The iSmut iPod Case

Virgin Threads offers the "To Love and To Honor iPod Case" to dress up your iPod to look like a romance novel. The teaser on the cover says: "A beautiful young heiress and a mysterious stranger really give a town something to talk about!"

Because nothing is more interesting to an entire town than an heiress' sexual awakening. We've come a long way, baby. (Or have we?")

The case is coyly priced at $69. Ahem. I think this cover is of a book by Emilie Loring, and now I'm intrigued. I'll have to find out who she was.

I actually wouldn't mind the "Scavengers in Space" version.

If it's for the masses, it must be trash. Right?

Right now I'm reading Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon and am really enjoying it. The New York Times Book Review calls it "Ferociously readable," and I agree. It's often compared to Chris Moriarty's Spin State, which I also enjoyed and read just prior to Morgan's book.

As a budding novelist myself, I like to learn a bit about the authors I read to see if I can find any insight into their process or just to see if they have a decent web site (they both do). I found this interview of Morgan in Infinity Plus magazine and something he said struck me:

"Anything accessible tends to get short shrift because it eliminates the need for critical interpretation, and therefore the chance for critics to assert a superiority of sophistication over the rest of the world."

While he's applying this to a specific novelist who was differentiating between Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction, I think this notion has a wider application to genre fiction in general. Feminists have long denigrated the Romance genre as anti-woman. Usually, those making the accusations haven't read any kind of Romance novel since 1975, but at its heart I think it has more to do with the fact that Romance fiction is written for the everyday woman, for the masses of women in the world, not just for a select few in academia. I mean, if something has entertainment value for the masses and a message, well it must be trash, right?

Alpha Mommy Freaking Madness

Alpha Moms of the world unite. You now have your very own cable channel where you can (s)mother until your eyes roll into the backs of your heads. Alpha Mom TV is all about (s)mothering. As if it weren't already a 24/7 job. Why does this make me angry? Why doesn't it make me feel like I finally have found a place where I belong? Because this is just another example of the Cult of the New Momism. The smart-ass attitude in the book The Mommy Myth sums it up nicely (I blogged about this in February). To quote The Mommy Myth:

"We are urged to be fun-loving, spontaneous, and relaxed, yet, at the same time, scared out of our minds that our kids could be killed at any moment. No wonder 81 percent of women in a recent poll said it's harder to be a mother now than it was twenty or thirty years ago, and 56 percent felt mothers were doing a worse job today than mothers back then. Even mothers who deliberately avoid TV and magazines, or who pride themselves on seeing through them, have trouble escaping the standards of perfection, and the sense of threat, that the media ceaselessly atomize into the air we breathe. . . like increasing numbers of women, we are fed up with the myth -- shamelessly hawked by the media -- that motherhood is eternally fulfulling and rewarding, that it is always the best and most important thing you do, that there is only a narrowly prescribed way to do it right, and that if you don't love each and every second of it there's something really wrong with you. . .

"This book is about the rise in the media of what we are calling the 'new momism:' the insistence that no woman is truly complete or fulfulled unless she has kids, that women remain the best primary caretakers of children, and that to be a remotely decent mother, a woman has to devote her entire physical, psychological, emotional, and intellectual being, 24/7, to her children. The new momism is a highly romanticized and yet demanding view of motherhood in which the standards for success are impossible to meet."

So, now, you can't just be a "Stay-At-Home Mom" or a "Working Mother," you must also be an ALPHA MOM. This conjures up images of a tigress defending her young or some such nonsense.

Alpha Mom TV says that you must "understand the meanings and functions of crying" in your infant, you must "be in sync with your child in order to develop effective discipline techniques," on long car trips you must "ensure that traveling with children will be an enjoyable experience for the entire family," and you must become a "parent doctor," effectively diagnosing your child's ADHD. (Except that it's OK if the "parent doctor" turns out to be Dad and not Mom, judging by the lone photo on the entire Alpha Mom site with a Dad and his kids.) Let's not even talk about the $35 sleeper oufits in the Alpha Mom TV Boutique. Pul-leeze.

Where's the Alpha Dad TV? Or better yet, where's the Alpha Parent TV? Or better yet, where's Smart Ass Parent TV?

