Ikea.  I have to assemble them myself, but they have awesome names like Verklempt, and they’re very affordable.

Actually I get most of my ideas in Austin.  Often while driving or in the shower.

(And by “in the shower” I mean, “on the toilet.”)

2.  Will you read my manuscript?

Hell, I don’t even want to read mine after the first six times.  Look, just because someone does something for a living doesn’t mean they want to do it for you for free.  Never assume a chef wants to cook you dinner; don’t expect your computer programmer friend to fix your damn PC (again).  That doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t be willing to help you out, but it’s presumptuous and rude to put someone on the spot like that.  They might offer, in which case by all means take them up on it, but by asking, you place the writer in a very uncomfortable position, and I don’t mean in the back seat of a Volkswagen.

A professional editor is paid to read manuscripts, and it takes a lot of time and effort to plow through that much crap.  Writers don’t do that for a living.  We tend not to have the ability to tell someone “this sucks goats” in a tactful manner…and the thing about most manuscripts is, they suck goats.  It’s an editor’s unenviable task to sort out which ones could be turned into readable books.  I personally lack that kind of testicular fortitude.

While we’re on the subject, don’t ever ask a writer if they can send your manuscript to their agent/editor and grease the wheels for you.  That’s just tacky as hell.  If someone went through the months of rejections, revisions, and self-doubt and came through with a book contract, automatically thinking you can just jump past all that because you “know somebody” is really kind of shitty.  Yes, who you know can make all the difference, but I promise you, being published doesn’t convey some kind of magical ability they can pass to you via mystical initiation.

Step 1: Sit down at keyboard. Step 2: Open a vein.

3.  How big was your advance/how much money do you make on a book?

The answer is:  probably not much.  Ignoring the craptastic economy, there are maybe 20 authors out there right now making huge amounts of money on their books, and if you have to ask, you’re not talking to one of them.  Getting published is no guarantee of success, fame, fortune, or anything except a lot of long hours editing, revising, and pushing toward deadlines with no assurance whatsoever that anyone will ever buy what you’ve spent the last year or more creating.  My observation thus far is that in order to make a comfortable living writing novels (as in, not needing a day job) you have to have quite a few in publication at once, and have built up a substantial following, which takes years.  The reason why you hear amazing stories about so-and-so whose first novel was a runaway success is that this almost never happens, and when it does it rarely has anything to do with the quality of the book.  There are myriad forces at work in determining the success of any one novel.

4.  One of these days when I have time I’m going to write a book.

Sure, okay.  And one of these days when I have time I’ll become a ballerina.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the writing/publishing process, especially about how much time and work it takes…and to be honest, if you’re not the kind of person who feels compelled to write, you probably don’t have the dedication to finish a book, much less survive the publishing process.  Believe me, there are easier ways to pay the bills than by writing, so when you consider how difficult it is to succeed in the industry, most writers do so because that’s what they do, who they are, and how they thrive.  The average writer has been writing as long as she could write, and would continue to write no matter how crappy her career ends up.  It’s a sort of creative OCD, and if you know many writers, you know we’re all somewhat…nuts to begin with.

5.  You know, you really should write a children’s book/a Young Adult novel/something about talking cats, or whatever.

Young Adult novels are the big moneymakers right now, true.  But not just anybody can write credibly from the perspective of a teenager – as is evidenced by a great many quickie YA novels out there meant to capitalize on the Twilight craze and other assorted trends.

I don’t write for children because I don’t especially like children.  I write violent books with sex in them.  I don’t identify with kids.  I didn’t even identify with teenagers when I was one.  I mostly read adult novels when I was a teen.  If I were to try and write YA, it would sound like a 30-something year old woman trying to sound like a teenager.  Some people know how to capture that kind of voice, but just because you can write one thing doesn’t mean you can write everything, or want to, or should.

How about this – I’ll write a YA novel, and Anne Rice will write a picture book for toddlers, and Stephanie Meyer will write hardcore gay porn.  Yay!

