I have, in the past , enjoyed AMC shows.  Well, let me step that back.  I enjoyed (until the season finale) The Killing .  I haven’t really watched anything else beyond an episode or two, mostly because I didn’t care for any of the characters. 

I feel like AMC is trying to bring a premium cable (HBO, Showtime) sensibility to a wider audience.  However, I’m not sure how much I like that sensibility.  I was never the biggest Sopranos fan- I thought Tony was a violent, cheating jerk and I had no desire to watch him have gross sex with strippers at his desk.  I didn’t want to watch his guys put dead dudes through meat grinders and I certainly could have cared less about how it ended.

I have watched Dexter and I have enjoyed the show but I have no desire to get caught up on the multiple seasons between what I watched and what’s currently airing.

I don’t like Mad Men.  At all.  While I know that many people find the characters on that show to be fascinating, I have a hard time getting into the story.  Don Draper is an ASS.  In fact, one might go so far as to say that he’s an ASSHOLE and I have to be honest, there is almost nothing I find less sexy than adultery and misogyny. 

My time is limited, as is everyone’s, and while there may be stories that are different and exciting airing on premium cable and networks like AMC, I must confess that I don’t want to spend my time with characters that are unrepentant and just plain bad.

They make bad choices and continue to make bad choices.  Some folks I’ve spoken to have mentioned that what they like is watching bad people do bad things, with bad results.  I guess I’m just not like that.

Spoilers below for the premiere of Hell on Wheels.  There be dragons, ladies and gents.  Procede with caution.

Hell on Wheels is a show set in the immediate post-Civil War period in the American West.  Our “hero”, Cullen Bohannen, is looking for work, as well as the killers of his wife so he’s heading out to where the Union Pacific is beginning construction on the transcontinental railroad.  So far, so good, right?      

Then we find out that Cullen is a Confederate veteran.  Which was the first strike against it for me.  As a history buff, I understand that Confederate soldiers were not necessarily bad people, they were just fighting for a way of life that I find morally reprehensible.  (And anyone who wants to argue that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and was actually just about state’s rights needs to read the order of succession signed by the state of South Carolina to understand that theory is bullshit, plain and simple.)  I think the moral ambiguity of a Confederate soldier is interesting but I don’t have a strong desire to watch and entire show about the subject.

On top of that, we find out that the guy was a slave owner.  He had five slaves.  But then, just to appease all of us Northerners who think that’s atrocious and EVIL, were told that he set them free a year before the war and paid them wages.  And I bet they were fair wages, too.  *eye roll*  Apparently, the guy married a Northern abolitionist and he changed his tune.  Sure he did.

And that’s where they lost me.  I cannot, ever, see a slave owner as a hero.  I don’t like Gone with the Wind either- Scarlet deserved to have her face punched on a regular basis and it is to my great sadness that it never was.

I understand that morality was viewed differently 150 years ago.  I get that.  I understand that times were different and how people interacted with others and viewed others is not even close to the same as we do now.  I can forgive books and stories from that time period that express racist views because that was the time.  (Although, stories like Huckleberry Finn makes me have more faith that not everything was a complete and epic fail back then.  Still failing, just not EPICALLY.)

It’s the stories from today that get me all up in arms.

Yes, as an amateur historian, I do enjoy stories that are trying to show the past as it was (or at least as close as we can determine from the primary sources, depending on the topic and time period).  I enjoy the dirt and the bad teeth and the clothes.  And for the right story, I am willing to put up with rampant misogyny or racism, if there is a point to each in the story. 

I am not willing to put up with the hero of the piece being a former slave owner.  That’s where I draw this particular line with this particular show.  I don’t like him from the get go, which is a trope of AMC/HBO/Showtime/FX type shows, and the reveal (which really isn’t a reveal) that he owned multiple people in human bondage does not further endear him to me.

And there are no other characters with which I feel any sort of connection, save one.

There is a young woman, Lily, who is traveling with her husband mapping out the great plains.  He’s taken ill and she is determined to stay with him on his trip, despite the fact that they are nearing Cheyenne territory.  We see her devotion to him, we get a sample of her intelligence, but we know that there is something going on with her that makes her uncomfortable with her current situation.

