Scam Emails! (Or how to craft better fiction...)

Congratulations!

Some obscure mil/billionaire in a foreign nation that may or may not exist has died/been sent to prison/exiled and you have been named his/her/their heir.

To claim your prize/inheritance/rainbow generator, all you have to do is tell me information I have no need to know, possibly break the laws of your own country as well as a few others, and not know world currencies!

Isn't it great?

If you ever needed proof that the ability to write something that isn't true doesn't equate skill at writing believable fiction, just pick out one of the oft-circulated scam emails at random and take a peek (without opening any attachments... please...)

However, that's not to say that you can't learn a thing or two from dissecting "bad" fiction. Let's take a look --


SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

Every writer of fiction (or fictional writer, for that matter) should know how far they can push their reader's BS-meter before they trip the book throwing response. This is where world-building comes in. You make the rules for your universe, and then you're obligated to operate within them.

• random gagillionaire (possibly royal) dude(tte) kicks off, and they're so destitute for friends/family that they pick someone at random to hand their millions to... wasn't that an Adam Sandler movie?
• You only get ONE of those OMG "what are the odds" moments per tale, so get it out of the way up front and don't push it. (Inheriting an airline shipping company, being the heir to King Whosamawhatchit VII, and winning the Spanish Irish sweepstakes in ONE DAY, is pushing it.)
• I don't care what country the person comes from. If they're in a contemporary, Earth-bound setting, even if they don't have friends, relatives, dogs, or charities of choice to whom they leave their indescribable fortunes, they will have a government under which they lived (or over which they presided). If no one else gets the cash, the governing body will lock it down.

Ignore any of these points, and that book-shaped dent in my wall is your fault.

DO YOUR RESEARCH

• The Irish sweepstakes is not held in Spain. It is not run by Spain. If you tell me you represent the Spanish government on behalf of the Irish sweepstakes, your book becomes a projectile, possibly breaking my window and killing the perfectly innocent birds in my tree. YOU HEARTLESS BIRD MURDERER!
• If a company has a famous owner, then spell their name correctly. When you tell me to contact "Bill Gate" at Microsoft, I am confused. Which gate is Bill's gate? Does he have his own that no one else uses? (most likely, and it wouldn't be one I had access to) Google is free and easy to use -- this isn't rocket science. CHECK YOUR FACTS BEFORE YOU WRITE THEM DOWN.
• If the steps required to accomplish a certain goal have real-world consequences, then you should mention those consequences at some point. (Chekhov's Gun - Google it - seriously) This means that if there are legal ramifications to wiring money out of the country to a total stranger, in return for a life-changing, under-the-table windfall, and the star of your tale chooses to do this, then at some point in your story, there'd better be (at the least) the threat of prosecution for doing this illegal thing.
• If the country you claim to represent has switched to the Euro, this is something you should know. (Not only does Spain =/= Ireland, but it's not the UK, either. Spain does not use GBP as their national currency. Goo-gle. One word, two syllables. Not difficult.)
  
• If someone famous has been dead longer than I've been out of high school, it's highly unlikely that they are sending me an email. If they are, then I intend to interview them and get my own show called "Emailing the Other-Side" wherein I use Yahoo to converse with audience members' deceased family members. Maybe they'll send pictures.
  

CHARACTER NAMING HABITS

• When you write fiction for an American audience, it's important to know that audience. Most Americans have a comfort zone firmly ensconced between things they're familiar with. Most Americans don't go to Japan and look for great sushi, they go to Japan and look for McDonald's. They also get this weird glazed look when too many unfamiliar names flash in front of their eyes.
• This doesn't mean you can't diversify... in fact you should. When I see fourteen messages from six different "Kipkalyas", all with names starting with S or J, I get them confused. I can't tell them apart, so I don't care about them. If you want to reach your audience, then you must make them care about your characters.
• Regional dialogue is like spice. A little for flavor works, but too much and you'll turn your guests stomachs. When you fill your fiction with phrases that your average reader doesn't recognize, it pulls them straight out of your story and makes them hate you. Then they remember you killed the birds in their tree in the last list and hate you even more. (This is where an editor comes in handy - they can point out which words work in any region and which ones, while benign on this side of the pond, reference embarrassing body parts in a derogatory manner on the other.)

And finally:

YOG'S LAW

• You may not know Yog, but he is both wise and benevolent, and his law is simple -- Money flows TOWARD the writer. This means you never pay to be published; publishers pay you.
  
• If you are offering to do something for me, but expect me to send you my name, address, phone number, social security number, bank account, and work details, in order to get it... you are an idiot. I don't waste my time with idiots.
  
• If you offer to publish my book, but expect me to send you my name, address, phone number, social security number, credit card number, bank account and addresses for my friends so you can spam both me and them with "deals" on purchasing a book I wrote myself and can read at my leisure from the file on my hard drive for free... you are an idiot. I don't waste my time with idiots.