At any rate, while I’m immersed in the genuinely weird experience of seeing the internet buy, read, digest, and comment on something I’ve created, I needed something to distract me from the queasy stomach that causes, so, here are some of the remaining questions.

Day 25 – Any five books from your “to be read” stack

• Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey
• How to Eat by Nigella Lawson
• Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner
• The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
• Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Day 27 – If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!

There’s really no answer to this one for me.  I don’t have a surefire subject or genre.  I write about vampires, but I generally don’t read about them; I love gutsy, smart, kickass women, but there are precious few in fiction that I’m willing to stick with.  For the most part my fiction reading is outside my own genre; I’m honestly not all that into urban fantasy.  I can’t give a concrete reason why that is, although I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I don’t like to look back over something I’ve written and realize it sounds an awful lot like _____.  If I’m reading something that’s remotely like what I’m writing, I can’t help but pick up influences, and I’d really rather just be myself.

That’s why if you ever notice that something I write happened once in such-and-such series, I’ll look at you blankly, especially as it applies to vampires.  No, I didn’t make it through an entire Twilight book, though I do know pretty much the entire story; yes, I read The Vampire Diaries twenty years ago but aside from being a devoted fan of the show I have no idea what’s going on in the new books.  No, I don’t read Sookie Stackhouse and, as it happens, I don’t like True Blood.  I watched the first season and that was quite enough.  Just because something has bloodsuckers in it doesn’t mean I’m interested.  That’s not a commentary on the authors, just on my own predilections.

I read a little mystery, a bit of general fiction, occasional fantasy (although my love of high fantasy petered out in my 20s); in the past few years I’ve been more inclined toward women’s memoirs and travel writing than straight up fiction.   I’m far more likely to read Joanne Harris than Kim Harrison.  I tend more toward individual novels than series; if I had to define my favorite sub-genre I guess I could call it “magical realism,” something that doesn’t quite reach urban fantasy but is far more enchanted than the everyday. Think Chocolat, Secret Life of Bees, or Animal Dreams.

Day 29 – Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)

Pretty much all the major character deaths in Mercedes Lackey’s Last Herald-Mage trilogy.  That series has special significance for me because it was the first I ever read with a gay protagonist; I was in high school in small town Texas and had the same thoughtless homophobia as everyone else…until I read Vanyel’s story.  Those books completely reframed my understanding of sexuality, and they were also one of the first instances where a book made me literally sob – the main deaths in the first and third books just killed me, even though the one that ends the last book is pretty much expected since, if you’ve read any of the other Valdemar books, you know Vanyel’s fate.

As with a lot of trilogies the second book wasn’t nearly as gripping, but still, I reread all three about a dozen times in high school, and there are still parts that I can hardly think about without remembering how my heart broke the first time I read them.

Day 30 – What book are you reading right now?

At the moment I’m between books. I reach a stage where I’ve got several books waiting to be read and keep starting them only to be derailed by something else.  This often happens with the same book several times before I finally get into it, then realize it’s amazing.  I think in many ways finding a beloved book is all in the timing.

I also tend not to read much when I’m in the middle of a project, or at least, if I’m working on a novel I find I can only read nonfiction, and vice versa.  But right now I’m not working on a book, and I’ve been intensely stressed out for the last month or so, so I’m a bit surprised at myself that I haven’t sought more of an escape in literature.

I did recently reread Eat, Pray, Love after seeing the film; it’s one of my comfort books, and I turn to it when I need a spiritual nudge or something warm and familiar.  (Yes, I loved the movie; yes, I love the book more. I think that narratively the movie is more cohesive, but not nearly as satisfying to the soul.  It’s visually stunning, Julia Roberts was…luminous, and seeing some of my favorite moments from the book onscreen were surprisingly stirring to me, but overall, as one might expect, I prefer the book.)

That said, if anyone has a book recommendation (fiction or non), feel free to leave it in comments. I don’t really do YA, so don’t feel obligated to suggest the Hunger Games trilogy – like Harry Potter I’ll probably read it one day, but I’m not really into the idea right now.  I hadn’t ever even heard of the series until the last book came out, it reached literary critical mass, and suddenly it was all anyone was talking about. Isn’t it amazing how that happens?

