Annoyance

One thing about being a writer that I find very annoying is when you are working on a project all the other stories that just run through your head. While I have been working on Flare File book three I have had one other original story and two fanfiction stories running over and over through my head. So as I am making my word count for book three I am rewarding myself with getting to write fanfiction. But of course when I sit down to write that the need just dries up. I tell my spouse that I am a tortured artist but he says that I am not dramatic enough for that. I think that when I am writing I am. Mostly because I will yell at my characters. I mean it. I have really yelled out loud at one of my characters.  He was being very annoying so I yelled at him. He wanted some plot stuff to happen that could not happen yet. So to make him shut up I told what had to happen before any of the stuff he wanted could happen. It did not shut him up. If I did not like the character so much I would have killed him and just worked with the other main character. She has patience. So I am going to try and write some fanfiction now. Maybe then I can get some peace and quiet in here.

NaNoWriMo this year

NaNoWriMo is this year is going to be interesting. I am hoping to get my first draft of a sword-and-sorcery series done. NaNo is normally just 50,000 words to win but I am going to be aiming for 100,000. So I will have to type twice is much for my personal win. The reason for that is I think that it is going to take about 100,000 words to tell the story. I am at a good start because I have done character worksheets for my two main character's but I need to finish the sheets for the villain and one of the main side character's who may turn into a main character. He's a fishy one. If I can get this written it is going to be the first in a five book story about on event. The event is big in the world and I have five different sets of character's that are trying to deal with it. I like them all but I think that I can get Maddox and Rilia's story out a little better. I have played with these character's myself and with my spouse. He is good with helping me when I get stuck on part of characterization and understands my personal language of screams, grunts, and other really non-verbal skills. I'm really good at the non-verbal stuff.
Edit: I meant to post this last week but it didn't happen. I am 16,011 words into my novel. I have so far done my daily word count of 4,000 per day and I'm hoping that I can make it!

So I'm back!

Well I have finished grad school and I passed my last term with all A's.
So I am going to get back to writing more than just book reviews. By September I want to have a short story that I started writing about a year and a half ago. Then I am going to give it to my spouse to beta read it. Then I need to start rereading his first novel to help edit. Wish me luck everyone! I hope that my self control is greater than my desire to be lazy. Or better yet the reason that I was having trouble writing was because I was so stressed and busy with grad school that now I am free everything will just come together.

Moving spider eggs

I had never seen one as big as that before. And that was saying something because I had been shipping ‘unusual’ things for about ten years now. I looked up at the client who was smiling at the giant ice spider egg the way a new mother looks at her baby. I was tempted to take off my bandana, that protected my third eye, and read his mind but decided against it. Anyone who looks at giant ice spiders, or at least their eggs, like that was head I had no business in.
“When can you guarantee delivery?” Mr. ‘Smith’ asked.
“Well I think that I can get to the over side of Neptune by tomorrow about nine in the morning.” I replied.

Mr. ‘Smith’ nodded, still smiling at the egg, as he signed my paperwork. He did not even notice the 25% mark-up I had added because it was a GIANT ICE SPIDER EGG. Even if I had pointed it out he would not have cared. After all no other shipper would touch it not just because it was a giant spider egg but mostly because you cannot just buy one from the net. But that was why he came to me and that was why I was in business. Import export business was a lucrative trade; if you stomach and/or live through your first job. Not the strangest thing that I have moved but definitely one of creepiest. I knew that I was going to be having dreams about this one for a while.
I put the egg in cold storage and locked the door. No way that thing was going to hatch while I was delivering it. The run was good. I got the thing out of my ship, signed for, and I was taking off when the first hairline cracks started showing on it. I was glad that I got paid up front. Ah the beauty of the modern age, credit sticks run through within twelve hours, and I had cleaned that 'Smith' out.

