D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

writing

Sunset Boulevard (not quite)

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I’ve taken a journey.  Haven’t quite returned yet, but I thought I’d drop by with a postcard to explain my extended absence from my blog.

This journey began 50 years ago.  I was 14 at the time. My mother had decided to find the family a new, larger house, something we could still afford on my father’s salary. She figured $20K would be about right. So she perused the ads in the paper and found a realtor to help her, and that realtor found a beautiful Spanish style house up in the hills above our little town to the east of L.A. It was a bit out of our price range–$40K to be precise. But my mother fell in love with it, had to have it, and my father could never say no to my mother, mostly for fear of getting his balls ripped out of their sockets. So…we  bought it, talking the sellers down to $38K.

She was amazing, this house.  I’ve described her previously. Here’s a picture of a painting my father did of her in her heyday.

Painting of Norma

In need of some work, but filled with little amenities you’d never find anyplace else. At the height of my romantic teens I ended up with a balcony Juliet would have envied. All the way to the right of the painting, over the windows to the kitchen and breakfast nook below my bedroom. I was happy there, for a time, but eventually at 20 I moved out to my own life (a story for another time).

Fifty years on, parents both gone for more than three years, and my sister and I finally put the poor rundown lady on the market. We couldn’t take care of her, and she was devolving into the Norma Desmond of residences, just waiting for her close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Selling real estate is a bitch. I suspect purchasing is as well, but I’ve never been there. We ended up with an agent who, thank the fates who brought her to us, guarded our interests like a bulldog. She posted the listing fairly late into a Friday night, and within 15 or 20 minutes, we already had an offer $15K above asking.  It was an as-is, cash-only listing.  We knew no bank would take a chance on Norma’s plumbing or roof, much less everything else that was wrong with her.

By Saturday morning two agents insisted on seeing her that very day. By Saturday afternoon, an impromptu open house had ensued, and my sister (I had to work) was escorting dozens of people through the place, filled with animals and trash and heaven knows what else, and many of them expressed an aching to own her, restore her, love her like we do.

Sunday brought the news that offers had risen to $50K over asking.  Unbelievable. Monday we’d reached $120K over.  Wow.

A series of small complications arose on Monday and the highest offer was rescinded, leaving us with another $105K in excess of asking price, and that’s the one that we chose.  That’s when the rollercoaster of offer, addendum and counter offer ensued, after which we entered escrow.

I’ve decided every time a house goes into escrow, another tree must die.  The paperwork is unending, with faxes heating up telephone wires. Not to mention the amount of gasoline consumed by the real estate agent as she dashes between office and client home to get “just this one last document” signed. Does it really have to be all this tough?

In the meantime, since this was all part of a trust and since I was no longer speaking to the lawyer who’d drawn it up, we had to get an EIN for tax purposes and open a trust account at the bank, then provide a deposit slip (non-existent, hence a letter on letterhead had to make do) for wiring of funds into the account when escrow closed.

But escrow didn’t close. Not when it was supposed to. Took an additional four days to get there.  We even had to put the buyer on notice, a buyer whose wife had apparently wanted the house for some time.  (They had submitted the original offer.)

So my life for the last month or so has been filled with: call the IRS, call the accountant, sign papers for hours and hours, and a plethora of other seemingly meaningless busy work all designed, I believe, to keep me from concentrating on the thing I’ve just retired from my equally meaningless job to work at full-time—writing.

I’m nearly back now. Distributing the funds remains, and I dread working out all that math, but I will.

And in the meantime, our agelessly beautiful, aged Norma Desmond awaits her resurrection. Knowing she will shine for the neighborhood to see and to marvel at was worth everything.  Oh, and the cash helped, a little.

Fatal Retribution by Diana Graves, A Review

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I love finding a new female hero who steps onto the stage at the beginning of the book already strong and willing to grow stronger. Raina Kirkland is just such a hero. Raina lives in a world no one I know has ever visited even though Fatal Retribution is set in the Pacific Northwest. Her world is our world turned on its head, where elfs and vampires and witches and many more paranormal entities reside, existing within a society which knows them and for the most part accepts them as part of the landscape. To me, a novice to this particular subset of urban paranormal novels, the only word I could use to describe it is steampunk.
Raina’s tale begins with her joining her siblings for a camping trip which turns into the camp-out from hell as they are attacked by a raging newly “born” vampire. Two of her brothers are bitten and must undergo dying and being reborn in a VCC (Vampire Care Center–see what I mean about an alternate reality?) before being allowed back out into the world. For some reason, Raina, part elf, part witch and part human, survives her bite and must learn what it means to be a “living” vampire. It all has to do with genetics, and I must say that Graves does an admirable job of explaining the physiology behind vampirism as she takes us through Raina’s experiences and the experiences of her relatives and friends, old and new.
Raina, like any only slightly post-adolescent young woman, suffers from self-esteem issues and endures a meddling mother who means well but refuses to admit that her little girl is a grownup. (Living at home doesn’t help.) And yet, she is feisty and forever questioning what she doesn’t yet understand. No waiting for some guy to come along and save her; this gal has spunk and she uses it as she becomes involved in the mystery of who is illegally offering humans the opportunity to become immortal by shooting up altered vampire blood.
My only quibble with Fatal Retribution is the grammar and word usage issue. Graves is an excellent storyteller, but too often one gets caught up in the lack of punctuation that could have helped a sentence make sense and the use of the wrong word, usually a homonym of the correct word. I would have given a 5-star review had the quality of the text come up to the delight of the storytelling. Regardless, I do recommend it and look forward to more from Graves’ prolific imagination.