UPDATE: The New York Times Magazine published an article on Alpha Mom TV founder Isabel Kallman, who gave up her 100-hour-a-week senior-vice-president position at Salomon Smith Barney to raise her son (and then launched a probably 100-hour-a-week job as a TV channel CEO). But it really burns my butter when she says that raising her high-energy son was a harder job than the SVP job. So, let's say this is true. Why aren't we paying our childcare workers the same, or more, than SVPs make? Money quote by the director of admissions to The Sunshine Kids' Club, where Kallman's son takes music lessons (he's two, BTW):

"They put more energy into it [parenting] than my generation. Like what’s the best stroller, the best nursery school, the best classes—all of it. It’s not like everyone doesn’t want the best for their child, but to me, it seems people these days have a more professional attitude toward raising their children. A lot of it is very intellectually thought-out and very scheduled, almost like they have a business plan for their children.” (Emphasis mine).

A business plan? Ug. It's never enough, is it? Kallman seems to me to be a highly-intelligent, motivated woman who cares about her family and wants to help other women. She's putting a lot of effort into this project. Why aren't we putting the same amount of effort into raising the quality of childcare? Kallman has a nanny (there's a photo of them together in the NYT Magazine article). She's got the income, education and clout to start up a new TV channel. What could she achieve if she devoted herself to raising the quality of daycare nationwide, which could potentially help a lot more families? I doubt she ever will -- what with having a nanny, a night nurse, a babysitter and an Alpha Mom TV intern -- group daycare isn't an issue that's anywhere near her radar.

Fire Branding

I've been posting mostly on my writing gig these days, but my day job is actually as a web site designer. Recently I've been boning up a lot on branding issues as the main site I work on is about to embark on an architectural and design overhaul. After signing up for a workshop with branding guru Laura Ries, I came across her blog. Here's also a nice overview artcle from LogoLounge.com on the scope of branding issues.

Before I head over to Amazon to buy my copy of Ries' The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, here's a shameless plug for my own design portfolio. I think after all this talk of branding I need to overhaul my own brand. Ouch!

Ready for action now, danger boy?

The movie version of Aeon Flux is coming out in December and Charlize Theron is playing Aeon. Can't wait! Watching the trailer made me realize how much Aeron influenced the creation of my main character in Bloodstar. Theron's line at the end of the trailer sums up my main character in many ways: "I used to have a life. Now I have a mission."

Click here to read some memorable quotes from the 1991 MTV cartoon.

The Heroine with a Thousand Faces

An interesting read for any writer examining myths and folk tales:

Evolutionary Psychology 3: 85-103
The Heroine with a Thousand Faces: Universal Trends in the Characterization of Female Folk Tale Protagonists

Jonathan Gottschall, First Year Program, c/o English Department, St Lawrence University, Canton, NY 13617, USA.
with fifteen St. Lawrence University undergraduate students: Rachel Berkey, Mitch Cawson, Carly Drown, Matthew Fleischner, Melissa Glotzbecker, Kimberly Kernan, Tyler Magnan, Kate Muse, Celeste Ogburn, Stephen Patterson, Christopher Skeels, Stephanie St. Joseph, Shawna Weeks, Alison Welsh, Erin Welch.

Abstract: Literary scholars and psychologists have long remarked striking similarities in the depiction of male heroes in the world's folk tale traditions. The best-known attempt to document and explain these similarities is Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1936). Campbell's work differs in detail from other prominent attempts to define universal features of heroes, however its grand thesis is much the same: while the details of heroes "faces" may change as the investigator crosses geographical, ethnic, cultural and chronological borders, certain details of the hero's life and challenges are everywhere the same. However, in contrast to the many determined efforts to generalize about heroes, scholars have expended little effort generalizing about cross-cultural features of heroines. The present article, based on a quantitative content analysis of folk tales from 48 culture areas around the world, represents the first systematic attempt to identify and explain cross-cultural trends in the characterization of heroines. This study was designed to improve substantially on previous attempts to define literary universals by drawing upon theory and methods used by human scientists to fruitfully explore and explain human universals.

Cows Don't Care Who Your Daddy Is

I don't watch much reality TV. Truth to tell, like a lot of people, I think it's incredibly stupid. But I just caught a few minutes of a show that tops all the others I've seen and/or heard about. It's E!'s "Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive." What strikes me beyond the obvious "fish out of water" concept so prevalent in other reality TV shows like "The Simple Life," is that how the theory of Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs is so obviously displayed in these shows. Here are people, often from second or more generation extremely wealthy families, who obviously have only had the two most basic need levels met (if that): Physiological and Safety. Their extreme wealth hasn't enabled them to meet higher needs. Part of that may be age-related, but most of it is a skewed view of reality due to living in an echelon of class that is separated from most of society, and an obvious lack of the fulfillment of Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization needs being met in these so very wealthy families.

Aside from being really bored with these people who fret over having to sleep on a cot or use an out-house, I feel sad for them. They're really screaming for someone to pay attention to them and to make them feel important. Obviously having the world cater them because of their wealth just isn't enough. The need for 15 minutes of fame isn't mitigated by wealth.