(*caveat* if you choose to self-publish, then you go looking for a reputable self-publishing company. I am referring to idiots who pretend to be commercial publishers when they are, in fact, pay-to-play vanity presses.)

Flash fiction -- Irregular Creatures

Another prompt from over here.

Glynnis McCreary was an irregular creature, and she had the measurements to prove it.

Contrary to what she'd been taught in high school, the space between her eyes was not perfectly equal to the width of one, nor did the corners of her mouth line up straight with the center of her pupils. People said she was beautiful, but she was sure they were just being polite.

Once or twice, Glynnis had even thought about plastic surgery... not the vain sort, mind you, just a bit of correction to make up for Nature's mistakes. To get things back in line -- but that would mean trusting that whichever doctor whose office she ventured into was adept as his craft, and she wasn't willing to do that.

Doctors were notoriously shoddy when it came to the cleanliness of their clinics - plastic surgeons... er, reconstructive surgeons... especially. She was certain she'd seen or heard or read that somewhere, and it was best not to take the risk. It wasn't like she went out often enough for people to notice the difference anyway.

Germs lived outside. Bad people lived outside. Kooks and monsters and all sorts of undesirable things lurked just beyond her door. Glynnis wasn't certain where she stood on whether or not there were aliens flying about overhead, but if there were, they'd be outside, too. That was another reason to keep her irregularity in tact. You see, if aliens were out there - and she wasn't saying they were, mind you - they'd want the regular people first. They'd want the ones that fit their assumptions of what a human person was supposed to look like.

So Glynnis didn't mind being a bit off-center. Not really.

She was perfectly happy to lock her door.... unlock it... lock it... unlock... lock... each night and keep them out. If they existed... which she didn't say they did.

Three times to lock was key, you understand. There's power in three; it's a special number.

She'd lock and unlock, then pat the door seam from top to bottom, to make sure the lock had caught properly, then wedge her chair beneath the handle, in case it failed. Then Glynnis would check her lights- on, off... on, off.. on, off... then lay her hand against the stove plates to make sure they were completely cool before she went to bed... jiggle the dial to make sure they were as turned off as they said they were.

Then she'd go to her room, turn on the TV, and marvel at just how perfect everyone else in the world was. They had to be, she could see them with her own eyes.

Just like she could see the aliens on channel twelve between the snow... but she never said anything about them. They hated to be noticed.

Writing Quirks

We all have them, and I'm not just talking about things like procrastination (*shakes fist at Mindjolt and Bejeweled*). What I'm talking about are those things that we *know* aren't right, or could at least be misunderstood, but by habit or preference do them anyway.

A few of mine:

"eventhough" <--- one word, not two. Surprisingly, I don't have issues with remembering to split "a lot"

"more than a little..." <--- nothing wrong with it on its own, but considering I find upwards of a dozen instances of this phrase in any given WIP, it's my kryptonite

"grey" <--- again, it's debatable if there's something wrong with it, but I can't make myself spell the color with an "a". I don't care what it says on the crayon; it looks wrong to me. (Besides, if it was good enough for Gandalf...)

"leapt" <---- (This is an all purpose quirk for any past participle that ends in "-t" rather than "-ed") Apparently, at some point, my Texas English lessons made me spell things the UK way. "Leaped" doesn't look right to me, and I know I hear people say "leapt" with a "t" on the end, but spell check, and American editors, say it's supposed to be "leaped".

Are there any little oddities in your own habits that irk you?

Today is my birthday...

... that is all.

(Miraculously I'm still over 10 and under 100. It seems like I stay that age every year.)

:-P

Flash fiction challenge

Over on THIS blog, writer Chuck Wendig issued a flash fiction challenge to write a story based on Shackleton's Scotch. (Play along, it's fun!) He gave readers a week window, but I made it a literal flash fiction challenge, so here's my twenty minute interpretation:

703 words



First you run out food, then fuel.

When the dream's new and all you can think about is the journey, it's not something you consider. Others might mention it as an aside or caution; they tell you horror stories about how the lower circle is what the old sailors meant when they talked about people dropping off the edge of the earth. Down there, emptiness becomes a living, breathing thing, a monster that thrives on the cold and doesn't abide outsiders in its territory.

But you don't listen. The warnings drone like white noise just below the glow of your own ambition, in a place that's too warm to understand the nature of cold. You fancy yourself an explorer, like the Vikings in stories you loved as a kid. You haven't figured out yet, that you're headed into a place where the world is upside down.

Reality butchers the dream with wind honed sharper than any knife. What little heat remains in your body melts the weapon of its own destruction so there's no proof of any outside force, only your own folly. You've gone beyond cold to where time itself slows down in the absence of sound and motion and where you traverse an alien landscape made without color. You can't even see your own skin to remind yourself its not as monochrome as everything else.

