Oh, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is

One of my reader friends, Emma, sent me a copy of an essay by Maj-Britt Rosenbaum, MD titled Sabbatical. I wish I could find a copy of this article on-line because it’s probably the best thing I’ve read on the topic. Rosenbaum perfectly captures the mix of anticipation and anxiety triggered by the very thought of that much “free” time.

“The private fantasy of uninterrupted time--time to waste, time to pour through my fingers if I want to, time to savor, time to loll in--has a different emotional texture than planned time off. Time extracted from the ongoing stream of schedules, commitments, and responsibilities, always balanced against such counterweights as “Can I afford it?” “Do I deserve it?” “What are my responsibilities?” “Will it be worth it?” and “Dare I, can I actually get away with it?”

All this -- and more -- is constantly churning in the back of my mind as I get closer and closer to the end of the year. Am I really going to do this?

In fact, it’s pretty much too late to turn back now. I’ve steadily (stubbornly?) resisted taking on any commitments for 2012, and now most of my publisher’s schedules are filled. If I publish anything next year it will be self-published.

That in itself is exciting. A new direction. A new challenge. A new adventure.

But doubts whisper in my other ear. I’ve worked hard to reach this point, the point of being able to even consider taking a serious amount of time off. Am I subconsciously sabotaging my success?

 Will I miss my fantasy, so shiny and satisfying, so “unattainable”--an ideal I can wistfully compare to my busy, hectic life? With no future fantasy beckoning in the distance, will I instead look back to these busy days as the more rewarding times, when what I did mattered, when I felt useful, and “good,” because I did for others?

How ingrained the work ethic is: to contribute, to excel, to climb the mountain, to use my “gifts” to do, to do, to do--to produce, to accomplish, to succeed.

Oh yes. I feel guilty even contemplating rewarding myself with sabbatical. Especially when everyone I know is busting their butt to make ends meet, to hit their goals, to carve a career out of ice.

Not that I’m choosing a sabbatical as a reward. I’m burnt out. I’ve been burnt out for nearly two years. But so what? I can still produce. The fact that I’ve come to dread writing is sort of beside the point, right? Because as long as I can function, it seems like I ought to.

I suppose that’s why the decision to go on sabbatical feels increasingly like a reward and not therapy.

All I want is the chance to stand still for a while, to reflect, to feel, to listen more carefully to my own voice. Just to wait and see what bubbles up. One fear is that nothing will “bubble up,” that no combustion, no energy will be generated. I fear that only cold wind blows in there--I fear a desert inside.

Yes. Exactly. Worse…right now I can function. I can produce. What if I come back from this break and I’ve lost the ability to drive myself forward, to work under this kind of pressure? What if it turns out I can’t refill the creative well and on top of that, I’ve lost the discipline to march on without water in my canteen?

What then?

It’s a risk. Will readers remember me in a year in a genre where there a couple hundred new titles every month?

I wake up at night thinking are you really going to do this? And yet…and yet…

I prefer to see it as a test run, a chance to find out if I have filled my house with enough life. I prefer to see it as an opportunity to listen to--and to express--my own voice, not the echo of others, not what they want to hear, what they want me to do, but just because, just because.

Maybe it is a mistake. But then, leaving the security of my day job was a risk too, and I’ve never regretted that decision. Not for one moment. I don’t know if this sabbatical will bring equally dramatic results to my life, but I know that for better or worse, I’m going to do it.

And in an odd way, making this decision to leave, grabbing this chance, feels like taking the first step to coming back.

The Mummy Walks

Hopefully onto your Kindle or Kobo or Nook or reading device of your choice.

Yep, Mummy Dearest is live and currently haunting the #1 slot on Amazon's Gay & Gay & Lesbian lists.

Genre: Contemporary, Gay, Holidays

Publication Date: 10-04-2011

Length: Novella

ISBN: 978-1-60928-536-4

Series: The XOXO Files

Price: $3.50

BLURB:

The truth is out there. Way, way, way out there!

The XOXO Files, Book 1

Drew Lawson is racing against the clock. He’s got a twenty-four-hour window to authenticate the mummy of Princess Merneith. If he’s not at his boyfriend’s garden party when that window closes, it’ll be the final nail in their relationship coffin.

The last thing he needs traipsing on the final shred of his patience is brash, handsome reality show host Fraser Fortune, who’s scheduled to film a documentary about the mummy’s Halloween curse.

The opportunity to film a bona-fide professor examining the mummy is exactly the aura of authenticity Fraser needs. Except the grumpy PhD is a pompous ass on leave from his ivory tower. Yet something about Drew has Fraser using a word he doesn’t normally have to draw upon: please.

