How I put myself in my books

I was just working on my latest manuscript (revising-- I love revising; so much easier than actually creating pages), when I reached a tiny event in the story. In the novel, my heroine's father has left her his journal, and she treasures it not because of its contents but because of the handwriting. Here's where that incident originated.

My father never went shopping for Christmas presents early. He was notorious for going out  the afternoon of Dec. 24, and coming back with the coolest presents for my mother, my sister, and me. But in December 1989, my father died about two weeks before Christmas. Several months after his death, my mother gave me a Christmas present that my father had bought for me (he purchased one for my sister as well) early that year.

Apu (that's Dad in Hungarian) was a mechanical engineer, and one of his last projects was designing a nut or bolt--I don't know which--for the stealth bomber. Lockheed Martin made silver coins available for purchase to the people who helped in the production of the bomber. My dad bought one for each of his daughters.

I collected coins as a kid, and still keep interesting ones. When I received the commemorative silver coin, it wasn't the coin itself that held my attention. Tucked into the box, written on a tiny card made from the cut-out corner of one of the extra invitations from my wedding (my family was nothing if not frugal) were the words, "Love you, Apu." I have the coin to this day, but the treasure in its official box isn't the silver, but that piece of repurposed paper with three simple words in my father's handwriting. I would recognize that script anywhere.

--Gabi

Books I'm reading now:
The Other Guy's Bride by Connie Brockway
Third Grave Dead Ahead by Darynda Jones

Bah Humbug

I think I may have a genetic trait that appears on days like today (it’s February 14, in case you didn’t know). Call it the cynical gene, call it the disbelief gene, call it what you will. I like to call it my rebel gene (because if you knew me, you’d know how funny that was). I don’t get excited about Valentine’s Day. My husband and I (I think he may have the same gene) don’t celebrate. There’s nothing wrong with a day to celebrate love, but we don’t like to be told that today is the day, especially when commercials and ads bombard you with messages about the importance of the day.

I was in a store last week and ran into a friend who was buying Valentine’s Day presents for her kids. Really? Don’t get me wrong. I totally spoiled my kids (and still spoil the kid at home), but not in the name of a non-holiday. I have the same reaction to my anniversary, my birthday, St Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, the Superbowl, and Halloween. I think I may just feel that these “holidays” have spiraled out of control with bigger and bigger expectations each year. Oh, we give each other presents on birthdays, but if we can’t do it on the day itself, that’s no big deal. And for our anniversary this year we decided to get a bed (not the mattress; we have one of those; I mean a piece of furniture that holds the mattress; I’ve never had one), but we still haven’t bought it. The last anniversary we decided to get a bed (clearly not a new idea), we spent two days shopping, and then decided it would be more fun to take the family to Hawaii instead.

It could be that I’ve trained myself not to expect anything. After all, I married a man who can’t understand the appeal of buying metal with rocks in it that has no express purpose (jewelry, for you non-engineering types). In the dark ages before the Internet really existed, he gave me a modem for a present. I had no idea what it was. Turns out, he was right about its importance.

Now there’s nothing wrong with celebrating family, milestones, events, etc., but to me celebrations mean more when they are not prescribed by the day. When I’ve had a bad day and my husband bring home a bunch of flowers just because, that’s romantic. When he calls up and offers to pick up dinner, that’s romantic. When I ask for help and he drops everything to do what I’ve requested, that’s romantic. When he takes the dogs to the dog park because the last time I went some idiot hit my dog and yelled at me because she’s high energy, vocal (she barks when she’s exuberant—you should see her talking to me while I’m in the kitchen), big, but so sweet and has never hurt anyone or any dog, that’s romantic. When he got down on the floor and played with our children when they were little, and even now takes our developmentally delayed daughter to basketball games and takes the time to play video games with her, that’s romantic. And when we still plan our future and what we want to do together despite having been married for 27 years, that’s romantic. And when we laugh together, and discuss politics together, and watch movies together, that’s romantic.

So go ahead and celebrate Valentine’s Day. There’s nothing wrong with it. I’ll do nothing special today except what we do every day. And I will love every minute of it, even the bad ones.

But I still expect special treatment on Mother’s Day. Oh, yeah. Nobody gets out of that one.

--Gabi

P.S. I have a giveaway running here until Feb 19. See the following blog entry.

Books I’m reading now

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

It's February...

It’s February, and you know what that means.