In 1999, a young college writer calling herself River began posting a series of fan fictions that would eventually become a massive…epic? known as the Signet Series.  (I hesitate to use the word “epic” given its recent devolution into slang, but really, the thing spanned centuries and continents, so I think perhaps the word is appropriate)  The series, which was very loosely based on the Source Material (a series of young adult novels that River had read as a teen), grew quite a following in the fandom from whence it came, and River gained some notariety in that fandom.  River was well known to the moderator of the fic archive site, Twilight Tales, who supported River’s work for years.  We are still friends to this day, and in fact I guest posted over at Vampire-Diaries.net last week with my enthusiasm for the brilliant show’s second season.

Back in the early 00′s a great many people urged River to one day take her series, strip the associations it had with the Source Material, and recreate it purely as original fiction: her own world, her own characters, her own story.

As the years passed, River grew away from writing fan fiction and took a turn as a nonfiction writer in the NeoPagan religion genre, under her new pseudonym, Dianne Sylvan.  Still, those old stories haunted her.  She loved that world she had created, and loved the journey her characters took that was so divergent from the Source Material.

Finally, River decided the time had come.  Vampires were growing in popularity, the urban fantasy genre was expanding, and she felt her writing had matured in those ten years…perhaps enough for her to tell the darker, more complex, more adult story she had always wanted to tell.

So, she left off her old name and, at the same time, stripped that story down to its bare bones and began to recreate it.  Some themes, snatches of conversation, bits of the journey stayed; most went into the scrap pile, as did anything that connected it with the Source Material. By the time she…I…was done, I had finally created something new and purely my own, and I wanted to share it with a larger audience.  I loved that world I’d created: the Primes and Queens, Miranda’s journey, the mystical themes that lay beneath the story.  I hated to think that my world, along with the Source world, would be confused, because they both deserved their own spheres, their own audience.  My work was not the Source’s, and hers wasn’t mine, and it was about time I got out of her universe and made room for the other fic writers who were more devoted to her world.

I wanted to tell the story of a broken-down woman who comes into her own power, who becomes a hero, a legend, not as Rapunzel in her tower, but as Persephone choosing the pomegranate seeds over six months of eternal Spring.  That myth of Persephone and Hades, more than anything else, influenced Queen of Shadows.  If it’s a retelling of anything, it is that myth.

It would be impossible, in my opinion, to place QoS and the Source Material side by side and find any true similarities aside from the fact that the main character is a redhead and…well, there are vampires in it, and since there are vampires in everything nowadays that’s hardly a trademark.  All vampire stories by their very nature overlap at the edges, assuming the author has stuck remotely to the old school vampire mythology (which not all do). In fact, after the first novel, the Shadow World novels will bear precious little resemblance even to my Signet Series they were born from.  I was 22 when I wrote the first version of QoS.  I like to think that I’ve evolved since then and that it shows in my writing.

But because fandom is full of bright, passionate people, I’ve already had someone accuse me of plagiarizing…well, myself.  So I thought it best to step forward and say, flat out:  I did not steal QoS from anyone.  It’s always been my story.  Its first draft was piggybacked on another universe a decade ago, but that story no longer exists.  The novel that I hope you will hold in your hands at some point in the near future is not in any way, shape, or form a copy of – or fan fiction of – anyone else’s work.  Love it or hate it, the Shadow World is my own creation.

I’m thrilled to announce the official release of my first novel, Queen of Shadows, which is now available for purchase in local book stores, retail locations of various kinds, and online retailers including the following:

Barnes & Noble

Borders

Amazon

Powell’s

A great many folk have already managed to get their hands on copies, so if you have read the book and enjoyed it, please comment to let me know, as well as leaving positive feedback where you purchased it!

