Cowgirl Contemporary Fantasy

I'm notoriously nitpicky about my sci-fi.  I've been a fan of all versions of Star Trek since before I knew how to properly pronounce Rene Aberjoinois.  I like Star Wars, but I don't feel the need to wear my light saber to work.  Other than that, I really am more into Tolkein and Butcher than Bradbury or Asimov. When I received Michael Pickard's novel, billed as "space satire," my ears perked up a bit.  The first chapter made me chuckle, so I threw caution to the wind and decided to dive in.   The Good Mr. Pickard's experience as a previously published author made this book's quality a definite cut above most self-published books.   The text had good flow and a defined voice.   Language use by the Frobs were consistent and had voice. It was filled with clever puns that made me chuckle. There were parts that reminded me of Monty Python, which always brightens my day, even if it doesn't involve fish slapping, silly walks, or shrubb...

I recently heard one of my heros give a speech.  Chief Joseph Medicine Crow is the story keeper, or storyteller, of his family in the Crow tribe.  He was the first of his people to go to college, and the last war chief, having counted coup on the Germans in WWII.  He's well into his nineties, and I was thrilled to hear him speak again. A self-deprecating man, he began by saying, "The wind has whistled and stolen my memory, but I have many more stories to tell." Boy, did he ever.

Just before Christmas in 1947, my grandfather boarded a small private plane bound for Seward, Alaska.  He had finished treating the ailments of the Natives on the Aleutian Islands, and he radioed my grandmother to pick him up from the tiny airport.  His plane was last seen banking over Resurrection Bay, but it never landed.  Alone with four children, my grandmother later remarried a rancher in eastern Montana, a brilliant, but troubled man that struggled with severe depression. What would our lives be like had Daddy B. not disappeared? Grandma would not have needed to come back down to the lower 48, nor would she have needed to marry Art.  My parents wouldn't have met in Glendive, Montana.  I would never have been born, much less raised on my step-grandfather's ranch.  Daddy B. was a warm and gregarious man, Art very stern and critical.  Would my dad and his siblings turned out differently?  Would Grandma have still refused ...

A little while ago, I blogged on the cliches about small towns that writers seem to enjoy.  There's something I couldn't believe I left out of the post.  The other day I noticed that Netflix made the movie  Knockaround Guys  available for streaming, a movie that takes place in my hometown, though little, if any of it was filmed there. With a cast that includes names like Vin Diesel, John Malkovich, Seth Green, and Dennis Hopper, it's hard to imagine what could go wrong with it.  Plenty.  The cliches were so thick I needed a shovel.  I actually liked the way the mobsters spoke and behaved.  The portrayal of my hometown is what pissed me off. Check out this bar scene. My mom used to bounce in the bar in which this scene takes place.  So did my brother, occasionally, when he wasn't being the D.J.   A kid a little older than my sister and I once came up to her and said, "You know, I've seen a lot of scary stuff in my life, but whe...

Two weeks ago I wrote a post regarding the relationship between speculative fiction and science .  In it I used Gene Rodenberry as a prime example of "boldly going where no man has gone before." Today I ran into a letter written by Gene Rodenberry regarding the very same subject.  He says,  "The links between science fiction and science are well established and I am very pleased to associate myself with the Planetary Society." Click on the link and read the letter in its entirety.  Not all of his scientific predictions came true, but he was a visionary, that's for sure.

Tweet It's been a while since the last psychopathy post, so let's review some facts. Psychopathy is a personality disorder.  It is characterized by very predictable personality traits that can be  measured by a trained professional.   Psychopaths are born, not made , though environmental factors shape how the disorder is expressed.  Psychopaths are perennially popular characters in all sorts of fiction, but authors often incorporate common myths about psychopaths . Today, we're looking at psychopathic behavior.  Let me make something very clear.   Finding these characteristics in yourself or others does not a psychopath make, young Padawan.   It is incredibly tempting to want to diagnose those around you as a psychopath, probably because everyone has some of these qualities to some degree.  The psychopath has most or all of these characteristics to such an extent that it has to be seen to be believed. Think of it this way.  One of...

Tweet When I was taking my upper level sociology courses, I remember a story my professor told about a Native American divination practice.***  When game was scarce, the medicine man would throw a deer's scapula in the fire until it cracked.  The medicine man would then read the cracks, interpret them, and then tell the hunters where to find game. The funny thing about this method of divination is that it actually worked, and not because the medicine man was a charlatan that already knew where the game had gone.  Humans are creatures of habit, mostly due to operant conditioning.   If we find a great little fishing hole and catch a large number of fish, we tend to return to the same area over and over, even if the fishing's never that good again. When the medicine man read the cracks and sent the hunters to different areas, it introduced variety into the hunters' search patterns and thus broke the hold operant conditioning had on them.  Did they always...

Tweet I spent my evening cursing vociferously after my enthusiastic, but ham-fisted, attempt to finish two choral compositions.  When the tirade faded, I had a thought about plot tension. I loved watching Lost.   Between smoke monsters, fantastic characters, and the altered laws of physics, trying to figure out what the hell was going on was half the fun.  Just when one question was answered, three more popped up, making for some serious, drawn-out tension.  Alas, the shrieks of outrage on Twitter after the last episode showed how many people were disappointed by the ending. Because I'm cheap as hell and a huge fan of many shows that aren't on cable or network TV, I don't have live TV, just Netflix.  I just got into Bones .  The sexual tension between Booth and Brennan is fantastic.  Two great characters, an interesting premise, and many, many layers of plot make for an engaging, addictive show.  I've been devouring episodes whenever I ...