With no time to waste—and a spark of attraction he can’t deny—Drew reluctantly agrees to let Fraser follow his every move as he unwraps the mummy’s secrets. Soon they’re both making moves behind the scenes that even the dead can’t ignore…

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Product Warnings

Whoso shall ever open this tomb, er, book shall suffer the curse of the Pharaohs. Okay, maybe not. But set aside a chunk of time for marauding mummies, too many cosmopolitans, illicit sex in hotel rooms, and other non-academic shenanigans.

You can purchase through All Romance Ebooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Samhain itself...

Float Like a Butterfly Sting Like a Bee

Speaking of short stories, I’ve been thinking a lot about the creative process lately. Maybe too much, because over-thinking and over-analyzing can make you stilted and self-conscious in your craft.

But anyway, I’ve been mulling over where ideas for stories come from. Does everyone get ideas for stories? And, if so, what form do those ideas take? Why do only some people write the stories that occur to them? I mean, I understand why everyone wouldn’t choose to publish everything, but just the process of writing those stories out…there’s something satisfying about that, something that completes the thought.

And yet, once the story is written, it dies out of my brain. So in one sense, putting the dream or fantasy into a story form almost spoils it….

Hm.

Maybe spoils isn’t the right term.  But it changes it. I can’t read my stories and enjoy them in the same way that I enjoyed the initial idea or dream. Once it’s in story form it becomes technique and craft and stops being a dream or a fantasy or whatever story ideas are.

I can’t see my stories as others do. No writer can. Which is natural. But also weird.

Anyway, there are a lot of yellow jackets and bees in the yard right now -- they get very aggressive this time of year -- and as I was splashing around in the pool the other day, I suddenly remembered an essay I’d read years ago by Elizabeth Choi. It was about a woman (Choi) on a hiking trip with her boyfriend. She gets stung by a yellow jacket and discovers the hard way that she’s allergic. That experience changes her negative feelings about marriage and her antipathy toward commitment.

So I was thinking about bees and bee stings and wondering if I too might be allergic and not know it, and inevitably a story began to unfold in my mind starting with a first line.

“About last night,” I began awkwardly.

There I floated, staring up at the clouds moving across the sky, and I began to wonder what this particular situation would entail where one guy -- probably the “I” character -- gets stung by a bee, and how or why it would make a difference in his life and his relationship with….

With Grahaem.

Grahaem handed me the red plastic coffee cup. Steam rose from the fragrant liquid.

            “Yeah,” he said. No particular inflection, but I knew my worst fears were confirmed.

Worst fears about what?

Well, obviously I need to write an entirely different story from Choi’s essay. So the point of the story must change and the narrator can’t be the one who doesn’t want to be in a relationship. Which means Grahaem must be. Which means that “I” (what is this guy’s name?) does want the relationship.

Or does he?

Yeah, he does.

Okay. That’s sort of sad. Why doesn’t Grahaem want “I” when I is such a cute, funny, sweet guy? Why are they out camping -- which they must be if the steaming coffee is being served in red plastic cups -- if Grahaem doesn’t want “I”?

Oh. Because Grahaem does like “I” a lot but he’s already been in a relationship. The best relationship anyone could have. The perfect relationship. With…

Jase.

Who is dead.

Poor Grahaem.

He’s already had the best that love has to offer. How can poor “I” compete? Plus the pain of losing that ultimate perfect love is enough to make anyone terrified of risking it all again. And “I” (what is his name?) isn’t anything like Mr. Perfect AKA Jase.

And there it is. Not enough of a plot for a novella. Just a short story about a day that changes everything for Grahaem and…whatever the hell his name is. An awful day. A day where everything goes wrong that can possibly go wrong including anaphylactic shock. And yet, despite it all, everything turns out well. A perfectly awful day…a perfect day.

Perfect Day.

And that’s it. Away I go, spilling it out as fast as I can without stopping to correct or fill in the blanks because it’s crucial to get the bones down before it all starts to slip away.

I sipped the coffee and stared at the meadow the blue tent the fields of gold beyond that in the early morning mist looked like a golden lake in the distance.

            Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

            From the beginning -- practically the beginning -- from the first night I’d spent at Grahaem’s X apartment he’d said he didn’t want anything serious. Not looking for anything serious. Not looking for a relationship.

            It didn’t get much clearer than that.

            But the problem was Grahaem was everything I wanted.

            He was thirty seven and a geologist. Okay, geology wasn’t part of the dream man job description. In fact, I’d always pictured my dream man more GQ than Field and Stream, but Grahaem with his slow grin and gray eyes -- gray, not blue or green -- and that little touch of silver in the dark hair at temples and his wide shoulders and narrow hips and his confident straight stance like an old time explorer surveying the vistas -- with his easy laugh and his maps and compasses and soft flannel shirts.

            Short story long, I guess. I fell in love.

            Despite my best intentions. Despite his warnings.

            I fell in love.

  And that’s how a story begins.