And then the Cheyenne attack.  Lily and her husband, in an attempt to save the maps/the work, are heading for the trees and they are followed by a Cheyenne warrior that looks like a white man.  I am willing to look up spoilers to find out if he is, actually, a white man that was raised by the Cheyenne, because if not, even more fail on the part of the show.

The husband is killed and the warrior tries to kill Lily but she ends up fighting him and killing him first.  It was a well done scene, incredibly brutal, and one of the few that I had watched at that point that actually made me feel anything other than revulsion. 

We watch as Lily says goodbye to her dead husband, kissing him on the lips before running off with the maps, into the woods.  This was the point that really had my heart breaking.  She had just watched him die and he would have still been warm to the touch when she kissed him, an awful dichotomy of signals for life and death.  It was a affecting moment that worked within a larger story that just felt like race!fail.

I know that Common is in this show.  Sadly, I stopped watching before we got to see too much of his character.  Am I sad about that?  Yeah, I guess I am.  However, based on the portrayal of everyone else in the show up to that point, I didn’t have a lot of faith in the writers/show runners to give me a character that I would give a shit about.  Will I consider going back and trying the show again, if only to give Common a chance to woo me?  I don’t know, to be honest.

I’m also concerned about the hand waving that seems to be happening over the lack of Chinese characters in show.  We get a throwaway line from the piece’s villain regarding the use of Chinese workers by the Central Pacific Railroad, where he suggests that with that kind of labor, they’ll “never get out of Sacramento.” 

The railroads were built by minorities and people who were considered lower class and “less than.”  So why the hell is this show all about the white people?  I mean, twenty minutes in and Common had been seen but not heard.  What the hell is that about?

This is going to be a show that gets compared to Deadwood.  It just is.  And it is a show that I am sure a lot of people will really like.  And I bet that I will get all sorts of comments about being too serious and not understanding that this is a story.  But you know what?  I don’t care.

I get to spend my money and my time on whatever I want.  And I want to watch movies and TV shows, as well as read books, that have characters that I actually want to spend time with.  The story could be the greatest ever crafted but if I didn’t like the hero (or heroine) of the piece, then I’m not going to stick around.  Life is too short to waste my time on jackasses like Don Draper or Cullen Bohannen.  Maybe I am too sensitive.  That’s fine by me.

There is all this shock, disappointment and complaining about the end of the episode “Orpheus Descending”, about how nothing was answered and only more questions were asked.

(There are vague spoilers below for The Killing.  Here be dragons, enter at your own risk.)

Like the end of a season of The X-Files.  My surprise here wasn’t that they screwed with us, that they revealed a traitor and that the killer may not actually be the killer (at least the evidence that linked him to the crime was faked) and so on- my surprise was that they spent a lot of time and money asking “Who killed Rosie Larsen?”, promising to tell us, and then they DIDN’T.

Look, I get that the show wanted to do something different.  They didn’t want to be CSI or NCIS or Law & Order or Homicide: Life on the Street (although why they WOULDN’T want to be H:LotS, I have no idea- that show was my JAM)- they wanted to avoid the one hour procedural and really make the case dense and twisted and not easy for the audience to figure out.

Ignoring for the moment that there are some people who watch mystery/murder/procedurals because they LIKE guessing the end, the writers and producers of The Killing could have done a lot with the premise that they set out with.  A young girl, Rosie Larsen, is murdered, drowned in the trunk of a car used by the campaign of a mayoral candidate inSeattle.  Sounds pretty good, right?  Lots of suspects, lots of twists and turns, lots of ways to really work this case right.  And tons of ways to screw it up, if the aftermath reviews of the show are anything to go by.

The promise that we are given, based on both the genre of the story that is being told and by the network’s own advertising blitz, is that we will, in fact, find out who killed Rosie Larsen.  It’s a mystery.  We put in the time, watching the detectives find clues and then we get an answer.  Even The X-Files, which was a show notorious for not giving viewers an official, “we could take this to court, it’s so solid” ending, they at least let the viewers in on the gag from time to time.  Mulder and Scully didn’t see it, but YOU did and now YOU know the truth.