From the Back Cover:

Spread throughout the dark corners of our world lies the Shadow World, a society of vampires that feeds off the living. In Austin, Texas, one woman’s madness will drive her into a world that few people ever see – or even know exists…

Shortly after she picked up a guitar, Miranda Grey conquered the Austin music scene with a newfound ability to psychically manipulate her audience’s emotions. But as her powers outgrow her control, her mind is increasingly invaded by haunting secrets and overwhelming sadness. Unable to look anyone in the eye, Miranda is fast approaching the edge of insanity – with no one to catch her fall…

When he outlawed killing humans, David Solomon ignited a civil war among Austin’s vampires. As Prime of the South, his sympathy for mortals angered the old guard who refuse to control their violent urges. David has his hands full with the growing insurgency, but he takes in a broken-down woman, a musician in need of supernatural guidance. Little does he know that Miranda Grey has the power to change his world as well…

“Queen of Shadows grabbed me on the first page and didn’t let go. Miranda, the heroine, is vulnerable and gutsy, with magical abilities even she doesn’t suspect. Vampire David Solomon is as powerful and heroic as he is deliciously seductive.  Dianne Sylvan has created an original take on vampires that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I’ll be looking for her next book with great anticipation. She’s a skilled and talented storyteller who definitely knows how to deliver one hell of a book!”
~ Angela Knight, New York Times bestselling author

“Dianne Sylvan’s rich, dark, sexy reimagined Austin is filled with people I want to visit again and again. Dianne Sylvan’s got voice, doesn’t miss a beat, and rocks it all the way to the last note…Looking for a new addiction? Go no further.”
~ Devon Monk, author of Magic on the Storm

You can read an excerpt from Chapter 1 here.

***

In the meantime, while you are waiting for your copy with baited breath, you absolutely have to watch this video, because it gave me a case of the giggles, and everyone deserves a good case of the giggles on an endless Wednesday morning.

Warning: The f-word is strong with this one.

Do you have the song stuck in your head now? I sure do.

I’m quite fond of nonfiction essay collections – often women’s travel or other memoirs.  I recently finished an anthology called Face to Face, which dealt with women’s relationships with the Divine.  Another favorite of mine is called The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work, and Pulling it All Together in Your 30s, edited by Andrea Richesin; I also enjoyed Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone, edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler.

As far as fiction goes I don’t read a lot of short stories, though I did like Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things.  It probably marks me as some kind of freak, but I’m not a huge Gaiman fan.  I definitely prefer his short stories to his novels – I think he’s got a brilliant imagination, but his writing style doesn’t involve me emotionally.

Day 18 – Favorite beginning scene in a book

I don’t know about scenes, but I can think of a couple of opening lines that I love:

We came in on the wind of the carnival.
(Joanne Harris, Chocolat)

I am the sister who didn’t go to war.
(Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams)

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood and she lived all alone.
(Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn)

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
(J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone)

Day 19 – Favorite book cover

I haven’t actually read this book, but every time I see the cover I smile.

*

First off, QoS received five stars and is listed as a Top Pick on Night Owl Reviews.  It’s also gotten its first review over on Barnes & Noble‘s site, which pleases me inordinately.

(Don’t worry, I don’t plan to post every single review the book gets.  I’m sure I’ll have periodic roundups like this one linking to blogs and other fun publicity news.)

On September 2 I’ll have a guest post over on Dark Faerie Tales, complete with a book giveaway.  (I’ll post a reminder on the actual day of.)

And finally, you can now read the beginning of Queen of Shadows right here.  Come and meet Miranda Grey, and spend a while in a crazy person’s head.  (By that, I mean mine.)

On a related note:

A number of people have asked me: all things being equal, what’s the best way to buy a book, in terms of its benefit to the author?  My personal preference would always be to buy from a brick-and-mortar store, preferably a locally-owned one; but generally speaking, the bigger the discount you get at checkout, the less revenue the author will see from the sale.  That said, I know how expensive books are, so I feel like you should get your hands on it however you can.  Every book sold will help advance my plan for total world domination.

