RNA conference notes--part one: Friday & Saturday morning

I figured it was about time I posted something useful and constructive about the RNA conference, seeing as how I’ve been back a whole week now. I didn’t take my camera, so I’ve borrowed some pictures from other people who did.

Friday afternoon started with the author panel. I’ve already wibbled on about it; the other authors present did a much better job than me!

Picture borrowed from Liz Fenwick, who has loads of great snaps. L-R: me, Nicola Cornick, Kate Harrison (standing; just finished The Secret Shopper's Revenge and loved it!), Anne Ashurst (just visible), Kate Hardy, Anna Jacobs.


Same line-up; this time it's Nicola Cornick speaking.

After a slightly late, boozy Friday night, it was time to get down to the business of learning more about this ridiculous business of writing and publishing. Here are the first couple of talks I went to.


Saturday morning

jay Dixon: Shakespeare on Love


jay gave an informative talk on the influences of Shakespeare on romantic novelists from Georgette Heyer through to the present. Knowledge of Shakespeare has often been used to demonstrate compatibility between characters, and used as a shorthand to add intelligence, without stretching the reader’s knowledge too far. Shakespeare is known all over the world in many different languages (I once saw a production of King Lear at the Barbican that had an all-English cast, including the late Nigel Hawthorne, but an all-Japanese crew, including the director, Yukio Ninegawa).


Shakespeare has given us many common words, such as abstemious, critical, frugal, and zany—and several that haven’t caught on so well, such as insultment (I love this!), bepray, and undeaf.


He borrowed plots and subplots in a way that would have us crying piracy today—but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was entirely acceptable. What Shakespeare gave us was a fresh way of writing. He could portray a character through speech—changing patterns of speech for older or younger characters, nobles or commoners (Julie Cohen also touched on this in her Sunday talk). His work was rich with metaphors and new ideas ‘bursting from their shells’ (that comes from a quote, but I only mate a very quick note so I can’t remember who!).


Romeo and Juliet gives us the framework for the romantic novel, beginning with disharmony and moving towards harmony. The stages can be described as:


Love at first sight

Obstacle

Declaration

Separation

Reconciliation


Of course in R&J the reconciliation isn’t between the lovers, but their families.

Shakespeare didn’t add on subplots for the hell of it: in R&J the Prince appears at three pivotal points and what he says and does affects the main plot. In Much Ado About Nothing, the wordy, funny, highly charge affair of Beatrice and Benedick is in total contrast to the romantic, tragic affair of Hero and Claudio.


Shakespeare had romantic plots of themes in a lot of plays that weren’t necessarily about romance: for instance Lady Macbeth’s love for her husband is the driving force behind her actions. The jealousy of Othello is a theme that’s been used again and again in romantic novels (although not usually with such tragic consequences).


And finally cross-dressing, so beloved of Shakespeare plots, is still an enduring device in romantic novels, although usually historicals, since today women in effect cross-dress on a daily basis!



Liz Bailey & Eileen Ramsey: Networking


Liz and Eileen gave a hugely enjoyable workshop on the right and wrong ways to network with publishers and agents. Using the biannual RNA parties as their example, and with Pia Fenton and Henriette Gyland as volunteers, they demonstrated the wrong ways to approach editors and agents at such events.
Picture borrowed from Kate Hardy, who also has a comprehensive write-up of the conference)

Things to avoid include: butting in on conversations; taking too long; being rude; approaching someone who doesn’t represent what you write; gushing over the other books they’ve edited; lacking a clear, concise ‘pitch’ to describe your book; don’t expect them to take your details/contact you; badgering famous authors for an introduction (but if they offer you one then take it!).


Things to remember: Be professional; be polite; know what your book is about (sounds obvious, but see below re: being unable to describe my own damn books); have paper/pen ready to take their details; if they’re there at such an event, then they’re willing to talk to you.


Then they had us role-play (haven’t done this since school) as pitchers/pitchees. I cheated, and played the pitchee.


The thing that always stumps me is trying to describe my books. All right; so I can explain the Sophie books without rambling on too long: a ditzy blonde gets recruited as a spy is probably all you need to know. And erotic paranormal romance doesn’t require much further explanation. But the book I’m currently shopping with agents (with very little success; possibly this is why) has no easy description.