FREE

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For the heroic teenager inside every a woman, a female hero who carries none of the usual female baggage into the story.  In Fractured, the first book of the Lisen of Solsta trilogy, Lisen views her non-sexist world of Garla through the eyes of a 17-year-old young woman who has just returned from a 7-year sabbatical on modern-day Earth.  Get her for free July 1-31 only.  Fractured on Smashwords in nearly  every possible e-reader format.  Just fill in the code at the top of the page when you check out.

I Don’t Want to be One of Those

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I have often thought of myself as the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes.  You know, the one who points out the emperor’s buck naked?  I look at things that others take for granted and ask WTF.  This does not aid my popularity.  Most people don’t want to be pointed out as fools, no matter how the fairy story goes.  I’m about to open my mouth again, so get ready for the tar-and-ruffled-feathering.

I signed on to Facebook back in December of 2010 for the sole purpose of using it to promote my writing.  I had nothing published at the time, but I figured I’d require some time to adjust to social media.  I adjusted, and not quite a year ago I established a page for my series, Lisen of Solsta.  Dropped like a dead balloon.  An initial rush of 18 likes and then nothing for many moons.  I let the page languish, occasionally posted bits of news and then moved on, remaining active on my personal page.

About a month ago, after posting a comment to Anne Rice’s page, I was contacted by a wonderful man who edits books for a living and who, even after I declined his offer of editing my next book, shared my page with others and invited them to like it.  I got to 30 likes within a couple of days.  This opened up the world of Facebook’s analysis and various data on the activity on my page.

Over the next several weeks, I got to 49, but I’ve been stuck there for a week.  Can’t get one more person to like my page to get me up to 50, and I’ve been somewhat of a pain in the butt about it.  How come all these other writers are crowing about 300 likes, 400 likes, and I can’t even get to 50.  Yeah, how come?  I don’t know the answer, but I do know something and I’m about to dress down the emperor.

Here’s how I likely got most of likes 19 through 49.  Message to my page:  “Hi, just liked your page.  Please like mine.”  With appropriate link to get me there.  Dutifully I would comply.   I was networking, and this was great.  Making friends with other writers.  What a rush!  What I didn’t know was a page cannot like a page, so all those pages liking my page didn’t count towards my quantity of likes.  Nor did my like count if I got there directly from my page.  (Check it out; you don’t even have to like it.)

But I digress, ever so slightly.  My point is this.  Anne Rice has over 700,000 likes.  Her “People of the Page” are readers of her books, fans of her books, hence fans of hers.  They didn’t make a deal with her that if they liked her page, she’d reciprocate by liking theirs.  She earned those likes because she is a writer who has written multiple best sellers and influenced these people’s lives to the point where they wanted to share some little part of her by participating on her page.

Not so with my likes #19 through #49.  I had to barter for their love.  Are any of them actually interested in what I’ve written?  I believe one or two have bought my book, and maybe they’ll read it one day.  But the rest?  A deal struck between two attention-starving artists.  How can that be right?

And more.  Most of these writers with their multiple hundreds of likes pound out one book, seek out little or no counsel on what they’ve written, maybe edit it once, maybe—just maybe—proofread it once, then toss it up onto Amazon for Kindle publication.  Because that’s all there is to writing, right?  Who cares if the grammar and punctuation suck?  Who cares if the sentence structure is shit?  Who cares if the formatting looks entirely unprofessional?  Writing is writing, right?

Wrong.  Writing is a craft, a skill honed over time.  Like a blacksmith with a sword, a real writer pounds the steel once and calls it a first draft, then folds it over on itself, often  many, many times, until  she can offer up a weapon which in its unity is much stronger than its components (in this case, the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the scenes and the chapters become a work of art known as a book).  She allows others to beat the steel so that her weaknesses get worked out of the metal by the strengths of others.  Writing is a craft, and it is work.  Making up a story isn’t writing; it is merely mental masturbation.  It is in the execution that mastery can shine, but only if one is willing to give over large chunks of her soul.

I know I’ve gone on long enough for a single blog, but here’s the thing.  All those likes for writers (many of whom do not respect the craft) from other writers (many of whom do not respect the craft) are empty.  Just a popularity contest.  Yeah, the more likes you have, the more attention Facebook pays you, but they signify one thing and one thing only—how many asses you had to kiss to get them.  These people aren’t your fans; they’re bartering partners.  I’d rather my likes came from my fans.  And if that number remains at 18, I can live with that.  Because those people can’t wait to read my second book, and I don’t want to disappoint them.