When you make a promise to your viewers or your readers, you are expected to fulfill that promise.  If you do not, you risk losing those viewers or readers for future episodes or projects.  Failing to deliver on the premise can feel like a manipulation, like a lie, and people do not like to be manipulated or lied to.

Now, there are shows that break the rules.  Shows that take a convention for a genre and they twist it.  But the thing about breaking or twisting the rules is that you have to start with what the rules dictate first and go on from there.  One of the reasons that Christopher Nolan’s Memento worked so well was that he really, truly understood story structure and how to craft a linear tale.  He had a tight story down on paper and then he was able to manipulate the order in which he revealed the story to the viewer, making his movie a one-of-a-kind watching experience.  The DVD of Memento allows you to watch the film as it was released or in linear order.  Both versions of the film make sense.  That is how you know that the writing works, that the skeleton of the story is sound.

There are shows that have great twists.  The secret to a great twist is that while it might at FIRST seem like a lie or a manipulation, it isn’t actually either of those things.  Look at a story like The Sixth Sense.  The reason that the twist ending works is that once you know the secret, it makes perfect sense.  You can go back and re-watch the film and all the clues are there, you just didn’t know what you were looking at.  You didn’t have the dictionary, so you couldn’t translate the text.  Once you do, it’s all there, very clearly laid out, and you don’t feel manipulated, you feel let in on the secret.

And that’s what you want.  You want the reader to feel that they have been let into a different world, where the rules have been changed and suddenly nothing is as it seems.  You want them to get excited to know more.  You want them to go back over the text you have provided previously (past episodes, previous chapters, etc.) looking for the clues that would have given it away if they had known what they were seeing and you want them to FIND those moments.  If you don’t give your reader or your viewer that opportunity, you will lose them.  You do not want to earn a reputation as a liar, as someone who is willing to screw the viewer over for a cheap, flashy moment.

When I was in college, I took a comparative literature class on detective stories.  The rules for a good detective story are very simple.  Give the reader everything they need to solve the case but don’t let them know that’s what they’ve been given.  Never end the story in such a way that the reader can’t go back and figure out how you did it.  The detective can never find things out off page and then reveal it later, when laying out the whos and the whats of the story.  That’s cheating and readers don’t like it.  You have to be upfront and honest, even if you hide that behind a few smoke and mirrors that can be easily seen through later in the book.

The Killing is failing in a number of ways.  They’re keeping information away from us so that we can’t solve the crime on our own.  They aren’t giving us much in the way of character commentary, especially on the part of our investigators.  We don’t get very many externally expressed theories or ideas based on the clues.  The stuff we get generally precedes the reveal of a red herring or some action that is later revealed to be a mistake.

We aren’t getting to know the characters well enough.  I don’t give a shit about any of them, except maybe Rosie Larsen’s parents.  And that’s mostly because Brent Sexton was Bobby on NBC’s late, great Life.  So, if you aren’t giving me enough of the mystery and you aren’t giving me enough character work, what’s left?  The setting?  Rainy, dreary Seattle?  Give me a break.  If I want to watch a lot of that weather, I’ll just pop in my Supernatural DVD set or stream some X-Files or Vampire Diaries on Netflix.

What they had going for them was the mystery.  It was intriguing, it was deep and dark and dangerous, and a young girl’s death was waiting to be accounted for.  What I had hoped they would do, once I heard that there was going to be a second season, was what Life did.  They solved one mystery but in the solving, they revealed a larger, deeper mystery that drove the story into season 2. 

It was satisfying because, as a viewer, you hate to get strung along and by giving us an answer to the question they’ve been pounding away at for 22 episodes, it feels good to watch.  But by presenting a new mystery, you give the viewer a reason to come back for the next installment.  And because the viewer knows they were given an answer before, it will be easier to keep them around for mystery #2, as the viewer trusts that they will eventually find out just what’s going on.