In fact you should probably buy several so you can give them out as favors at your upcoming Autumnal Equinox gatherings, for as we all know, the ancient Pagans came together every year to exchange man-shaped biscuits, bottles of honey mead, and mass-market paperbacks about psychic musicians and badass vampires.

Trust me on this. I’m a writer.

I Can Has Enlightenment?

Anyone who has ever attempted to meditate has dealt with the concept of “monkey mind.”  The monkey mind, by Buddhist reckoning, is the conscious mind that is always chattering and jumping around, scratching itself and throwing coconuts while we are trying to get our spiritual groove on.

There are a number of ways to deal with the monkey mind; my favorite has always been distraction.  Give the monkey something to do so he’ll sit still – this is one of the benefits of movement-based meditation as well as mantra and chant.  The conscious mind gets involved repeating words, and the deeper levels of the self can step to the foreground for a while.

In the last few months I’ve come to understand myself a little better.  I’ve learned that while the idea of being the enlightened, peace-oozing spiritual guru-nymph is very appealing, I’m just not the type.  It’s one thing to try and improve yourself, overcoming issues and laying down baggage; it’s another to try and rewire your inborn inclinations entirely, to cheat the world out of the self that God helped you fashion for this lifetime.  There are aspects of my personality that I have simply decided to accept and, in fact, to capitalize on, instead of thinking of myself as somehow less-than because I don’t fit into a particular mold.  Molds are useful for cheeses, not so much for people.

I have discovered one very important thing: while I have an enormous capacity for strength and power, I’m also a bit of a toddling spaz, and I’ve decided that the monkey mind metaphor doesn’t work for me.  Yes, my mind can be a howling, poo-flinging beastie, but most of the time it’s much more vulnerable than that.  I don’t have monkey mind: I have puppy mind.

My mind is a flop-eared puppy with big, sad eyes.  She’s earnest, eager to do the right thing, always wants to be involved – but she trips over her own feet, and she’s easily frightened by loud noises and big crowds.  She howls when she’s left alone, and is often desperate for attention.  Stern looks and harsh words make her cower and, when dragged toward discipline by the collar she’s a lot more likely to pee herself and hide than to snap into shape.  She takes a lot of positive reinforcement and gentle persuasion.  She gets bored easily, and when bored, causes mischief and tends to chew on everything in sight.  She has to be gently corrected when she wanders off course; force and anger will do no good, only make her too afraid to try again.

She was a pound puppy, so she’s afraid of being abandoned, and that makes it hard for her to let go and just enjoy life.  Her puppy exuberance is tempered with a fear of being kicked.

She responds well to treats and cuddling – and to activity.  If I want her to stay out of trouble while I’m trying to meditate, it’s best to give her a mantra to play with, some beads to nibble on, or music to sway to.  She doesn’t understand simply sitting still; that’s not her job.  Her job is to do things, to run and play and chase squirrels, to figure out puzzles.  But because she’s young, she doesn’t grasp the fact that she’s not the center of the universe, and that other parts of me have jobs of their own and need her to be still sometimes so they don’t trip over her.

She’s a creature of habit, nervous in strange circumstances.  If she gets used to a negative way of thinking or behaving, it does no good to rub her nose in it.  She has to be given an alternative, a nudge in the right direction, so that she can sniff her way over on her own time.  That way she thinks it was her idea, so she doesn’t fight the change.  Otherwise, well, she can dig her little feet in and refuse to budge.

She also whines a lot.

I find this analogy a lot more fitting for my own personality than a monkey, but also, it’s an image that I can work with.  It’s easier to treat myself with more kindness if I visualize the restless, jumpy part of myself as a young creature that needs care and love rather than an annoying, screeching primate up on a branch.  Yes, puppies can be very aggravating, but you keep working with them because you love them and want them to grow up into good companions, not because you want them to shut up and go away.

I am already too much at odds with myself to set up a battleground in my head.  I’d rather think of my conscious mind as something to befriend than something to overcome.  Every aspect of the self has its place and its mission; sometimes the first step toward balance is just finding a cute fuzzy metaphor.