Check out my web site which will connect you with, amongst other things, my Lisen of Solsta Facebook page.

The Prize

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Months ago I began my first “official” post to this blog by talking about my adventures in self-publishing and why I’d taken on such a daunting task.  It was a multiple-choice question, with “All of the Above” being the correct answer.  One of the answers (answer B, I believe) encompassed in that All of the Above was “I wanted it read, in its entirety, by someone who felt no imperative to like it.  No imperative to hate it either.”

For some reason I can’t fathom, I’ve put off sharing the results of that adventure on my blog.  I’m shameless in shouting it from the rooftops (irritating as well), but I’ve said nothing here.

Cue the drumroll….

I received my review from IndieReader the beginning of this month, and although I didn’t win, I did get a 5-star review from a reviewer who mirrored back everything I’d stuffed into my little 304 page tome.  She GOT it!  Not only did she get it, but I know now that my vision manifests on the page with such clarity that it remains intact once it reaches the reader .

Do you know how amazing to me that is?  I’ve been living with this vision for over 30 years.  Its ultimate fulfillment does, admittedly, remain incomplete until I’ve finished the last book in the trilogy.  (Do people even refer to them as “trilogies” anymore?  Or do they just use “series” to cover all contingencies?  Hmmm.)

There is a key to this reaching, and my reviewer even mentioned it.  A few years back, I made the decision to send Lisen, the hero of the piece, to spend a few years on earth.  Important years, ages 10 through 17.  Now we view a large part of the story and the strange, nonsexist world in which its characters live through the eyes of someone who knows us as her own.  She may be Garlan, but she often steps back to study her world as we as humans would, giving the reader a sense of accessibility that had previously been lacking.

I did it.  I wrote my best.  I rewrote my best.  I formatted for publication my best.  I designed a “professional” cover even though I’m anything but an artist.  I put every bit of best that I possess into Lisen and into Fractured, and it worked.  I hope one day that the borders of Lisen’s niche expand to include many more readers than she currently has nipping at my heals for volume 2 (Tainted, due out late this year).  In the meantime, I take pride in the fact that although I didn’t win a prize from IndieReader, to me I won the whole damn lottery.

Shut up and Write

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I made a significant decision today about how I’ve been approaching the writing/rewriting of book 2 (Tainted) in my trilogy (Lisen of Solsta).  I’m going to let the forest be.

As those few who frequent my blog know, I’m writing a trilogy about a young woman named Lisen who believes she was born on Earth but discovers within a few pages of the beginning of book 1 (Fractured) that she is not human, and Earth is not her home.

What are now books 1 and 2 were once book 1 of a slightly different trilogy in which Lisen never spent any time on Earth.  I invested a couple of years into pulling that book together.  A couple of drafts made their way through my writing group.  And then I changed everything.

The short of it is—Lisen went to Earth and then came back, and I broke up the big book into two books with a concluding volume still in the imagining process at the moment (though my notes are quite detailed and I do know how it ends).  I worked on Fractured for a couple more years, continually refining until I was satisfied.  Then I independently published it, both in paper and electronically, and entered it in a couple of contests, the results of which are still pending.

Although I have tackled (and achieved) perfecting the electronic version over the last several months, I’ve also had pressure from my solid block of a dozen or so fans who continue to clamor for Tainted.  So I’ve kept at the reworking of the draft which, when I began, lacked any reference to Lisen’s Earth experiences and contained references to plot points which I chose to eliminate in order to make room for new, more productive twists and turns.

(It is truly amazing how many little tiny changes must be made in order to accommodate one added character.  And the choices I’d made proved more complicated to incorporate than I’d imagined.  Not complaining, mind.  They’re good, and they’re worth it, but here’s where the aforementioned decision comes in.  Are you still with me?)

Part of my process includes what I’ve come to call the read-aloud.  (I recommend that all writers read their work out loud to themselves in a quiet room with no interruptions.  Read it more than once.  And perhaps more importantly—LISTEN as you read.)  For some reason, in this mightily modified draft, I’ve done whatever I can to avoid the read-aloud.  I put off writing for days because I have a scene awaiting that step.

Today I realized that I’m working with a draft that I’ve already vocalized multiple times.  Yeah, I’m adding stuff and taking stuff out, but who cares in this draft.  I’m going to be back to work on it at least once more (two or three times more for the newly added scenes), so why stress over it now?

Because right now I’m clearing my forest of old branches and laying down new seed.  Which means when I’m done, the forest will have altered in ways I can’t see now.  I’ll only be able to see the damn forest once the trees have settled into place.  So tonight, three scenes went to the printer in one day (rather than the usual one scene in three or four days), and now I’m more than two-thirds of the way through.  How’s that for progress.