vampire and make an uneducated guess as to what would work best. What should I do, should one of these fearful, lust-inciting, soulless entities show up in my house and all I have to defend myself is a spatula or a plunger? Besides get him off my rug before I win?

Communication, or More Appropriately, the Lack of It

I've been somewhat remiss about making timely, monthly blog entries. It isn't that I haven't been thinking about it -- I do, all the time. I get topics in my head -- "How Come I'm Always Stuck Behind a Landscaping Truck on the Road of Life (Not Necessarily a Metaphor)?", "Smart Girls Can Have Kinky Sex, Too (which is actually not about me, even though I am, I think, no slouch in intellect, and whatever I may choose or not choose to do otherwise is none of your beeswax, by the way)", "Five Gestures Romance Writers Think Are Sexy But Should Quit Using Already (do NOT get me started)". 

But the fact of the matter is that if I don't actually blog or write or even speak, if I keep all these ideas somewhere in my cerebellum (or forebrain, I forget which is right), it doesn't matter if any of the ideas above would knock the socks off the world. Nobody knows about them but me.

In any case, I've been a tad overwhelmed and underblogged. At least it feels that way. Things are a little spiral-ly here at the home office. And whether you picture that as an upward spiral (as in tornado) or a downward one (as in drain), neither picture's all that pretty. Things are busy, lines get crossed, messages have slipped.

It's possible this sensation's acute in part because we've gotten another dog. If you ever want to feel as if you're vocally peeing into the wind, get a puppy and try to train it when you've repeatedly only had about three hours' sleep the night before. I do not know why I continue to be surprised when I say, "Raven, don't poop in my flower garden", and she DOES IT ANYWAY.  She seemed pretty smart at the pound, so I don't know if all she's hearing is "Raven, blah blah blah" or if she's just being spiteful because I didn't feel like throwing her thirteenth tennis ball (they keep turning up from the last dog, and now you know I never, ever, clean under the hutch in the dining room) for the six thousandth time. I told a neighbor after we got the dog how pleased I was that she'd quickly learned to use the bells we hung on the back door to let us know she wanted to go out. I thought we'd trained her to do something useful. My neighbor said (bless her heart, and you North Carolinians know what I really mean when I say that), "Oh, you mean she's trained YOU to get up every time she rings those bells." 

I guess it's a matter of ... interpretation. 

Let's try to relate this to writing. Or life, if you're not a writer. Whatever works. 

When you write, or even when you speak, you have to assume that the other person reading/listening has no idea what the hell you're talking about. It doesn't mean (you know who you are) you have to speak to someone as if they're stooopid, only that you might be better off providing some context in your story, or saying more than "hunh, almost out of milk". You have to remember your audience.

In the case of writing, you have to picture the scene, present the scene, think of what's going on around your characters and in their heads. You may have to remember what they're wearing, for instance -- I can't tell you how many sex scenes I've edited where the clothing being removed (or not, duh) changed from one moment to the next. I've read characters who take each other out for a meal and then never eat. Like, over multiple days. And not just because they were rushing to remove assorted pieces of clothing -- although that's, you know, possible. One of the characters may seem to get inexplicably cranky, but who can blame them? They're starving.

A common mistake writers make when they read aloud in critique or to their family or friends is to feel compelled to explain something when the other person(s) doesn't get it. You won't be able to do that if you sell the book, or hopefully many books, to complete strangers. You have to write it. If you find yourself saying "I meant this", that means you didn't put it on the page.  If you end up repeating yourself, you can always take it out, but if the information isn't there at all, you leave your reader or listeners confused. You leave them in a blank space with characters going "Raven, blah blah blah".

And if somebody says "hunh, almost out of milk" in your house, you should probably ask which one of you is going to go get some and when. Otherwise nobody's happy when it's coffee time or there's a hankering for Frosted Flakes in the middle of the night. I'm just saying. I'll stay away from other, more serious, words left out. Hopefully you get what I mean. 

Or do you.

So how do you ensure that what you say gets across, that you've painted a clear picture, that you won't run out of milk? 

I'll check back in after I let the dog out. She's ringing those bells again.