To Query or Not to Query (again)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

I’m contemplating sending out queries — the packets of synopsis and short excerpt and stuff the agents request — again. Even after the over 100 rejections I’ve gained over the years, I want to try again. Just in case someone’s in a better mood or something.

I’m thinking of trying something different:

Going by a pen name?
Going by a MALE pen name? It would burn my butt if I got a agent’s representation as a male and not as a female (but imagine that first meeting)!
Send in to literary fiction agents in addition to (or instead of) science fiction/fantasy agents?
Just giving up?
Retitling the book?

I’m not sure why I’m contemplating this again — could it be because I’m sitting on seven finished books, five of which I believe are publishable? Or that I don’t sit still very well, I don’t watch tv, and my Internet use mainly consists of blogging and researching (books and plants)? Or that I refuse to believe that my writing isn’t good enough? Or maybe I’m just a masochist?

Or maybe, just maybe, the stars will align and a receptive agent will take a chance on something just a little different. Or tell me what needs fixing instead of the standard “It’s not you, it’s me” form letter.

I really want to reach the next part of my journey.

PS: My Valentine to You

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! This includes the Russian Bot, the Portuguese mystery, my daily visitor from Ukraine, the one person my sister knows from Germany, the one person I know from Canada, India and Hong Kong, and the charming girl from Poland who might also be Portugal. Oh, yes, and Peru. How could I forget Peru?

And Happy Valentines Day from my fans in the US, which sometimes even let me know who they are.

In a perfect world, this would be my valentine:

We would all go out to coffee together and meet each other, some of us for the first time. Hugs would be optional, but I would work hard to feel the hugs in the spirit of how they were meant. I would introduce all of you to each other. We would talk about what your favorite coffeeshop beverage was, but because this is Valentine’s Day and not Heaven, I would not be able to indulge you in herb tea or samovar or Turkish coffee. That’s okay, because we are all friends. I would tell you what you mean to me. That would be my valentine.

Isn’t fantasy wonderful?

If ignorance is bliss

I should have been ecstatic about my blog stats yesterday, but I wasn’t:

At about noon yesterday, I looked at my stats for this blog and saw more hits on my blog than I’d ever had before from two countries, Russia and Portugal. Russia and Portugal were semi-frequent (in the case of Russia) or frequent (in the case of Portugal) visitors to the blog.

So, what’s the problem here? Webcrawlers. Bots. Robots. Spiders. Slimy bastards. Computer programs that investigate a blog to mine information, whether it be an email to send spam mail to (No, I don’t want to be a REAL man!) or who knows what purpose! If you look below at the circled diagram, you’ll note that the action started close to noon and peaked at noon, which is more activity than I get when I publish (see the spike at the far left).

Russia, according to my friend Dann (hi, Dann!) is a hotbed of bot activity, whether to feed addresses to a spambot, influence US politics, or look for coded messages. I hope to heck Russia’s looking for coded messages, so at least I can get a good short story about mistaken identity out of it. I had always imagined Russia to be an adolescent female who wanted a writing career. I’m disappointed to find out she’s not.

The US is probably not using a bot — I actually do have at least 16 friends who read this blog. But I don’t know most of them.

Where this really disillusions me is Portugal. I know nobody in Portugal, so that was my favorite mystery. I imagined Portugal to be a Secret Admirer, which is really a silly thing for a fifty-something woman to fantasize about, isn’t it? A younger fellow who’s too shy to actually give you meaningful information but courts your curiosity, and elicits laughter but no jealousy from your significant other? Women my age are more likely to get “Hi, surrogate mommy!” which is not flattering at all.

So I have lost a little spring in my step with the loss of my Secret Admirer fantasy. It’s okay — as I told Dann, I prefer the truth always.

But the fantasy makes for better stories.

The Darkest Pit

Eighteen feet down where the sun doesn’t touch me
I tumbled, landed hard, the wind knocked from me,
still alive. Screaming for help doesn’t count
in the woods where nobody lives.