AMC could have revealed who really killed Rosie Larsen.  They could have let the viewer in on the secret even if the detectives did not know the answer.  They could have had the detectives solve the crime but uncover an even more sinister plot, one that will require yet another season to dig through.  They could have but they didn’t and, sadly, that makes me less likely to return to the series when it comes back to cable next year.

Remember their mistakes, dear reader, and consider them when crafting your own stories and series.  Remember that people who pay money for your product don’t want to feel cheated or lied to.  They want to feel satisfied at the end, no matter what the twist is.  You don’t have to give us a happy ending, you just have to give us an ending that makes sense based on what has come before.  It can be difficult to do so, yes, but it is worth the effort when you get loyal fans/readers coming back, time and again, to read your work.

I had an editor request pages from me this weekend, after a pitch.  I am very excited at the prospect of submitting and getting a response, good or bad, from a professional.

I started off pitching my current WIP, First Lady and the Dead Presidents, but that project is not in the traditional mold of romance.  It’s more chick lit/women’s fiction, which wasn’t what the editor was looking for right now.  FLatDP is a first person story, which I don’t usually even like to read, much less write myself, but I’ve got a story that my brain is convinced that I need to write so I am.  And it isn’t this editor’s thing, at least right now, but it could be LATER.

So I threw out The Drake, a wild pitch that I hoped would connect and it totally did!  She was interested in the world, the fact that Jack is a shape shifter, and that it’s written as a traditional romance (third person, balance POV with hero and heroine, etc.).

The only problem here is that I haven’t looked at The Drake in over a year.  When I left the story, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end but there were a number of story points that I wasn’t thrilled with.  I’m hoping that I can figure out how to fix those bits so that I can get out a revised synopsis and the first three chapters that were requested, in a timely manner. 

She asked to have them in July, so I think I have a good stretch of time in which to polish and correct.  And all I really need is for her to want to read the whole thing, right? 

After the OCC meeting this weekend, I am under the impression that every book that gets purchased has editing done.  Nothing goes out on the shelf without at least a little nipping and tucking (or implants) here or there.  What they’re looking for is a solid voice and a story that shines, even if it needs a little buff and polish.

That’s not to say that I’m not planning to make this the best synopsis and three pages she’s ever seen.  No, I understand that.  What I really need to remind myself of here is that there is room to maneuver and that I shouldn’t worry myself sick over the whole thing.

My plan for the next week is to re-read the entire manuscript and try to spot the weakest points.  There is a “highlight and flag” method that my girl Christy Finn has used in the past that I need to get more info on, so I can determine where I’m strong, where I’m weak and where I need to shore up the walls to survive the hurricane.

Once I’ve got that done, I’m going to pull out Carol Hughes’ “Deep Story” class notes and really dive in there.  I think that could really help me re-lay the foundation of The Drake and make sure that I have a strong enough world and characters to support the kind of story that I’m telling.

I’ve really been thinking about my plot and I think some of the problems that I was having when I left the story before have been worked out in my head.  I was playing around with the idea of my hero and heroine as soul mates tied together through time, which is something that has come out in my fan fiction in the past as well.  I think its part of my story, so I’m not surprised to see it come up here.

When I say “my story”, I’m referring to the basic story that every storyteller tells.  Steven Spielberg’s stories are about fathers and sons.  JAWS, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, Schindler’s List, even Jurassic Park- they’re all about the relationships (or lack thereof) between fathers and their sons. 

Tom Cruise, if you break down his roles to their simplest form, tells the same story from movie to movie as well.  He plays the talented man who has to prove that he deserves his place in the world.  Top Gun, Far and Away, The Firm, even Magnolia has him fighting to prove to someone other than himself that he deserves what he has.  And maybe that’s a part of it- outwardly he’s trying to prove to others that he has earned his place but really, it’s all about him proving it to himself. 

It’s something about us, as individual people that comes out in the tales that we spin and weaves its way through everything we put down on the page.  We all have something that has shaped us as people and we try to work that out in our art/craft. 

