Month: August 2012

I *HEART* the HEA

No seriously, I am very, extremely, completely, (insert adverb here), fond of the Happily Ever After. Just love it! Won’t even read or watch a movie that won’t guarantee me a HEA. Well … except for Gangster flicks. Every rule has to have an exception.

This may lead you to wonder… if Gen loves the Happily Ever After, but also loves writing about gangsters, how on earth can she reconcile the two? Well, given the theme of the Downey Trilogy is about a very moral cop who loves his gangster father, I think you should probably brace yourself for my even greater love of figuring out how two opposing ideas can live in harmony.

The truth is, it’s not about the HEA, it’s that I love a JUSTIFIED ending. And the HEA is justified in most plot lines when it’s been earned, just as the nonHEA is justified in certain endings, which in a way, if you think about it makes it a HEA ending for certain characters. If you give a HEA out when there was never any conflict to begin with isn’t it a bit anti-climactic? Likewise, making an unhappy ending for some characters while giving others one and not really explaining why just shows you have a love for the random and not necessarily a well deserved ending. See what I’m saying? No?

I know, I know … What the Hell is Gen rambling about now?

(I lobtser HATE Godfather III, but simply adore to the point of having it nearly memorized Godfather I & II, if that gives you a clue.)

Anyway, I love it when characters go through Hell. I think every author owes it to their audience to make their characters — whether these are dark characters or Mary Sue perfect characters — suffer a bit, actually quite a bit, before giving them their HEA. And similarly, I feel if you are going to write an UNhappy ending give me a damn good reason why that guy had to die alone next to a stray dog and not the OTHER ‘bad’ guy who died surrounded by his beloved tomatoes and grandchild. Bittersweet endings have their place, like the first in a series or an actual recounting of history, but not after you’ve already made the character suffer in other ways. I’m. Just. Sayin.

Similarly, I’ve always really hated Romeo and Juliet. No, it’s true. It’s not really because of the unhappy ending, it’s because of the inherent stupidity of the two main protagonists. I mean come ON! I’ve been fourteen. All passionately in luuuuurve. But faking your death, then not taking two seconds to doubt the veracity of what you’re seeing and offing yourself for real? I was never that dim-witted when I was fourteen. That’s taking hyperbole and a flair for dramatics to the extreme. No?

See, even as a teenager when first reading it I remember thinking, if I had written Romeo & Juliet it would go something like this:

Romeo gets his priest (who I think everyone realizes was on the take the whole time, right?) to secure passage out of town. Juliet sews a bunch of family jewels into their clothes to pay for the journey. If they have to do the whole over-the-top faking death thing they can stage an explosion/accident (ala Count of Monte Cristo) and they both fake out not only their families but the priest himself (no witnesses!) then they go hide out in a town in Sicily and create their own Mafia family and then decades later they come back to Verona and literally take over the town, round up their surviving ‘loved’ ones, all fuck you bitches, bet you wish you’d just let us get married now huh? See, then all the unreasonable warmongering ones got their just deserts and the ones who just wanted to get the hibbity on got to be together, but only after they worked hard for it. Not to mention your two main characters are no longer written as simpering morons but badass take charge entrepreneurs.

But … that’s probably just me.

I’m weird like that.

Romeo: Corleone’s that way, baby. I got a crib there and everything.
Juliet: Oh, Romeo, I lurve it when you strap your gangster on…

There’s nothing more important than family

especially when they leave you alone…

People often compare writing to childbirth and it’s true that there is a huge cathartic relief to getting an idea that’s been festering in your brain out on paper (or pixels as the case may be). But likewise, when life gets in the way it’s like Braxton-Hicks contractions sending you to the hospital only to be sent home, tired and disappointed.

That’s what last week was like for me. It seemed like all the other hats I had to wear were preventing me from getting the time to wear the writer hat. And I am convinced there is nothing more frustrating than not being able to complete a thought due to constant interruptions. It leaves you with this sense of scatter-brained impotence. That’s the danger of being a one woman band. I’m a mother, housekeeper, friend, community member, ad hoc nurse to sick children, wife, daughter, sister, apparently on every political phone list known to mankind, AND writer, editor, promoter.