Crab-crawling on the walls doesn’t help, nor does
trying to jump, or wishing a ladder or
screaming for help in the woods where nobody lives
and my telephone landed above.

God helps those who help themselves,
says the adage, which implies to me
That this God turns his back on the helpless
and that I will starve to death in this hole.

The dead don’t exhort their God from the grave,
The living give testimony in their churches;
the sample is biased.When I die,
no one will blame God for forsaking me.

An Old Song

This song was written a long time ago about a friend with whom I had a shy, almost mystical friendship with. In real life, I wouldn’t go out with him because there was always a long line of irrational women in front of him, and he had briefly dated all of them. (He was a guitarist). But in my dreams, and occasionally in life, we had great conversations …

Turn the corner

to a street beyond a map,

walk much further

till our feet forget the path.

We have walked here

but only in our dreams,

Then we wake up,

Never knowing what it means

Turn the handle,

slide back the creaking door

while I wonder

if you’ve been here before.

Weathered iron

is rusting in its sleep

As we settle

in the silence that we keep.

(CHORUS 2x)

In the morning,

if the snow has turned to gold,

does it matter

to the secrets that we hold

1), then CHORUS 3-4x and fade

Eulogy of My Husband’s Mother, Whom I’ve Never Met

My mother-in-law died a week ago at 83 from complications of uterine cancer. I will go with Richard to Kansas for a memorial service in March — possibly March 17, our wedding anniversary.
This seems oddly fitting, because Dorothy Steffens died believing her only son had never married. I will meet Dorothy for the first time at the internment.

Obviously, there is a story behind this. Dorothy Steffens suffered from mental illness and dementia. She was, Richard said, alternately demanding, doting, and delusional during his childhood. Richard was the only son of a Chinese mother and her farming husband, so he got more of his share of the doting — even smothering — behavior. His sisters weren’t as favored.

Dorothy became a divisive character in any household she lived in, setting spouse against spouse with frightening accuracy. Her cognitive decline added to her emotional turbulence, complicated by Type 2 diabetes and poor self-care. Soon the sisters realized that the only way Dorothy could be cared for was to place her in a nursing home.

In the nursing home, Dorothy became fixated on a savior who would sweep her from the nursing home and take care of her forever. At one point she had targeted the doctor at the home. When Richard and I were planning our wedding, however, she had pegged her own son as her knight in shining armor.

Which is why, when Richard sent her a wedding invitation, Dorothy tried to break out of the nursing home to stop the upcoming wedding.

Richard’s sister Linda called Richard — “How could you send Mom a wedding invite?” Richard had assumed that he should give his mother another chance to be the mother he’d wanted; it hadn’t worked that time either. It was agreed that Richard would fly down to Texas and assure his mother that he had broken up with me.

Of course I had fantasies that I would meet his mother and that she would bless our marriage. On the other hand, I am pragmatic, so I sent Richard to Texas to break us up in the eyes of his mother.

I had never met Dorothy E. Steffens when she died. She never knew I had married her only son. From all accounts, she would have tried to break apart our marriage either before or after the fact, and she might well have succeeded.

Strangely, though, I think I understand her. Sometimes, a child grows up in desperation — perhaps during the Chinese-Japanese battles of WWII — and no amount of safety or security will be enough. Because there’s never enough love, never enough food, never enough reassurance, the child demands more and more. The child who struggles with mental illness loses bits and pieces of their safety to the disease and needs even more to cling onto, and it’s never there because we don’t understand the broken glass of their perception.

The Star and the Street Lamp

He points at the star —
“That star was me once,
high on accolades,
floating on publicity,
viewed by telescopes.”

I point at the street lamp —
“Is it worth less, then,
to be the gleam of light
in the kitchen window?
Is it worth less
to help some poor soul
find his way home?”

He said he’d think about it.

I hope he finds his way home.