I think the idea of soul mates, of being destined to be with someone, is something that comes out in my work.  I might be wrong- I’m a notoriously bad judge of my own work- but I think that’s at least part of my story.  The rest of my story, I think that’s better saved for a different post but I can already tell that The Drake has the potential to really get all of my stories out and on the page in one text.

I’m excited to see what this editor has to say and the prospect of selling to her and her publishing house is just an amazing opportunity.  Here’s to not screwing it up.

The editing on The Drake is not going well. I had some luck with the first chapter but I’m just not feeling it. I’m trying to determine the cause.

Is it because I know the editing process is going to be hard? I mean, really, really hard? Knock down all the walls and just leave the basic foundation kind of hard?

Is it because I’m just not feeling the story itself? I’m asking myself some serious questions about my main characters and how I feel about spending 75-100K words on them. I have to admit that I’m ambivalent.

Am I just not understanding my characters? Do I need to do more background work so I can get a better handle on who they are?

Am I trying to do too much in this story or not enough?

I started this particular story when I was bitten by a plot bunny (it’s got big sharp, pointy teeth!!!!) after listening to a Harlequin Meet the Editors podcast. They mentioned that they don’t get enough dragons and I laughed to myself but then, I had an idea. About a dragon shape-shifter who was a detective. And then I was off.

But it’s been road block after road block with this story. I’ve really had to beat my head against anything I could find to make the story come out and even then, I’m not sure what I think about it.

I know that writing isn’t easy and I never thought that this would be an easy process but based on previous completed works, this just seems so much harder.

Is this a sign that this isn’t the story that I’m supposed to be telling right now? OR is this just something that happens from time to time and I need to just buck up, little soldier, and get it done?

I’ve been bitten by a different bunny (the teeth! Look at the teeth!) for what I think is a short story or novella. M/M, which means my editing and crit group options are limited or I need to find completely new ones. I was inspired by a friend of mine to write this one, about a farmer and an army medic who fall in love.

I really like writing Jake, my medic. He’s an Iraq war vet, just home to Ohio. He saw a lot of action, had to deal with a lot of injuries and death while he was there. He’s not okay. PTSD, sadness, depression- he’s got it all. But he wants to find something better in the world that can show him that it isn’t all bombs and blood and death.

I played around with the story a bit on Saturday and got out what I feel is a really strong scene between Jake and his family that touches on just what he came back to and where he’s coming back FROM. I’m excited about exploring Jake and his life and figuring out ways to make the choices that he needs to make for this story to work make sense to the reader.

Alex, the farmer, is a bit tougher. To start with, I’m not sure that Alex is the best first name for the character. I’m not sure if fits the guy that I’m trying to create and I don’t want to stick with that name for too long in case it starts to affect how I craft the character. I almost want to just name the guy Xander but I don’t want any Buffy bleed over. But you know, as I type that out, the more I think that Xander is the answer. Hmmm…

Alex’s problem is that he wanted to leave town and do something bigger but he was forced to come home and run the family farm for his grandfather. I’m trying to express his unhappiness without making Alex unlikable or whiney/ungrateful for what he has. I want the reader to like Alex, to feel for him and understand why he’s not happy but I feel like it’s a fine line between unhappy and whiney.

I know there is an audience for this kind of story- I’m that audience myself. I’m just not sure if I should jump the good ship Drake to write about my new boys.

I haven’t heard a peep from the editor that my pages were sent to in February so either they never got there, the editor didn’t bother to read it or they were so unacceptable that she tossed them (and if that’s the case, I’d rather not know).

I’m looking for advice, if anyone has any to give- writers out there, have you been in my shoes before? What did you do?

PS: Check out my money blog over at ING DIRECT’s We the Savers. Read, laugh, comment!

It’s been a few days since it happened but I was able to achieve my goal!  I finished the draft of my novel and was able to submit it for the EVA contest.

Am I happy with it?  Not completely.  I had to face the fact that there were a number of story lines that I wanted in the book that had to be cut so I could finish with a (somewhat) coherent storyline that had a beginning, middle and an end.

A lot of the layering that I was trying to achieve wasn’t finished to my liking.