That latter part may seem really petty, but the more I watch these shows -- the more I watch others of these kinds of shows to see how the uber-rich and celebrities are catered to -- the less I feel bad about being petty. These are people who are invited to events where they're given huge amounts of merchandise that cost more than some countries' Gross National Product. I'm no Communist, but these people could pay off the national debt or end poverty in some nations, and still live a very comfortable life. How do you live with yourself knowing you could bring that kind of relief to other people and aren't doing it? Celebrities who become spokespersons for global social programs are just practicing good PR.

OK, back to writing now. I promise.

Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write.

Italian sculptor Giancarlo Neri constructed this monument called The Writer, a 30-foot structure that overlooks Parliament Fields in Hampstead Heath. In a time when writing involves word processors, online critique groups and other technology that separates the writer from the page, this monument reminds us that writing is a solitary process and not a communal one (that is, until the story is finished, at least). You don't need a computer or an AlphaSmart or a critique group. But you do need to sit your dupa in a chair and get the story out of your head. I think it also depicts how a writer's nature is to see the big picture -- to stand outside of society and observe it in order to be able to write about it. Read more about this monument at Augustine's Blog. See more photos at the Rollo Contemporary Art web site.

Quote: Natalie Goldberg

A Synopsis is a cold thing.

Been working for over a week to rewrite my synopsis for River of Stars -- now renamed Blooooooodstar. (You must say this title just like Dark Helmet says "Looooonestar" in Spaceballs. . .) -- so that I get rejected again by two agents who have requested a partial of the manuscript. Yes, I'm feeling morose despite the fact that I'm actually liking the new version of this synosis.

I still hate squishing my 100K novel down to just a few pages and having to leave out so much good stuff. (OK, so I've been rejected several times -- maybe it's not-so-good-stuff).

To make this post even more of a rant I'm going to rail at all of the how-to-write-a-synopsis articles on the internet that basically say "paraphrase your novel, stupid" instead of actually providing examples. Good thing I belong to RWA's FF&P chapter, because several members have actually offered up samples to other members. I'm exceedingly jealous of Michele Hauf's writing skills in general, but specifically of her synopsis of Seraphim. It's a great novel and an even better synopsis. I wonder if I could pay her to write mine?

Oh, but, no, that would be bad, because "money flows to the writer" -- even if it takes you longer to write the damn synopsis than it did to write the damn novel. GRRR!

Signing off now to go spank this puppy of a synopsis if it's the last thing I do.

Quote: J. B. Priestley

Water and fire both elements our ruin do conspire.

Just over a year ago my entire house flooded, so my heart goes out to Marianne Mancusi whose house burned to the ground when it was struck by lightening -- she was at the RWA Conference in Reno at the time. Luckily her dog survived since it was staying with a friend. Members of RWA, and anyone for that matter, are donating books and gift certificates to help rebuild Marianne's library and her life. You can read more about how to help Marianne at Barbara Ferrer's blog or through the Literary Chicks web site. Or, you could just purchase Mancusi's book A Connecticut Fashionista in King Arthur's Court and help her income that way. (Quote above is by John Cleveland.)

Shining Bright at the Reno RWA Conference

I just returned from the Romance Writers of America National Conference in Reno, NV. As usual it was a great time, got to see my online buddies and learned a great deal at the workshops and publisher spotlights. I even managed to get a request for a partial by an agent. So, now I'm tidying up rewrites of my now newly-titled Bloodstar in order to submit it. Again. We'll see. I'll be dropping my letter in the mailbox with my eyes closed.

I also learned about author Linnea Sinclair whose science fiction romance novels are just coming out on Bantam Spectra.

Three of the best workshops were I've Got You Under My Skin: Deep POV by Virginia Kantra, Heroes to Die For by Julia Ross, What is Emotion by Suzanne McMinn

Strings Theory

I've moved my knitting posts to my new knitting-only blog: Strings Theory.

A Galaxy of One's Own

Not so long ago in a galaxy close to home science fiction was purely the realm of geek testosterone, but the Broads have invaded. As more and more women enter scientific and technology fields, more and more of them are writing, reading and watching science fiction books and movies. Female science fiction writers are changing the face of science fiction and men don't seem to mind.