Valentine’s from the Outside

This will likely not go into Whose Hearts are Mountains, but I wanted a writing exercise on alternatives to Valentine’s Day, mostly to understand the collective members (Archetypes)
****************

We sat around the Trees, of course, in the deep night. Through the dome, we could see stars; our only other illumination the faint glow of lights that ringed the edges of the dome’s spacious lawn. I looked around at the collective members: Estella with her dusky skin and musical voice; Davis, with his tight curls and stocky build; Summer’s impish face in shadow; Daniel, his tall lanky bulk next to me …

Mari, as always the apex point of the semicircle, sat with her back to the Trees. “Kirsten and Derek” — the pale twins with almost white hair who looked unworldly — “informed me that we hadn’t celebrated Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, no!” Jude chuckled from a hidden perch in the tree. “Whatever shall we do?”

“You might recall,” Mari said repressively, “we …” She paused to think, and that in and of itself suggested secrets. “We have placed importance on rituals to celebrate and cement our heritage.”

A long silence ensued, the type where people turn to each other and silently ask, “What do you think?” and nobody has anything to say.

I decided to break the silence: “Valentine’s Day is a problematic holiday.”

“Why?” Estella wondered aloud.

Another mystery — why did this group regard Valentine’s Day as a mystery? In the years before the Battles, the media was full of Valentine’s Day ads exhorting consumers to remember their loved one with increasingly expensive items. Could they have missed that? Were they refugees from a monastery?

“The trouble is that,” I explained as if my audience had never heard of Valentine’s Day except in name only, “the holiday celebrates romantic love, love between two bonded partners. It had become a competition over the last century, with the price of the presents representing how much you ‘love’ a partner, and disdain toward people who didn’t have a partner.” Having never had a partner, I’d noticed that last point keenly. “I’m not sure that’s what you want to introduce to the collective. It fosters jealousy and inequality.”

A long silence ensued. “Why did — who would invent that kind of holiday where your happiness was at the expense of others?”

“That’s easy,” I shrugged. “People selling items meant to be romantic. To create a market where people will spend more.” Not for the first time, I wondered if the economic collapse of North America had its advantages.

“We don’t buy and sell,” Summer said, braiding a strand of her hair in silhouette. “Nor do we buy partners, really. I mean, Lilly and Adam are partners, but they don’t own each other …” Daniel nodded his head, and I wondered about Lilly and Adam’s story.

“Ok,” I jumped in. This was folklore. This was what I was good at. “What is your notion of love?”

“Love?” Jude inquired, hanging from a branch.

“Love?” a less-familiar voice at the other end of the semi-circle echoed. “Hmm … I guess love is when you set down your wants to take care of another’s needs.”

“Love is training your eyes outside yourself to the people around you,” Estella intoned.

“Love is allowing the other into the pattern of your life,” Daniel rumbled beside me.

The answers were what I would have expected from a communal society — had these folks always been communal? Were their parents communal? How could that happen without anthropologists like me discovering them and writing about them?

“Ok,” Mari — the premiere Native American anthropologist and my mother’s mentor — called out. “How do we show love?”

As the residents around me fell silent, I took out my notebook, waiting for the answers this unique group had to offer.

Valentines Day is coming soon. Oh, no!

Valentine’s Day is coming up in the US, and never was there a more problematic holiday. A holiday originally devoted to sending a sweet note to one’s significant other, it has devolved into a sense of pecuniary* duty to one’s partner and, in some cases, a nuclear arms race of materialism.

For example, a sign in Maryville’s downtown: If you really loved her, you’d get her a limo ride. To “love” her, then, you have to 1) spend money 2) on luxury goods. Facebook at about this time consists largely of women posting what their significant others got them for Valentine’s Day, and the competition makes me sad.

My news correspondent from China, Yunhao, points out that this dynamic exists in China, perhaps even in a more amped-up version, because of the relative shortage of females there. Women can expect more because there are fewer of them. Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker referred to the matching of partners through skills, resources, and shortages “the marriage market”. Perhaps we can call the Valentine’s Day dynamic “the reassurance market”.