That’s right! My mother’s birthday. Anyu (That’s “Mom” in Hungarian) has reached an age where I’m sure she’d prefer using only the term “significant,” and in a “significant” age, she has reached a “significant” milestone (one easily divisible by 5 or 25). An incredible woman with an incredible history: She escaped from Hungary at the age of 18; married to the same man (my father, also Hungarian) for thirty-four years until his death; survived a burglary that robbed her of many sentimental Hungarian artifacts, an earthquake that damaged her house, and just two years ago a fire that burned her condo to the ground (she likes to joke—yes, joke—how she’s been the recipient of Red-Cross care packages three times in her life—once when she was a refugee, once after the earthquake, and once when her house burned down). She speaks and reads English well, but we still laugh at some of her mangled idioms: just this past Christmas, she was speaking with my daughter about never having received a speeding ticket, “knock on the door”.

So in honor of February and my mother’s birthday, I’m giving away three Kindle copies of TEMPTATION’S WARRIOR, my ebook release of an earlier hardcover novel (don’t worry; other formats coming very soon—and I’ll do a giveaway then too). Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, TEMPTATION’S WARRIOR is dedicated to my mother. And if you’re confused about the author name, Gabi Anderson is the name I published TW under. TEMPTATION’S WARRIOR is medieval light—look for fun, not density. (See this post for more details)

So if you’d like to be entered for one of the three Kindle copies, please leave a comment here telling me you’d like to enter or shoot an email to GabiStevens505@gmail.com. Be sure to leave me a way to contact you or heck back on Feb 20. I’d also love to hear a story about your mom. I’ll draw the winners on February 19. That’s Anyu’s birthday.

--Gabi

Books I’m Reading Now:

One more RITA® book to go. Still not telling.

Technophile

I hate cell phones. No really. They suck. The reception is bad, they lose service at the most inopportune times, and frankly I don’t want to be connected 24/7. I have never figured out why I need a camera on my phone (I’ve tried to use it, but I hate taking pictures. I used to hate it before every phone had a camera. I had to force my self to remember my camera when we were on our European adventure this summer). I have one mostly because you can’t not have one these days, and honestly, how often do they get used in an emergency? (Parents always say their children need one in case of emergency—really? In a real emergency, they get in the way far more than they help.) I hate the new mentality that everyone MUST be perfect at all times—no more errors allowed, no misspeaking, no tripping and falling—because if you make a mistake your flaming takedown will be posted for all the world to see in a matter of seconds. Really? I though being human was about learning from mistakes, but no one seems to be willing to give anyone a second chance any longer.

I don’t have an iPad, though I crave one, because I just can’t justify it. I work at home. Why would I need a portable tablet? We don’t have 500 TV channels or Tivo or DVR. Our TV is relatively small in comparison to most that I’ve seen. I don’t have GPS in my car (although it was handy in the European rental car) and when I taught, I rarely used technology, although I will admit to looking up facts on the Internet—on those sites that weren’t blocked.

You’d think that I’m a technophobe. I’m not. I honestly think technology can save mankind. I’d rather fly in a plane with a computer at the helm. I’d rather have a robot surgeon. I’d love the see the technology of self-driving cars (keep the idiots from getting their hands on the wheel. BTW, Flying cars? No thank you. Can you imagine what dumbass drivers would be doing up in the sky? You really want that texter behind the wheel of a flying car? I don’t think so.), and smart houses. My husband has a PhD in Robotics. He’s even worse than I about gadgets. Because gadgets aren’t what will save the world. Oh, they’re fun, but is the world really a better place because we can take pictures with our phones? (Although in the case of the Arab spring, that technology was crucial, but that was a mighty powerful exception.) I have embraced Twitter, and FB, and blogging, but they aren’t as important as solar energy or wind power or wave energy.

I guess what I’m saying is I don’t have any problem with gadgets, but don’t expect me to jump into the 21^st century any time soon. I don’t want to be attached to my phone. Or have my picture taken.

--Gabi

Books I’m reading now:

Still working on the Rita books I have to judge.

Why Romance is NOT porn

To all you ignorant, self-righteous dullards^1:

In my last book, AS YOU WISH, the story is told in 306 pages. Of those, let’s say ten are pages of sex³. That’s approximately three percent of the novel. The sex is between two consenting adults who are attracted to each other and end in a committed relationship with each other. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s usually how a committed relationship expresses itself—with sex. I’ve been in a committed relationship for 27 years and, yes, I still have sex with my husband. It’s the natural progression of showing affection for someone.

Porn is intended to do no more than cause sexual excitement. While passages in Romance may do that, the stories celebrate love, relationships, how those relationships form, and the characters the reader comes to love (we hope), root for, and who earn a happy ending. Most often this relationship is not with the pizza delivery boy or copier mechanic.⁴

For those of you simpletons who still insist Romance is just porn with a prettier name, let me apply your definition to other media:

            Bridesmaids: clearly porn. The opening scenes and then the ones at the closing credits. It’s obvious really.

            Shawshank Redemption: clearly gay rape porn. Forget the message. It’s all about the sex. And those pin-up girls...tsk, tsk.

            Schindler’s List: Again, message unimportant; the only scenes that matter are the ones with sex.