Day 14 – Favorite character in a book (of any sex or gender)

I don’t have a single favorite, but some of my favorites are:

Mirya, Varden, and Roxanne from the Strands of Starlight series (Gael Baudino)
Bast from the Bast Mysteries (Rosemary Edghill)
Cannie Shapiro from Good in Bed (Jennifer Weiner)
Talia from the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy (Mercedes Lackey)
Vianne from Chocolat (Joanne Harris)
Jovieve from Wrapt in Crystal (Sharon Shinn)
Amy from The Ordinary Princess (M.M. Kaye)
Bambi (another of my favorite YA books, a much more dark and complex novel than the Disney version) (Felix Salten)
Bigwig from Watership Down (Richard Adams)
Tarma from the Vows and Honor duology (Mercedes Lackey)
Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing (William Shakespeare)

Day 15 – Your “comfort” book

Hmm…it all depends on what kind of comfort I’m looking for.  The books I tend to reach for most often when I need some emotional uplift are Eat, Pray, Love and Good in Bed. However, if I’m looking for practical advice, I’ll open Martha Beck’s Steering by Starlight, or The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  If I just want to laugh?  The Book of Bunny Suicides.

No, really.

Day 16 – Favorite poem or collection of poetry

I’m not much on poetry, to be honest.  I have, however, always had a warm fuzzy for Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence.”  It describes the mystical experience with both beauty and wonder…and it’s probably the only rhyming poem in the world that I don’t outright hate.

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, –
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.

I’m a chronic re-reader.  Almost every one of my favorites has been read enough times to have pages fall out.  But here’s an abbreviated list of those I know I’ve read at least five times as an adult:

The Strands of Starlight series by Gael Baudino
Most of the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey, specifically the Last Herald-Mage trilogy and the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner
The Spiral Dance by Starhawk
Book of Shadows by Phyllis Curott
Witch Crafting by Phyllis Curott
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Red Book by Sera Beak
Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Cloven Hooves by Megan Lindholm
Rosemary Edghill’s Bast Mysteries

Day 13 – Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)

Honestly, I haven’t been interested in reading YA books since I was a YA…well, except Harry Potter, but it feels like that series should get a special exception from the genre.  The Harry Potter series starts with Harry at 11 and ends with him 18, so it progresses from a lighthearted (sort of) children’s story to something far more adult, growing as its readers grow.  I think that’s a large part of what draws people of so many age groups into the series; the story grows in complexity and maturity as its characters do, instead of assuming a static readership.  Some people might call that a flaw, but I always appreciated that about Harry Potter.

However, my favorite children’s book is a little-known fairy tale by M. M. Kaye called  The Ordinary Princess.  Kaye, better known for her sweeping novels like The Far Pavilions, wrote and illustrated The Ordinary Princess, which is a fresh take on the old “beautiful damsel in distress” that predates the days of Shrek’s Princess Fiona.

The Ordinary Princess tells the story of Amy, the seventh princess of an enchanted kingdom, who is given a double-edged gift by one of her fairy godmothers: when confronted with the list of virtues the other fairies have bestowed, old Crustacea declares that Amy shall be ordinary.  Amy, then, grows up with mousy hair, awkward posture, and a tendency to climb trees and soil her gowns, unlike her six perfect blonde sisters.

Trouble brews when no prince will marry Amy; prince after prince comes to meet her, only to turn their noses up at her apparent lack of Princessly graces.  Finally, when the King and Queen decide their only recourse is to lock Amy in a tower and dupe some poor prince into marrying her, Amy takes matters into her own hands, and her adventures form the main narrative of the book.

The Ordinary Princess is absolutely delightful, and the sort of fairy tale that modern girls need more of; Amy finds happiness not in spite of her appearance and demeanor, but because she is unabashedly herself.

The original hardcover has been long out of print, though a paperback reissue came out in 2002. If you ever chance across a copy, snap it up for any Princess in your life (or for yourself).