But sometimes you need that certain special someone in your life to remind you that the very connections (wife, mother, etc) that spread you thin are there to help you when you are stretched too thin.

Yesterday my husband (possibly for his own sanity’s sake due to having to live with my constant moaning) took all distractions but the sick kid away for an entire afternoon and evening, and bribed said sick kid into leaving his mother alone with Star Wars movies and games allowing me to get not only some writing done but some editing and … the biggest shocker of all … READING!

I feel like I gave birth to triplets!

Huzzah! … Drinks all around … I just might get this sequel out by January after all!

*smooches*

A whiskey in your coffee kind of day…

Sometimes you just have to let go and let it roll, you know?

I came to the sad truth last night that my children are all singularly and collectively way more funny than their mother. If I had a dollar for every time someone’s urged me to write abook about the funny things my kids say and do… but I’m reasonably certain there’s already been a coffetable book published of the cute and funny things someone else’s kid says. Of course, everything has already been published at least once. Aren’t there only like, six plots in existence, really?

What was I saying?

Surely, by now you are used to the rambling. It’s what I’m internet famous for. That, and the sailor’s mouth. And my sloppy gangster love (but for them old time gangsters, not the ones today who can’t even define the word omerta), not to be confused with my equal sloppy love for law enforcement. Because I love them both, or rather the battle between the two. I love a good chess game, feud, or battle of wills. Better than whiskey in your coffee. Two opposites combined for an extra special zing!

So just now I was thinking while enjoying my Irish coffee, for every bad day like the one I was having yesterday and the day before, there’s a great day lurking around the corner. And just when you think no one but your close friends are noticing, some stranger mentions something in an offhand way that makes you realize maybe, sometimes, you’re just as funny as a six year old.

So thank you friends and strangers for being the whiskey in my coffee!

PS– More character updates in the “More about the Downey Trilogy” tab. I also edited the Downey Family tree so it’s easier to see the age grades/generations for who is contemporaneous to whom.

So much TRUTH

seanmchandler's avatarWords I Stole from Other Countries

I’ve actually been sitting on this article for several months now, but I never published it because it came from a pretty dark place.  This piece was sort of like Sauron’s ring for me.  I was content to let it sit in the shadows and never speak of it and at one point I even considered destroying it.  How did it come into being?  Well, I was pretty damn disheartened when I could not find an agent or publisher for my first book The Notice.  I spent months slaving away on that book and every person who read it told me it was wonderful.  Maybe that was part of the problem.  My mother cried like four times while reading it.  I was 99% certain I had a bestseller in my hands and you can probably guess what happened:  Not one agent wanted to read it.  I could have written…

View original post 2,058 more words

Social Networking: About as exhausting as childbirth

Nah, I kid… (bahdumpbump)

Okeydokey, to your right is a new SubPage of the First, I Love You tab called FILY Quotes, where you can have a chapter by chapter snippet from the book, as previously shared on Facebook.

You will also find a new page called More about the Downey Trilogy which will contain little facts about all the characters, and not just the main six of the trilogy.

I also joined — actually I had previously joined and forgotten entirely I had joined (That’s so Gen!) — Networked Blogs which I guess aggregates all the different social media I am on. I kind of thought that’s what WordPress does here on this site, but heck whatever, whatever, the more exposure the merrier … oooh look at that, another unintentional reference to childbirth. Freud would be so proud.

Happy clicking my friends! And keep spreading the word, birds… without you, Indie authors cannot survive. You are like the doula, midwife and nurse to our little book-birthing process … to beat the childbirth theme to its last bloody twitch…

Lawd … is it 5:00 yet? ;P

So as my trials and tribulations continue in my desperate campaign to get Apple to categorize the book in the right Genre (which I RESENT having to further distinguish beyond Contemporary Fiction, but let’s at least get it out of the Plays and Poetry section … foresooth…)
Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, remembered this exceptionally funny piece by Guy at the Red Pen of Doom. Take a gander.