I sat next to Imogen Howson for this talk, and while she described her book to me (A romantic ghost story with a shocking twist) perfectly, my description of the Untied Kingdom went something like, “Well, it’s set in a parallel world, and there’s this endless war, because basically we—er, that is Britain, England—are a sort of third world country, and there’s this girl who falls through a whole in the world from our world, and she’s fished out of the river by an army major, and he thinks she’s mad, or maybe a spy, and…”


You see the problem. So during and after the talk, I jotted down ideas for a more concise pitch. The trick to this, as I realised when I was writing the book, is to figure out whose story it is (I kept trying to write it as Eve’s story, but it’s really all about Harker). Here’s what I came up with:


Major Harker is fighting an endless war in a third world country that’s falling apart. It’s called England.


Whaddya think?

Hussah!

Have got Mozilla working again! I know, everyone was on tenterhooks, tearing out hair in sympathy, etc. New profile--apparently the old one got corrupted, probably by whatever Norton found lurking like a maggot in the depths of my hard drive. Also, I panicked when the most recent set of bookmarks it could found dated from January 2007--but I located the newer ones, too. I bookmark all my reviews, you see, so I can find them quickly. Now I just have to stop that Getting Started tab popping up every time I launch the browser, and I'm good.

Stupid browsers

So, I was getting tired of Mozilla crashing on me, and on my brother's recommendation downloaded the new version. Mozilla 3.0. Can't get it to even launch properly (opens a blank window and an eggtimer. That's all).

So, I'm using Internet Explorer, which obviously I hated enough to switch to Mozilla. It has none of my usual haunts cached, no bookmarks, no spellchecker (and I'm a terrible typist, I need to see my mistakes before I post anything!) , and everything's a little fuzzy, as if it's been enlarged 110%. Whenever I click on my Gmail notifier for new mail, it tries to open Mozilla. How do I get Mozilla back? I've installed, uninstalled, reinstalled... I don't really want to have to give up on it, especially because it involves resetting all my preferences for things like Gmail.

It's probably my computer, which has decided it hates me. I even downloaded new virus software (AVG Free said there was no problem; Norton begged to differ) which started a whole new rant about why I should have to pay for virus protection just to use the Internet (sure, if you never venture away from AOL or Yahoo's homepages, never send or receive anything, or even download a picture, you'll be safe, but then why are you using the Internet in the first place?).

Just my luck: I get the first computer in existence with PMS.

My shoes

Since so much has been asked about them--I thought I'd post a picture of the cream and black brogues that got so much attention on Saturday at the conference. Although for some reason Blogger has decided to post the picture sideways. Picture me confused.

I was going to post something much more witty and insightful about the conference, but I'm a bit floopy this morning having handed over a large wodge of cash to my dentist to drill and fill a tooth. Consequently, the right side of my mouth, jaw and lip, are kind of numb and earlier I found myself chewing my own cheek instead of some cheese. I thought I'd cheer myself up by watching Scrubs and Greek, which should have been recording last night, but Sky+ has no memory of either of them. This is very annoying, since I can't find a repeats--not for Greek which was the repeat episode (tennis having taken precedence on Sunday), or Scrubs, which is on E4 where of course there's no room for anything, what with Big Brother chomping great putrid holes in the schedule.

Anyway. When I'm less grumpy I'll write some more about the conference, or at least about Crowded House at Thetford (the cause of my TV schedule interruption) last night!

Spaceport: The Series

Isn't Lexxie clever?

Annoying things people ask authors

One of the lovely things about RNA meetings is that everyone there is in the same boat, or at least adjacent ones. No one asks you the irritating things you usually get asked whenever you reveal what you do.

These include the assumptions that you're writing about yourself, your friends and family. Maybe people are desperate to recognise themselves in books; whatever it is, just mention a skin tone or hair colour, accent or nationality, or heaven forfend a name a little like someone else's, and everyone's convinced they know who you're writing about.

At RNA events, I'm often asked if I write full time. This is so much nicer than the "So do you have a proper job?" phrasing, which means the same thing but also manages to imply that writing is a sort of hobby. Even worse is, "So don't you do anything else, then?" But then, authors are paid to think about how words go together--and how not to insult someone deliberately.

I don't know a single author, published or unpublished, who hasn't been asked where they get their ideas from. And I don't know a single one who could answer honestly. I think Terry Pratchett put it best, when one of his characters invented a sort of helmet to try and stop the constant inspiration particles from colliding with his brain.