Mostly gone are the days when female characters in science fiction were simply "trophies to be rescued, or smoldering, sexual beings that really didn't contribute to the overall plot other than as the hero's love interest." (Michaela Drapes, Burgundy Nails and Rose Tattoos: The Women of Cyberpunk)

When Star Wars A New Hope came out in 1977, this shift was just beginning and the Princess Leia character was a woman who could rescue as well as be rescued, shoot a blaster better than just about anyone, and in the next breath negotiate a treaty. (About the only thing that might have made Leia better would have been to give her a lightsaber, but I digress.) In any book or movie the writer creates expectations about her work. Audiences expect sequels to continue in the same vein as the first installment. That's why many Star Wars fans skim over the stilted dialogue and overblown special effects of the second trilogy - that's what we expect from George.

I also expected Padmé to be from a similar feminist mold as Princess Leia, not the simpering gestator she turned into in Revenge of the Sith. I expected George to once again be at the forefront of writing about strong female heroines, but he fell far short of the mark. Not only did Padmé not stack up, but other female characters were poorly representated as well.

Case in point, Lucas repeatedly missed opportunities to show female characters as equal in power to their male counterparts and often these changes would not have altered the overall story. Not once do any of the female Jedi on the Council speak - all of the lines spoken by Jedi Council members are from male members.

I also found it a bit too coincidental that the Twi'lek female Jedi, Aayla Secura, is dressed nearly as scantily as any other Twi'lek female in the Star Wars movies, but all of the other female Twi'leks are slave girls or part of the Coruscant "entertainment industry." One assumes that slave girls don't have much choice in how skimpy their attire is, but a Jedi would. Maybe Secura chose the skimpy outfit, but the coincidence makes me wonder. There are two male Twi'leks in the movies; both are clothed in long robes.

Back to Padmé. In Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, Padmé showed promise. Like Leia, she still didn't have a lightsaber, but other women in Star-Warsland did, which was a step forward. Padmé was highly educated, had reached the pinnacle of political success on her homeworld at a very young age, stormed her own palace with her handmaidens a la Artemis and fought off nasty monsters on Geonosis.

Once Padmé became pregnant, though, all that changed and all she did was sit around wringing her hands over Anakin's fate and talking about losing her job because of the pregnancy. This latter point seems totally out of sync with what is supposed to be a near-post-utopian society. Also, Padmé's inaction is completely out of character as is dying of a broken heart without seeing to the welfare of her children. Truer to character would have been a heartbroken Padmé going on for the sake of keeping her twins safe and to continue her opposition to Palpatine by being integral to the forming of the Rebellion.

I suspect that George wanted to have an Ophelia moment for Padme (floating on that coffin-barge with flowers in her hair) despite the fact that in Return of the Jedi Leia remembers her mother. How that's possible if Padmé died when Leia and Luke were minutes old, I don't know. I suppose you could attribute it to the Force, but neither Padmé nor Leia are ever considered to be particular Force adepts in the movies.

Still, I could let that go if Padmé had had a better end. It would have been much more poignant if Anakin had actually hurt Padmé in some way (domestic violence during pregnancy is much more common than one might think), but she manages to survive long enough to deliver, then to ask her trusted colleague Bail Organa to adopt Leia, ask Ben to take Luke to Tatooine - and then dies. A broken heart could even have been a contributing factor, but the difference is she would have taken care of loose ends instead of ending her life in an act of selfish suicide, which is essentially what she did.

Last Thoughts

Where the heck was Mon Mothma? She had an action figure, why wasn't she in the movie? Evidently, in the novelization, Padmé is busy working with Bail Organa organizing a coalition of Senators who are against Palpatine being invested with more power, but that it was cut. If that's the case, you know it's going to end up in another DVD version down the road. Maybe that's what happened to Mon Mothma as well. That bit of the story would have gone far to make Padmé seem less like a doormat.

My friend Snickle over at Random Piffle brought up the interesting notion of the German Spieltod, "which is basically a death in a play that must occur for dramatic purposes, but is carried out in a silly way. In Buddenbrooks, a main character dies suddenly of a toothache at the point where it was most dramatically necessary for him to be dead. Padmé's death by losing the will to live was supremely silly and lame."

I have a hard time believing even the Force couldn't help a woman deliver a child in the contraption George concocted for the delivery scene. Women in reality are fighting tooth-and-nail for dignity during childbirth, and here's 1950s-style childbirth depicted in a near-utopian society. The message is, no matter what girls, you can't ever deliver your own babies under your own steam.

I wore my "Someone's got to save your skins" Princess Leia t-shirt to see Revenge of the Sith and am so glad I did, if only to remember what potential Star Wars had for females in science fiction.

Secret Diary of a Clueless Newbie

I'm researching agents and editors, so spent my lunch hour combing the stacks at my local Borders, based on my internet research. Came across this site and had to pass it on. Does this mean I should toss my Locus collection?

Do you know where your bunny slippers are?