Cuz fun is necessary. Cuz.

Just a quick update to say I will be making a page later with all the quotes I have put up on the Facebook page, along with the character background facts I am going to start sharing on the page. If I get time, I will put up the Downey-Anastasio kinship chart I made. (All the fellow Anthropologists geek out a bit. ;P )

In the mean time I will leave you with a bit of wisdom from my youngest child, Sam:

“Mama, you didn’t get the time to have fun yesterday. Cuz we have to do that every day. Cuz.” (said while emphatically nodding)

🙂

War Stories from an Old Whore: Why I Went Indie

War Stories from an Old Whore: Why I Went Indie.

Seems like … I was just saying something about this. Only this is better written and from a more reliable source. ;P

Wuuuut?! Snow White is a snitch?

So, as mentioned before, my husband and I are making our way through our summer Red Shirt programs. Last night I made it up to episode 18 of Once Upon a Time.

Oh Snow … Snow, Snow, Snow. Never rat out your friends. This turns them into Maniacal Evil Soul Crushing Bitches! It doesn’t matter your ‘pure as the driven snow’ child heart was in the right place. As they say in Chicago, “Keep your mouth shut!”.

Naw, I’m kidding.

I knew it was you, Snow!

Well, maybe not. To think all that evil heart-demolishing the Queen has done could have been prevented by the axiom of ‘Mind your own business’! I mean, as the show likes to hammer into its audience, ‘Evil is not born, it’s created.’

Which, yeah. Anthropologists all over the world nod in affirmation.

This reminds me of an argument my husband and I once had in the middle of the night as we were watching some show, I think it was Rizzoli and Isles or maybe Mobwives or perhaps I was mocking his beloved Criminal Minds, I don’t remember, but I made the comment that criminals deserve love too and their family members should never have to apologize for loving them. This devovled into an argument about whether or not sociopaths are capable of love and therefore whether they deserve the devotion of their family and friends or whether it’s the ulitmate con (his point of view).

What, doesn’t everyone have philosophical debates with their significant others in the middle of the night? No? *crickets*

True, he loves his cops shows, but he especially loves them when the cops in question dance all over the shades of grey (Damn you EL James!) as you see in The Shield or The Wire. So I was surprised he took this hard line stance. See, for me, I luuurve complicated family relations involving morality and situationally justifiable law breaking from Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo all the way to The Godfather. And I believe that no matter what side of the Thin Blue Line you are on, if you have a Code you live by … you live and die by it. But you were taught that code. It’s not a given. The issue of morality always has to be contextualized by its setting. And similarly, people are taught how and what it means to love people in their own families. Love is even more irrational than morality. So to debate whether anyone is deserving of love is specious to me.

So it should come to no one’s surprise that in response to his comment “Is this supposed to make me feel sympathetic to Regina?” I said, yes of course! She was taught her nastiness. Isn’t that the point? No one is saying it’s ok to rip a man’s heart out of his chest and pulverize it. It’s just some of us are saying if only Snow had kept her trap shut, if only the King weren’t such a douche, if only Regina’s mother weren’t an abusive controlling sociopath … and a thousand other if onlys that are actually what make the storyline compelling.

Yes, right is right and wrong is wrong (within your culturally taught emic worldview) but isn’t it simply delicious getting to know all the sides of a person?

“This was like discovering your vanilla cupcake had a chocolate fudge center.” — Tommy Gates, “First, I Love You”

Psssstttt …..

Anxious to get a peak at Second of All, the second book in the Downey Trilogy?

Well, wait no longer! I have posted the prologue in the tab to your right ——–>

It’s not terribly spoilery, but if you haven’t finished First, I Love You … well, why haven’t you? ;P

 

In other news, still haven’t figured out the delay on the genre mis-coding. But I have noticed everyone but Barnes & Noble sure do like that price drop. *Kanye shrug*