You Get What You Pay For

I happened upon a three star Amazon review for "The French Have a Word for It" wherein the reviewer stated:

I know it only cost $1.49, but it's only 631 locations (translation for the rest of us: 8,362 words -- or 20 pages) there are free sample downloads that length. So while Lanyon is a skilled writer, this is really just a snippet and I'm not going to buy anymore stories this length because they are too short to satisfy me. Colin is a young artist, Thomas is significantly older and used to be his body guard, and they bump into each other in Paris...

There is nothing wrong with the writing or the ideas here, it's just too short to build any meaning for me.

Now, not everyone loves short stories. I do get that. But where did the idea that all short fiction should be free come from?

You don’t get this attitude from those readers still buying print books. But maybe that’s because they’re under the (false) impression that the bulk of a book’s price has to do with the physical end product?

I have to admit that review -- those comments -- floored me. Are a lot of ebook readers this far out of touch with publishing reality? Are they honestly this spoiled? Or is it simply that because so many readers in this genre come from a fan fiction background where all the stories are free, they don’t grasp the fact that writing is a skill and a trade like any other, and the practitioners of that trade need to earn a living?

If skilled writers can’t earn a living, then you won’t have skilled writers penning your stories. You’ll have fiction from people who have trouble giving their stuff away. Oh yes! On another Amazon forum they’re debating that very thing. Debating whether Amazon ought to charge authors upload fees (one person suggested $500 - 1000. ) as means of weeding out all the dreck that is currently showing up at low, low prices and apparently making it too hard to find good stories.

Yeesh.

Come to think of it, maybe the bigger concern here is we might have a generation growing up that can’t tell the difference between a snippet and a short story. There is a difference. It has to do with plot and point. I think most readers get that, right? Please tell me this woman is the exception and not the rule of our new book buying paradigm because there are writers who specialize in short fiction. They make a living at short fiction. The short story is a perfectly valid art form, and while print markets for individual stories are dwindling, the market for anthologies is growing. Magazines like Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen still pay around 5 - 8 cents a word.

I happen to love writing short stories, but not so much that I would write them for free.

A Thankless Task

I’ve been relaxing between projects by watching old movies. A Woman Possessed got me thinking how sometimes the kind of story you want to tell necessitates the kind of characters you write.

Admittedly, most of my stories are character driven, but once in a while I’ve chosen to write a certain dynamic that necessitates one character being just not as likable as my usual cast members. A Vintage Affair, for example. Or Icecapade. Or the yet to be released Lone Star where part of the plot really depends on the protagonist’s hot temper and tendency to fly off the handle. Not qualities I particularly admire, but interesting to explore (for me) in this context.

In A Woman Possessed, one of those 1950s English domestic dramas, a young doctor brings his new fiancée home to meet his neurotically possessive mother. The fiancée suffers from a heart ailment and darling Mummy is tempted to rid herself of her rival by aggravating the girl’s condition. It’s old school and uber-dramatic, of course, but it’s notable for the fact that there’s a great deal of everyone saying all the stuff you always wish characters would say in these situations but so rarely do. They talk. And they do ultimately work the situation out, although the ending sent the wrong message, I think.

Anyway, as far as characters, the American fiancée comes off the best in that she’s spunky, frank, and gracious in the face of the cold and possibly murderous reception she gets. She’s an orphan and she’s been very ill--is still having heart attacks--so her reluctance to walk away from this relationship is psychologically sound. The mother, doesn’t come off too badly because it’s her job to be borderline nutso. She’s elegant and charming and totally convincing, and as unreasonable as her wishes are, we sort of understand where she’s coming from. The least likable character is the son. His role requires a staggering lack of sensitivity to both his fragile fiancée (especially startling since he’s also her doctor) and his mother who he’s sort of avoided for the past two years he trained to be a doctor because of mama’s general over-bearingness.

The problem is, in order to get the dynamic of this story, he has to be dense as a block of cement. If he reacts like a normal bloke we won’t get this awwwwkward situation of the three of them living on top of each other with the tension mounting as the poor fiancée attempts to assert herself and the mother and household servants watching her for weakness like hungry birds of prey.

The only way to avoid the son being a jerk is to tell a totally different story. But suppose the writer doesn’t want to tell a different story? Suppose the writer simply wants to explore this dynamic and this situation and this plot?

This is the dilemma we sometimes face as writers. Readers of literary fiction tend to be a little more flexible on the issue of liability in main characters. In romance, many readers have a difficult time accepting a genuinely flawed hero.  Jerks are easier to love in real life than fiction!

Cyber Launch Party for Come Unto These Yellow Sands

Thank you to the Fanyons for organizing a countdown to the release of Come Unto These Yellow Sands.

In fact, it's a lot more than a simple countdown; it's a cyber launch party with real prizes and games and...well, I'm astonished and moved at the effort they've gone to for this.