It's like with Shakespeare (well, sort of). You know how there are people convinced he didn't write his plays because he'd never been to the places where they were set, and that no one in his family had any history of writing, and--gasp!--may have even been illiterate! Well? So? No one else in my family can play the piano, but no one assumes my brother fakes that. Can't we allow the clearly brilliant Mr Shakespeare the nous to, I don't know, ask people about these far-off places?

Which brings me onto the sniggering question I'm asked when people find out I write erotic romance. "So do you research your books (nudge, wink) personally?" Yep. All of them. Everything in them--I've done that. Even the one with the faery wings and the flying.

As for, "Can I be in your book?" there's only one sensible answer: No. You're far too annoying.

Pacing, and Why Kett Has Problems

Not just Kett the character, but Kett's book (which still doesn't have a definite title: another problem).

I bastardised Julie Cohen's plot chart to make this:

I know it's too small to see (also I don't want to actually give away the plot) but all the colours are relevant. The wide column with all the text outlines what happens in each chapter. The coloured columns list what they do. Orange is for character development, turquoise for plot development. The darker, the stronger. The next five (I ran out of clearly different colours) represent humour, drama/action, love/affection, lust/attraction, and hate/anger. This is so I can look at the book as a whole and see where the high and low points are.

For instance, chapter six appears to have some problems: it's high on plot development and exposition, but there's no character development, humour, drama, love, lust or hate. This means that chapter six is going to be pretty damn boring.

The purple column represents lust/attraction. You can see that Kett and Bael get off to a great start, but then there are big droughts where they barely even touch each other. This is a problem in a red hot romance. However, for the most part there's a lot of growing affection, and for many scenes there's drama which actually gets in the way of any naughty stuff.

The high point of hate/anger (the bright green on the right) represents the Black Moment. But look at all that crap that comes after it!

Methinks I need to do some serious work on this...

Well, what was romantic fiction?

Have just got back from RNA conference--well, not just, I had to watch Doctor Who first, obviously. Can I make a full report? No, my brain hasn't started working properly yet. The RNA conference is usually about two things: wine, and talking to other people who also hear the voices (in fact Nell Dixon has a t-shirt to that effect). Put the two together, and you don't get much sleep, especially in student accommodation with paper-thin walls (I hope to hell their library is quiet and conducive to study, because the student rooms aren't).

Anyway. I survived the author panel, which was the opening session and therefore at least over with quickly. Anne Ashurst did a brilliant job of keeping it moving and making sure all five of us answered each question, and in varying order. As we were first asked to talk about what sort of books we wrote and how we'd ended up writing them, I played the 'mis-spent youth watching Buffy and reading Terry Pratchett' card, which was sort of cheating as I'd already put that in my speaker bio for the conference notes.

Most of the questions weren't hard or scary, but being put on the spot is not my forte--when asked to name my favourite author in my own genre--paranormal romance in this case--my brain went dead and I couldn't think of one. It sort of went like this:

Me: Er, er, I hate being asked this question, er, well, my favourite paranormal author is Terry Pratchett, but that's not really romance--

Various Authors In The Audience: Which one? / Witches Abroad! / Wyrd Sisters!

Me: Yes, but the City Watch books are my favourite, Men at Arms and Thud! in particular.

Lynne Connolly: What about Kenyon?

Me: Oh God, thank you. Fantasy Lover! It's about a Greek demi-god who's cursed into a book as a sex slave, and whoever speaks the right incantation gets him as her slave.

V.A.I.T.A.: Collective sigh.

~


Question: What makes romantic fiction? What makes your books romantic?

O.A.O.P.: Very sensible answers about love and finding other half of soul, etc.

Me: I always think about what comes next. I hate books that are all grand and passionate but you can tell the characters are going to burn out. I always want to know what happens after the last page. Do they get married? What do they name their children? I want to know they're still going to be together when they're grey and old. (All right, I wasn't this concise and probably miss most of the pertinent points, but this was really what I meant to say. See above re: being put on the spot.)

~

Question: I know most of us are happily married, but if one of your heroes walked through the door, would you...?

Other Authors On Panel: No, of course not, I love my husband.

Me: I'm single, so yes. (This response was quoted back to me multiple times throughout the weekend!)

V.A.I.T.A.: Erupt in laughter.