I think the end is very abrupt.  That might just be me as the author being very picky and negative but that’s how I’m seeing it.

I keep thinking about my edits.  Where I’m going from here.  I wake up thinking about this book.  But I can’t seem to even open the file.

I’m terrified to see the mistakes in the manuscript that I sent to an editor.  TERRIFIED.

Let me be clear.  An editor is going to read my full manuscript.  She is an acquiring editor.  That is completely accurate.

I don’t have any expectation that she is going to be interested in picking up my book.  The only reason she’s even reading it is because a member of EVA knows this woman professionally and asked her to read it as a favor.

My expectation is to get back feedback and notes- what I’m doing right, what I’m doing wrong, etc.

That doesn’t mean that I want to send a mistake ridden document to someone who might look at my work as an acquiring editor in the future.

It’s completely my fault.  I overestimated my ability to fix my plot errors in such a short amount of time.  I failed to balance my writing with the rest of my life.  I made it so that I didn’t have a chance to do the polishing/editing that I needed because I had to send the doc to be printed so I could turn it in.  That’s all on me and I’m going to have to accept that, especially if the feedback is negative.

HOWEVER, I do feel like my characters are strong and interesting.  I love my sidekick, Roman, the GQ gay detective.  He’s funny, he’s suave and I love him.  Everyone who’s read his pages really liked him as well, so I know that at least ONE aspect of the novel connects with people.

I think that the writing itself flows.  I like the tone and have been told by others that they do as well.

So, I have a few positives and a few negatives battling it out in my brain right now.

And I still can’t open the document.  *sigh*

I’m gearing up for the OCC February online class, which is Candace Haven’s Fast Draft class.  The goal is to write a first draft in 14 days.  I think this class also has the Editing Hell section attached.  I BELIEVE that if you take the class and participate fully, you will have a completed first draft with edits by the end.

Anyone who is interested should go here and sign up!  You DO NOT have to be a member of OCC to take the class!  Join me and Finny and JUST GET IT DONE!

I’m trying to determine which project I’m going to work on in the Fast Draft class.  I just sent Finny a list of story ideas to get her opinion and I’m going to list them here as well, see what you all think.  Any that interest you?  Any that really, really don’t?

STORY IDEAS:

1)       First Lady and the Dead Presidents (working title)

1. This is the one with the daughters all named after the President of the United States.  The father dies and leaves his daughters his business but they have to complete a few tasks and all four daughters have to do their part or none of them get the money.  Oldest daughter is forced to come home from CA and run the business for one year.  She wants to sell it to Carter, a guy who was trying to buy it before the old man croaked.  I haven’t decided if this is going to be a mystery or just a family drama/romance.

2)   Moving Bodies

1. The story of three high school friends who are thrown back together because of murder.  They must dispose of the body of an abusive husband who was also working for the mob.  After mistakenly taking the mobs money, the ladies are on the run from both the law and the bad guys.  They need to get to Florida to dump the body in the Everglades, rebuild their friendships and avoid getting killed or arrested on their trip.  A hunky local Sheriff who wants to help thrown in to the mix might make this a romance but it feels more like a chic lit adventure story more than anything.

3)   Though the Heaven Should Fall

1. The American Revolution romance.  I have the outline pounded out but I don’t have the research done and I don’t want to get stymied by lack of info and sit there, looking at a blank screen.  But I really like Jensen (yeah, I know.  I couldn’t help it!) and Emma and wouldn’t mind spending serious time with them.

4)   Wolves of Indiana

1. The gay werewolf story.  I don’t even know.

5)   Red Slippers

1. A murder mystery set in 1950’s Ohio.  A young girl is murder, her face beaten in.  No one knows who she is and no young women are missing in the tiny community where her body is found.  The local Sherriff, the youngest Sherriff in the country at the time, is on the case.  No CSI teams and no internet, the Sherriff and his merry band must determine who she is and who killed her before the Country Fair rolls out of town and any suspects roll out with it.  This is based on a true story and in reality, they discovered who she was AND found her killer all because of the shoes on her feet.