Perhaps Valentine’s Day is roughest to single people. After all, the day is marketed to lovers, spouses, partners and the like. I’ve been single most of my life, because in assortative mating (Becker’s marriage market) I have too many of the wrong skills — the presumably male skills of high education, intelligence, and a career — and not enough of the right skills — the presumably female skills of a stunning body and long hair. Valentine’s Day felt like a candy store that others were allowed into but I was not. The best Valentine’s Day I had as a single was in grad school when a couple of my friends got into the spirit and gave me a white rose (Dave, thanks!) and a mylar balloon (sorry I don’t remember who that was!) True to the use of Valentine’s Day tokens as visible proof that one was “taken”, my fellow grad students wanted to know who my boyfriend was.

I would love to see Valentine’s Day change. Instead of being a marketing ploy for everything from chocolate to diamonds, I would like to see it become a holiday of generosity to friends and family — and partners. Of course, if this developed, it would have to happen the day after Valentine’s Day —

National Half-Price Chocolate Day
*************

* pecuniary — having to do with money. One of my favorite words.

Plague, Pestilience, and Papulomacular Rash

In honor of having the pestilence on my face named — it’s an adenovirus, related to a cold of all things, in one of its less common manifestations — I will spend a moment talking about all sorts of pestilence a writer can infect their characters with.

I’ll start with smallpox. Smallpox is a disease you don’t want to have. If the high fever doesn’t end your life, the chance of toxemia, or toxic reaction to the viral load, could. Only 30% of people who contract smallpox die, but what if someone genetically tinkered with it so that the fatal form, malignant smallpox, resulted 100% of the time? Smallpox doesn’t exist in the wild anymore, having been eradicated recently through vaccinations. There are, however, stores of the virus in government research labs throughout the world, who endeavor to create better vaccines using smallpox in case of biological warfare. Unless they’re planning biological warfare themselves. Hmmmm…..

If the book is set in an earlier time period, dysentery might be the disease the doctor ordered. Dysentery is an intestinal disease which causes bloody diarrhea, and it can be caused by bacteria, viruses, or amoebas. Malnutrition and dehydration are the causes of death. If death by diarrhea sounds strange, remember that it’s the largest cause of death in the world. For those of you who played Oregon Trail, this is the disease that killed you many times. If the writer wants a messy, smelly death carried by contaminated water, this or cholera will fit the bill.

Tuberculosis and leprosy (related diseases, as it turns out) aren’t what they used to be. In ways, these diseases functioned opposite to each other in literature. Leprosy spared the victim’s life but disfigured them due to numbness and subsequent injury, and made them a pariah. Tuberculosis drove romantic figures to an early coughing death while making them more attractive in their frailty and pallor. Nowadays, both are easily treated; we only see the dramatic forms of these diseases these days in Edwardian/Victorian romance (tuberculosis) and in travel/adventure novels (leprosy).

Influenza doesn’t seem to get written much about. Possibly because we usually get it and get better. But the flu killed a lot of people — and still kills people. People actually die from complications from the flu, such as immune system hyperactivity, an opportunistic disease, or organ failure. The only place this disease creates much drama is in the regret that one couldn’t talk to a loved one before they died an unexpected death.

Cancer, as a slower disease, usually allows characters to interact with the victim before they die. In fact, it’s often portrayed in literature as being a “pretty” death, much like tuberculosis used to be. In actuality, cancer is often a messy death, involving stages of dying from less talkativeness to coma to death rattle to death. Characters facing death by cancer also get portrayed as beings that have already ascended into the afterlife, only their bodies haven’t caught on. Gleefully pursuing their bucket lists from a wheelchair, they dispense truisms to their unlucky earthbound brethren. There are people like this (watch Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture — he’s genuinely this enlightened by ensuing mortality), but there are also people who fight every step, there’s people who detail every pain they’re feeling, and there’s my mom — who demanded that the Catholic Church apologize for her abuse by nuns. (She only got as far as a chaplain, but he apologized).

Authors kill off characters. It’s one of the ugly realities of writing. My schtick, I guess, is that we should kill off characters as realistically as possible, to capture the humanity within humiliating, messy death.