As I lay sleepless due to the throbbing in my joints, I had a very long night to reflect.  My screeching nerves decided that Brandon Sanderson got something very right in his novel,  Elantris . Pain. Sanderson's protagonist, Prince Raoden, is stricken by the Shaod , a terrible affliction that renders its victims immortal, freakish, and hungry.  He is thrown into Elantris, a decaying city whose wonder can no longer gleam through the filth.  The Shaod leaves them without a heartbeat.  No injury will heal, and the pain of each injury never fades.  Eventually, the cumulative agony from hundreds of small injuries, coupled with an unrelenting hunger, drives them mad. For me, it started with low back pain, then constant headaches.  Soon my hands were always cold.  Then, I broke a bone in my foot from walking crookedly.  Most of the time I could ignore it, or at least put it to the back of my mind, but even if I wasn't consciously thinking abo...

I wrote a review  last month for the Portal, and one of the stories had slang that really bothered me.  It wasn't because the language was foul.  It bothered me because the author had an American Southerner calling a television a "telly."  Much of the slang and nicknames he used just didn't ring true, and it almost ruined the story for me. Most of my stories are through the eyes of a Montana rancher, and all of the slang I use is derived from my family.  I really like dialogue to sound authentic.  Below, I've written examples of idioms and slang that my family uses, especially the older members.  In the comments below, please offer up slang, accents, and idioms from the places you've been, but be sure to tell where you've heard them. Grandma's Idioms "I feel like I've been rode hard and put up wet."  (People always gave me funny looks when I said this at college, for some reason.) "I burnt the hair right off my tongue."  (C...

Tweet I grew up in a town so small that traffic lights were, and still are, completely unnecessary.  There were seven bars, but to balance things out, there were also seven churches.  Main street was only a couple of blocks long.  There were only about 80 kids grade 7-12 when I was in school, and that number has since dropped to around forty or so.  I started shooting a rifle when I was four, just like all of the other country kids, and I started driving about the same time.  (No lie.) According to the latest census, seventy-nine percent of the U.S. population lives in urban/suburban areas.  I don't know if seventy-nine percent of U.S. authors live in urban areas, but I think it's safe to say that the majority of America's authors do.  To me, the disparity shows.  If a small town is used in a setting in a story, it's nearly inevitable that one of the following negative stereotypes will be included. Nosy gossips. Ignorant yokels. Inbred...

Tweet I realize that the stories authors tell about all of the times they almost quit are usually coming from the I got published and now it's all worth it perspective.  My nearly-quit story is not.  I am unpublished.  I'm plowing through my edits like crazy.  I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not going to proclaim that I'm gonna be the next big thing because I fully realize it may never happen for me. I came to writing in a weird, roundabout way, mostly due to high levels of physical pain and social isolation.  I've always been a little odd to talk to, a little strange to look at, and looked at the world in a weird way.  Just ask my high school classmates, who could probably regale you with tales of apocalyptical theological discussions in the girls' locker room.  In my defense, I was going through a phase. I started writing as an adult while recovering from a surgery that wouldn't heal.  I nearly quit after realizing the first draft of my...

Tweet The Popularity of the Psychopathic Character The psychopath is a perennial favorite character-type amongst authors in every genre, though they are most often used in mysteries and thrillers.  Often authors get the very nature of the psychopath incorrect.  I'm not a criminology expert, but I've studied them extensively, both on my own and through my sociology coursework, and seeing a story with an unrealistic psychopath is an instant turn-off for me. I've long wanted to do more than screech incoherently at the television or book that portrays them as the product of abuse or other fallacies, but the topic is quite large and I've been hesitant to broach the subject.  Tonight, I'm fueled by enough caffeine to wire a moose and I'm trapped inside by yet another winter storm.  I've decided to do a series of blog posts based around the characteristics of a psychopath, and how we authors often get them wrong.  Myths about Psychopaths Wiktionary define...

Several months ago, I read a blog post about do's and don'ts for conference panels.  I would cite the author and post if I could remember where I found it, so I'm terribly sorry.  It may have been  Janet Reid's , but I can't be sure.  One of the no-no's was asking a question that was truly a thinly veiled pitch.   Example:  "How do you think a story about robots that pick your nose would sell?  I can show you what I'm talking about, as I have the manuscript in my hand." Earlier today, I participated in my first UF Chat on Twitter.  It was a blast and the discussion was great, and the other participants seemed very knowledgeable.  Several of them are published, and I had a question I wanted to ask regarding the genre of my novel, The Rider of Nealra .  I was afraid to ask, just in case I might look like Robot Pitch Girl above.  Just before I actually asked, though, my toddler woke up and I had to leave.  Several par...

Tweet Rant Alert! Just as I find the portrayal of earthy elves  to be pedantic, I find the portrayal of Christians in fiction a tad cliche.  Christians in the Christian literature I've read are too pure to be believable.  Christians in mainstream fiction tend to be either bigoted bad guys or shallow caricatures of what I feel it means to be Christian. Please understand that I'm not advocating the censorship of authors who use characters in this fashion.  I also must say that after reading a few works of Christian fiction, I abandoned the genre.  There very well could be works out there of which I am unaware that address my criticisms. Using these types of Christian characters bothers me for several reasons.  One, it reinforces both positive and negative stereotypes that separate Christians from others.  Two, those characters resemble no one I know, and it makes them unapproachable or unbelievable.  Three, my relationship with God doesn't r...