One of my critique partners has been published! I'm taking this as a personal compliment. Kathleen Long's "Get Bunny Love" has just debuted in stores.

Beatrice Love believes in fuzzy bunny slippers, feng shui and positive Chi.  Nathan McNulty believes in rules and decorum, and runs his event planning firm with an iron fist. When her free-spirited spunk crashes headlong into his need for control, fuzzy bunny slipper fur flies. In a battle of wills, they'll both discover there’s nothing so life altering as a dose of Bunny Love.

A Romance Junkies review warns that this book "will most certainly cause uncontrollable fits of laughter," and it's true. I'm so happy for Kath and can't wait to go buy my copy of "Get Bunny Love" (which I will do, today). I'm living vicariously through Kath until I get to go to the Show myself. Kath will be having a book-signing at the Celebrate Romance event in Baltimore, MD this weekend.

Naked Dukes and Other Things

There are so many things rattling around in my head today that it's hard to choose what to blog about. So I'll start with something naked, which is always fun.

This weekend one of my writerly friends Sally Mackenzie is having a book-signing at Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, MD for her book "The Naked Duke." Proper Philadelphian Miss Sarah Hamilton's life is turn upside down when she awakens from her innocent slumber to find herself in bed next to a handsome--and exceedingly naked--man! I wonder what nakedly pithy phrase she's including in her autographs?

On a more serious note, check out John Stewart's hilarious appearance on Crossfire a while back. Comparing Crossfire to a World Federation Wrestling-- does it get any better than that?

I'm no political pundit, but there's some interesting, ahem, "entanglements" that other bloggers have uncovered about the Jeff Gannon/James Gukert "Gate."

On other fronts and backs, I started Donald Maass' "Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook" last night. My assignment is to figure out who my personal heroes are. Joy. Like that's going to happen.

Mommy Freaking Madness

There's been a rash of books and articles (Newsweek, Salon) lately on how "intensive parenting" is driving women off the deep end, ruining marriages and creating spoiled kids. I have a few thoughts as an anxiety-ridden working mother in a major metropolitan area.

(1) YES, we need a national standard for daycare and we definitely need affordable part-time daycare, which doesn't currently exist. Daycare providers, a center or a home provider, ulitimately need to make money. They make more money on full-time care than on part-time, it's that simple.

(2) I want my mommy. I want to live closer to my extended family. Daycare is great, but sometimes you just need grandma. Unfortunately, our jobs are here and mom is there. Sucks, really.

(3) Letting your kid sleep with you is sometimes about getting some sleep yourself -- even if it means being attacked every night by the twister toddler feet -- instead of being about "co-sleeping." Let's see, would I rather rock/pace/soothe in some other way at 3am for nearly an hour or just set the kid in between us and we all go to sleep? Cause, y'know, I get sooo much more sleep if I just let her cry it out. Sure, I can sleep through that. Yep.

(4) Society trying to push women around is nothing new. Read getupgrrl's "And The Soup Of The Day Is: It's All Your Fault!" rant. The question is, what's the motivation behind "intensive parenting" today?

(5) "Divorce is down, but more marrieds are unhappy because men still do squat." Bah! Husbands do help. Mine does. He's a true partner and all men should take notes. I wanted a partner and didn't settle for less. Yes, there are still a lot of ego-centric little boys who can't deal. Don't settle. If you have one of these, tell him to grow a pair and then let and expect him to do his share. Don't micromanage him. You picked him as a father, let him do it his way and make his own mistakes. Could we maybe learn from each other?

I'm in the middle of reading The Mommy Myth by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels and I am hearing the battle cry of "No More!" I do remember my parents being more relaxed. I remember Steeler Superbowl parties where empty beer cans were made into a pyramid. I remember hiding in the hallway watching adults party while I was supposed to be in bed. I remember watching TV most evenings. And wouldn't you know it, I turned out OK. I got good grades in school, managed to avoid making really stupid decisions and generally have a nice life.

Last thoughts. There's a moment that struck me more than all of these articles and books and, believe it or not, it's from TV. When character Lynette on "Desperate Housewives" hits bottom after downing her kid's Ritalin meds, she ends up alone on an abandoned soccer field (what better place for a down-and-out soccer mom?). Two of the other female characters track her down and Lynette says that it's over, she can't do the mom thing anymore. She's terrible at it, she says. The other two chime in with how difficult things were for them and it makes Lynette stop and think. We should talk to each other more as women-who-are-also-mothers, not just talk at each other. (My name is not "Lauren's Mom" any more than it is Mrs. Scott Blah-blah!) We all feel like we're effing things up 90% of the time.