 Anyway, the book releases June 14th from Samhain Publishing. It can be preordered through Amazon, etc.

It's definitely a different kind of story for me. In fact, it's a little nod to those readers who claim they love my stuff but wish I would write something besides mysteries. So here's a mystery from the perspective of someone who doesn't give a damn about mysteries and has no desire to solve one, but finds himself in the middle of one nonetheless.

Anyway, I'm currently in the midst of unpacking and catching up on email and all the other stuff that piles up no matter what else is going on in your life. More on that later -- meanwhile, have fun and don't forget to "like" my Fan Page if you're so inclined.

The New and Improved Schedule

Well, whether you consider this an improved schedule or not is probably a matter of opinion. I don't even know if I consider it improved, I just know I needed to give myself a little more breathing room.

So without further fuss, here's what's lined up for the rest of the year.

This Rough Magic now available

First in a new and exclusive series from Loose Id Publishing.

ISBN:     978-1-61118-402-0

Genre:    LGBT 1930's Suspense

Length:   Short Novel

Price:    $5.00 Info

BLURB:

Wealthy San Francisco playboy Brett Sheridan thinks he knows the score when he hires tough guy private eye Neil Patrick Rafferty to find a priceless stolen folio of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Brett’s convinced his partner-in-crime sister is behind the theft -- a theft that’s liable to bring more scandal to their eccentric family, and cost Brett his marriage to society heiress Juliet Lennox. What Brett doesn’t count on is the instant and powerful attraction that flares between him and Rafferty.

Once before, Brett took a chance on loving a man, only to find himself betrayed and broken. This time around there’s too much at risk.

But as the Bard himself would say, Journey’s end in lovers meeting.

Loose Id

Moving Target: Who are Book Reviews Really For?

I did my column for Jessewave this week, and the topic was the new -- and not always healthy -- changing relationship between reviewers and authors.

Now the purpose of the column was not to hurt anyone's feelings -- these columns are never intended to hurt feelings, but merely to introduce a topic of discussion that I think needs...discussing.

Snowball in Hell re-release

Yesterday saw the re-release Snowball in Hell. Snowball is a noirish novella set around Christmas time in 1943. It's one of my personal favorites as far as my work goes, and I'm delighted to see it get a second lease on life with Carina Press not least, because this enables me to write the series I was longing to write for these two.

Look for more Doyle and Spain stories starting in 2012.

To celebrate, I'm blogging in a couple of places, and giving some cool stuff away in contests. The first place to stop and help me celebrate is over at Not The Usual Suspects. We're playing match the author to the first line of a classic piece of crime fiction.

And the second stop is over at the Carina Press blog. The game there is simply name two romantic pairings from my stories EXCLUDING Jake and Adrien, Chris and JX, and Elliot and Tucker. (Well, and it can't include Matt and Nathan either, for obvious reasons!

And if you've already bought the book, thanks so much!

Snowball in Hell now available

A quick note to let you know that Snowball in Hell, my WW2 norish mystery romance is now available through Carina Press. Also through Amazon's Kindle, B&N Nook, and over at All Romance Ebooks.

It's 1943 and the world is at war. Journalist Nathan Doyle has just returned home from North Africa--still recovering from wounds received in the Western Desert Campaign--when he's asked to cover the murder of a society blackmailer.

Lt. Matthew Spain of the LAPD homicide squad hates the holidays since the death of his beloved wife a few months earlier, and this year isn’t looking much cheerier what with the threat of attack by the Japanese and a high-profile homicide investigation. Matt likes Nathan; maybe too much.

If only he didn’t suspect that Nathan had every reason to commit murder.

20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories

Blogging at The Usual Suspects today on SS Van Dine's classic rules for writing mysteries. Some things never change...

The Yabba Dabba Do Dah Contest

So to my great surprise I'm in one of the final rounds over at Dear Author -- the Elite Eight. I'm the last m/m author and one of the last ebook authors, I believe, and I'm up against a Berkley Sensation author (NOT that there's anything wrong with that) who has been campaigning tirelessly to win what is apparently the biggest deal of her young life. ;-D

I would offer you my first born child if I had one, but...I don't. And anyway, the truth is, I'd be making all kinds of stipulations that you send him to college and make sure he gets proper religious upbringing and exposure to plenty of cultural variety and vitamin D...anyway, much, MUCH easier all around if I just say, I have nothing to bribe you with, but if you would like to offer a vote of support for ebooks and m/m fiction, it would be nice to at least make a respectable showing.

You needn't register or anything, you just click and vote and the website registers you as having voted. And as I am currently getting my butt kicked...well, a kick in the butt for me is a kick in the butt for m/m and ebooks, and that's a shame.

So here's the place to go and vote. And if you can find those three seconds in your heart of hearts, I thank you. And my first born child, somewhere unrealized in the stars, also thanks you.