Your heart wants to break when the decision comes to turn back, but it's frozen solid. If you let it break, it'll shatter beyond reparation.

So close to the goal, you can taste it. Considering it's the Antarctic, you can see it on a clear day. The only thing you can't do is reach it.

Someone gets the bright idea to crack open a case or two of whiskey and use the bottles for wick-lamps and small stoves, and for a while there, you have your own Southern Lights burning on the ice. Your ramshackle base camp looks like something out of a kid's adventure story with blue-white lights popping up like ghosts guarding a treasure cache.

One of the men pours a bottle out and lights it on the ice. Why not, you wonder- there's nothing else to do.

The flame catches along these tiny little spider veins and branches out in every direction. It doesn't last long, because the whisky burns fast, but it's enough for you to realize you've set ice on fire and it isn't even cracking. That kids' story in your head hops to another one you heard when you were young, back to those stories about Vikings and the ships that went places no one else dared go.

Viking hell was frozen solid.

Now you start to understand. Being so close to the goal... it's torment. You've somehow left the mortal world and ended up in Purgatory, on the outer edge of madness. You're Sisyphus and the journey's your stone.

The fires go all night, as one after another of your companions take a turn burning the ice, but not you. You know better than to disturb the things a human mind can't comprehend; you know to wait it out because the places beyond don't keep those who know enough to realize they've crossed the border. When your chance comes, you'll be one of those who makes it out.

You don't grumble or complain when you pack up your things, and turn back. It's a tense morning while the others argue about what to take and what to leave. They say it's a waste to abandon the liquor, but you speak up, finally. You say it's best to leave it for what it was intended. It's meant for those who reach the end, so they can celebrate, and none of you are going on. It's bad luck to take it back.

"Bad luck" turns out to be the magic phrase that gets the others moving, and you wonder if they realized where you'd ended up, too. The quiet returns, and soon the only sound is the whoosh from your skis as you put hell behind you.

It actually makes you smile beneath your layered scarves and mask, where no one else can see it. You left them a little heat... maybe that'll count for something in the long run.

If Only, If Only

It's no secret that authors rarely have a say in the actual design of their covers. Sometimes, if the proposed cover is really awful, an agent can convince a publisher to rethink it, but for the most part, writers write and the rest is out of their hands.

But... that doesn't mean I can't play with clip art, google images, and my photo-edit software. I've been in a mood to post a lot this week, so I thought I'd add another one to the list and let you in on how I approach making my totally-fake, wishful-thinking covers that would go on my books if it was up to me.

This one you've seen before, if you've read this blog for a while:



It's a fair reflection of the tone of the book, I think. There's the MC with her back turned to the darkened woods, inside a tunnel, with that spot of light at her hand. Arclight is literally about a world divided into light and darkness, so it fits. Even the girl's expression is perfect.




You may not be able to tell what it is in the tiny picture, but she's got the title "Premeditated" branded onto her arm in raised lettering. The guy beside her has the inverse branded into his, so they fit together like a macabre "best friends" set. Creepy, but perfect.





Wolf-Killer is obviously going for a "Little Red Riding Hood" parallel, and ideally, the title would be a scrimshaw on a bone knife held in front of her face, but there was no way to do that without drawing it off by hand, and... I was lazy.


This is how I see Blue:



It's a ghost story set around a tween boy, his little sister, and the entire community that exists on their street that no one can see other than her. I guess you'd call it a "boy book" because the boy's the main character, but I hope any kid could enjoy a story about finding your voice in a world that doesn't always want to listen. Even real kids can feel like ghosts from time to time.

And then there's Tamga:



It's totally different from any of the others. I like the semi-tribal motif and the tattoo-like birds. It took me a while to settle on a title for this one, and I previously had it tagged "Totem", but knew that wasn't the right connotation for the story. Someone suggested I look up Tamga instead, and it fits. This is a contemporary boy's story, but with a tiny bit of fantastic adventure dealing with the finding of an artifact.


Anyway, this is what I do when I need to step back from the actual writing part of writing. It actually helps me with things like theme and concept. I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but the 1st pages of each one of these are behind the tabs at the top of the page, if you want to take a peek.

Think Pink

Why yes, that is me with my hair Photoshopped pink. (And yes, I look rather miserable, but it's not because I detest pink. I was rather violently ill when I snapped this pic.) Apparently, I also rather like saying rather. I guess pink hair made me British.

Anywho...

My hair is hot pink for very good reason: Writer solidarity! Yay!

The ladies over at this fine blog got a bit of a surprise when their cover came back with the MC decked out with a pink do. Rather than cry in the mire of writerly woes, they decided to rock the pink. A few of their followers and blogger-buddies have joined them, by photoshopping their own hair in shades of pink, so I decided to see how I'd look with a new dye-job. Strangely enough, I think I like it...