Me: Especially if it's the one I based on Richard Armitage. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

~

Etc. etc. Anyway, that over, I proceeded to the bar to drink lots of wine. Saturday morning came a little bit suddenly. It also came with my pretty cream and black heels, which garnered more compliments than any other shoes I've worn. They were followed by my silver sparkly shoes, which so enchanted Janet Gover that she put a picture of them on her blog. Sunday brought my red polka-dot wedge-heeled espadrilles, which made an appearance in a quickly-written PG Wodehouse-style parody in Katie Fforde's workshop (but unfortunately I can't remember whose! Sorry!) and had Tansy-whose-surname-I-can't-remember (sorry! Information overload!) asking me how me how many pairs of shoes I'd brought. The answer, embarrassingly for a three-night stay, was five.

Shoes and wine aside, I had a fantastic time hanging out with my writer friends, which I usually only get to do, Almost Famous-style, in the bookstore (speaking of bookstores, I took thirteen of my paperbacks with me, and sold eleven. Result!). I met Immi Howsen, who is an absolute sweetheart, and Naomi Clark, who is my age and lives near Cambridge which is brilliant. The usual suspects--Katie Ff., Kate Walker, Sophie Weston, Kate Lace, Jan Jones, Julie Cohen, Anna Louise Lucia--were all there and several of them ran brilliant workshops which I will try to relate in more detail later, and I made new acquaintances in the form of Kate Harrison, Anna Jacobs, Nicola Cornick and Kate Hardy who were also on the author panel with me.

(nb: why are there so many Kates in the RNA?).

Right. More will follow, probably, but a) I'm really tired and b) I'm trying to apply Julie Cohen's tips on pacing to making Kett's book work. Wish me luck!

What is romantic fiction, anyway?

That's the title of the author panel--yes, author panel--I'm on at the RNA conference this weekend. And, you know, if someone asks me that, I'm going to be stumped. I mean, your obvious answer is, "Fiction about romance" or, for the less sarky, it's a story about two people falling in love and living, if not happily ever after, them for the foreseeable future.

I'm representing the paranormal genre for the panel, and this makes it a little trickier. Paranormal romance is not a huge market in the UK. The authors you might find on the shelves are a) imports, mostly from America, and b) not very well known by much of the public over here. Therefore, unlike the other authors on the panel (Kate Harrison, chick lit; Anna Jacobs, sagas; Kate Hardy, category; Nicola Cornick, historical), I'm going to be going in cold, because most of the conference-goes won't be familiar with the genre.

So, as Jan (who coerced me into doing the panel in the first place) asked, "Why are elves sexy?" I immediately replied, "Didn't you see Lord of the Rings?" but I fear I'm going to need more of an answer than that.

What's so special about paranormal romance? Why do we find vampires and werewolves, traditionally the very unsexy monsters of horror stories, suddenly attractive? What about future worlds and alien species? Fantasy universes? Why is paranormal romance, well, romantic?

Hissy fits

As we took Pepper out for her walk this afternoon, Spike appeared on the corner. I gave him a cuddle. Pepper pinned him down and licked him all over. He didn't fight. He never does. When we came back, he was there again, so I let him in, gave him some cat treats, and let the kittens out of the piano room.

Spike did not like this.

He ran upstairs. Jack followed. He hissed at Jack. Jack still followed him. Spike ran downstairs and hid under the coffee table. Jack followed. Spike tried to get out at the back of the house, but Pepper was there, and I had to rescue him. He ran upstairs, downstairs again. Pepper pinned him down and he hissed and miaowed, but made no discernible effort to break free. I rescued him again and carried him to the front door.

He hissed at Pepper. He hissed at the kittens. Then, as I put him down to open the door, he hissed at me. I let him out and shut the door without a word. Spike and I usually have lots of conversations, you see.

Half an hour later, I heard him run across the conservatory roof. He was sitting outside the back door, waiting to come in, with a mouse in his mouth.

Sorry for hissing at me? Present for the kittens? Or just telling me he can feed himself?

Jack and Daisy

Prepare for the cuteness overload. One thought did occur to me: will these names (the most 'human' names I've ever given my pets) now be excluded from my list of potential character names? Although come to think of it, two of my Changeling novellas have had characters called Jack and Daisy, so I'd probably be unlikely to use them again any time soon. And, I have been known to recycle names under different spellings (I know I've had about three Finns, Alexes both male and female, and I even named a character Kat, in one of my Cat Marsters titles).