            Notting Hill: there is a sex scene, therefore porn.

            The Firm: in the book Mitch cheats on his wife on the beach, therefore, porn.

            “Afternoon Delight”: Really? Need I say more?

Don’t want to read Romance? Fine, but don’t parade your ignorance. You’re embarrassing yourself.⁵

¹In general I have nothing against nor am I offended by cussing or stronger words, but I don’t use them much myself. I like the extra sarcasm offered by non-profane vocabulary. Shakespeare had insults down to an art without the crude language. As for those words, they have appeared in my books, but not too often; only when I found them appropriate and convincing, as when my two Guards in WISHFUL THINKING are yelling at someone and drop the f-bomb. These two men are essentially military. I doubt they would say, “Gosh darn you.” But feel free to replace “dullards” in your head with any appropriate synonym you might think of.²

²And yes, it is okay to end a sentence with a preposition. That’s one of those fake grammar rules that teachers plague their students with because it’s easy to remember. Others are never start a sentence with a conjunction (I can think of many sentences that are just fine grammatically even though they start with a conjunction) and never split an infinitive (that one goes back to Latin and German construction.)

³I counted the pages and it works out to less than nine if we count actual lines, but I’m being generous here and counted the paragraphs leading into and out of the scenes.

⁴ I didn’t mean to single out you pizza delivery boys or copier mechanics, but those are the clichés that pop to mind. And now you know how it feels to be judged on clichés and not substance.

⁵By the way, your parents had sex. At least once. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

--Gabi

Books I’m reading now:

It’s RITA time. I’m reading, but I’m not telling you what. I’ll continue with Discovery of Witches after I’m done judging.

Error Proof?

Here in the middle of January with the sky gray, the air cold, and the day too short, I have finally finished the last iteration of fixing WISHFUL THINKING. I've pored over the galley proofs, corrected errors and sent it back. I'll be receiveing ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) next to send out for review and then the final product, the book itself. The scariest part is that in 320 pages of galley proofs, I found 147 errors. Oh, most of them were commas instead of periods, or periods instead of commas, or missing end quotes (and a couple of missing beginning quotes), but I also found repeated words (I fixed those--and some repeats are on purpose), or awkward syntax, or outright mistakes, like a character standing in one line, then three lines later he stands again.

Collector's card

What's scary is that this book has been through so many reads. Not only by me while revising, but also by two beta readers, then me again, then my editor, then me again, then by the copyeditor, then me again, the typesetter (or person who puts it into the way it looks when printed form--they don't really set type any more), then me again. And yet in that last step I still found 147 errors. Now it goes to print. I honestly believe that no manuscript (of any significant length) can be error-free. There will be typos, wrong punctuation, and other mistakes. That's the reason why I have never read one of my actual books. At that point there's nothing I can do about it, so I don't want to know. I've had another author tell me in one of my early books (pre-Gabi Stevens) that I have envelope rather than envelop. Not helpful. I can't fix it. Maybe if it went back into print, which it won't, but in any case not helpful.

Now, in TEMPTATION'S WARRIOR (now available on Kindle and I'm working on the other formats) if I find errors, I can fix them. That's the nice aspect of self-pubbing.

I know some readers get very annoyed with errors in a published book. Every book will have errors. Especially after writing the thing and reading it umpteen dozen times, you can't see your own words. I guess I'm asking readers to be a little more forgiving. Oh, not if the book is error-laden (and I've read a few of those--that's just wrong) but you really need to overlook a few misplaced or missing commas, periods, and quotes. And I'm not talking about the ebook versions of books. I've had more trouble with the format of books than I care to deal with. (Not my own, other books)

Of course, WISHFUL THINKING will be clean now. I hope. :)
--Gabi

Books I'm reading now:
11/22/63 by Stephen King
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

The new year

This is the second year in a row that I haven't celebrated New Year's because I was sick. I'm still coughing, but at least I'm healthier now. Except for cancelling our annual game night (we don't party, we play board games...with incredible competitiveness), I don't mind much because, honestly, it's just a date, but it is a traditional party date and I missed that. Twice now. So I think I'm going to throw my New Year's Eve party next week when I'm healthy again and ignore the calendar.

Speaking of calendars, it's 2012.  Are you worried about the end of the world? Me? Not so much. As I used to tell my students when they'd mention that the world was ending this year, it's just the end of a calendar. We don't panic when we throw out our calendar and put up a new one. The Maya Calendar is just a longer calendar. (Don't harp on my accuracy, folks. I'm making a point). So I fully expect to drink champagne Dec 31, 2012, and see January1, 2013 and have my annual party.

Unlike this year.

--Gabi

Books I'm reading now:
Winning the Wallflower by Eloisa James
11/22/63 by Stephen King