Anyway, here are some adorably cute pictures of my adorably cute babies.

Daisy, left, and Jack, right (I put collars on them to tell them apart!) They have a little cat bed, but apart from the first night they've preferred the back of this chair with its cat cushions, or the office chair (what is it with office chairs? Spike loves mine).

Engaged in their second-favourite activity. You're always warned that cats might not eat a lot to begin with in a strange place, but these two have been really tucking in. And a good job, too: it's the expensive kitten food, so they grow up extra healthy and strong--and hopefully smart, too (no Sugar, I'm not thinking of you. Well, maybe a little bit).

And here's their first-favourite activity. Apparently it's comfy for them to sleep this way--and yes, they're on the office chair (the piano room doubles as an office/study).

This morning, Jack discovered how to get out of the piano room (jumping off the piano, over the gate, is a key aspect) while the Demon Puppy was out, so explored the house a while. Here he is leaning over the stairs, trying to decide whether these glass pebbles are edible or not.

Jack posing like the beautiful boy he is.

Daisy, slightly blurry because she moves so fast in her efforts to hide! While her brother is as bold as anything (I had Jack Sparrow in mind when I named him), little Daisy is terrified of everything, and spends most of her time hiding behind chairs and doors. When she made it into the sitting room this morning, Pepper appeared on the other side of the baby gate, and so terrified Daisy that she couldn't get herself out from behind the sofa. When I rescued her, she darted back behind her chair in the safety of the piano room, so quickly I have a scratch on my chest from her launch to the floor!


And, because the poor wee motherless mite is feeling horribly left out and sulky, here's a picture of my Gorgeous Boy, Spike, when he was much the same age as Jack and Daisy. All together now: We Still Love you!

Themes

So, I was reading an article on the RWR by Julie Rowe about voice, and one of the things mentioned was core themes and stories. Julie says she writes books concerned with healing--physical and emotional. So I started thinking, what are the core themes of my books? What do they have in common?

I looked at a list of my Cat Marsters books, and tallied things up. Out of twenty titles, six have themes of Acceptance, five of Redemption, three of Second Chances, two of Transformation, and a whopping ten have themes of Independence (I didn't tally the Sophie books I write as Kate Johnson, since they have similar themes--but Independence is definitely one of them).

I thought more about this. How many of my books feature protagonists who are Outsiders? Well--let's start with Sophie, since she's the most useless spy in the history of espionage, and never quite feels she fits in. Luke, while he's a fantastic spy, is not the warmest and cuddliest of guys, and never quite feels at home in friendly company.

In my Spaceport story, the heroine is a socialite who prefers the army to her gilded life--and then after she's forced on the run and disguised as a cheap whore, doesn't really want to go back. Pretty much all my Sundown books (and there are twelve now!) feature outsiders. Of course, that's more common when you're writing paranormals, but what I mean is that my characters don't fit in even in their own worlds. Masika is the scarred, ex-concubine vampire who was cast out by her Master; Elek is a loup-garou who isn't in control of his wolf form; Con is a wizard without much power, entirely at the beck-and-call of a set of mad faeries. And that's just the first three. Ruarc is a high fae who hates his Queen and Court; Reaver is virtually a sociopath. Sofie is a werewolf who doesn't believe in werewolves!

Then there's Almost Human, and when I thought about this book--which has a very independent heroine, too--I realised there was another theme in my book. Denial--or perhaps defiance is a better term. Chance is in denial of her heritage in a major way (she's also a courtesan--you may notice another theme here). In the sequel, which I've just finished writing, her cousin Kett comes to the fore: the most defiant character I've ever written. She's not comfortable with company, rejects the title her father bestows on her, can't keep a normal job, tens to pick fights with both people and massive scary predators when she's angry--oh yes, and is the only known shapeshifter in her world. She's pretty much a textbook Outsider.

So those are my themes, as I see them. Outsiders and Independence. Even books I've written in different genders tend to come out with a similar character type, like in the Untied Kingdom, where my hero is an officer promoted from the ranks in an army where commissions are still purchased by the aristocracy, and Eve is a former popstar now living in a council flat. Oh yes, and she's from a parallel universe. I guess that's taking a theme and making it explicit!

Wimbledon

Today I'm blogging about The Championships on the Britwriters blog, so I've let Spike take over and vent his grievances about the newly arrived Jack and Daisy. Cute, ain't they?