The Big city is different from Home

I wasn’t naïve, there was no way she was a superhero. But she did wear her knickers on top of her tights. And I like that in a person. But then again it was my first day in the ‘big’ city. San Francisco was the big city to me. The second clue that she could be a superhero was the fact that she was flying. With big colorful wings. She was diving straight down at some poor guy who, as I watched him, was hiding behind a normal looking woman. The guy was in purple and black with a half-face mask. And he was laughing in what I think was a maniacal fashion. I could practically see the explanation marks at the end of the laugh. He had at least five. The flying woman stopped just above him and glared down. At least I think it was a glare because her face was covered in a full mask.
“Well Bird? What now?” Purple mask demanded up at her.
“Now you are going to unhand that woman and come with me.” She replied.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t then I will pull you both up with me and you will drop like a stone.”
“Idle threats mean nothing to me.” He sneered.
“They are only idle if I won’t do them.”

At this she dropped the last ten feet and stood in front of Purple Mask. He snarled at her. Really, honest-to-God snarled. The normal woman screamed something like ‘Help me’ but I’m not too sure. Someone snickering near my ear made me turn. Another guy in a mask but this time he was not dressed in purple and black. He was in gray with a full grey mask and he was leaning against the building behind me. The winged woman whipped her head around to look at me. Or rather just passed me at the other guy. He was clearly a guy and a guy the winged one was not happy with. She lifted her hand starting to flip him off but stopped herself. She put her back to him and went back to Purple Mask.
“Oh Birdy don’t be that way.” Grey said from behind me.

‘Birdy’ was fighting with Purple Mask and the woman got free. I don’t know how it ended but man that woman sure at some wings on her.

Standalones and flash fiction

Today I am going to be doing more than just one thing. I am going to give what I think about standalone novels and then I am going to be give some flash fiction. I have not been writing anything but stuff for my graduate classes, this blog, and my book review blog. I know that looks like a lot but I am annoyed with myself about not writing anything else for so long. So I am going to be taking a prompt from ‘from my write side’ http://frommywriteside.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/master-class-2013/?blogsub=confirming#blog_subscription-2 and writing a quick flash fiction piece about it.

Standalone novels are the pillars of literary novels. All great novels from the previous centuries are standalones. I think that standalones are both harder and easier to write. For the easier; there are no plot threads that the writer has to worry about, no long narratives, no worry about the forgotten love interest. Just one story and just one book (after editing and rewrites I get that.). Downside about standalones; the writer may not have the time or the space to tell the full story, there may be forgotten plot points or characters that were important just dropped from the narrative leaving the reader confused. I know that there is more to say about both series and standalones but for now I think that I am finished with both. If you think of anything else that you believe that I should talk about please just leave me a comment and I will address them.

My prompt is One of the biggest complaints of motherhood is the lack of training.

One of the biggest complaints of motherhood is the lack of training Ona thought as she watched her eldest son walk away with the dust from the coming wind storm following in his wake. The red light from the thick atmosphere of Jupiter tinted his black hair red and the anger in his stride made it a darker red. She was the favorite concubine of the headman but her son, his son too, was not good enough to be the next leader of their people. Ona cursed under her breath about the ancient laws that stopped her son’s ambition. He was going away now. He was going to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, to be a success there. His father was yelling at his back but her son did not turn, did not response to him at all. Her son, her Cal, was going to where she would never see him again. In vain did Ona beg his father for mercy or understanding or anything that would stop Cal from leaving. His father would not listen to her or to anyone but the old laws. The space shuttle that would carry Cal to his new life was lifting off and in a shower of dust and flame he was gone. Ona turned her back to the landing site and walked behind Cal’s father back to his home. In her heart of hearts Ona knew that she would never forgive him for taking Cal away from her or Cal for leaving.

As always thanks for reading and see you next week.

Series

Series are what I would like to talk about today. Series, love them or hate them, are everywhere. They have not always been. In fact before the beginning of the 1900 century series were seen as something only weak readers would read. Series were seen by librarians as something that should be used get young children to read but then they must weaned off of series so that they could read ‘real’ books. I learned this in a course about the history of books in grad school and it floored me. Series are just something that are so ingrained into our reading habits at this point that the very thought that they were or are less than real books just does not compute.

Now I both love and hate series at the same time. I love a good series with interesting characters that grow over the course of the book, I love to see the complex threads of a plotline come together, to see the stray threads just waiting to be picked up and explored in a later book. A series can be one of the most wonderful things in the reading world that you can read or write. A series gives both the writer and the reader a stable world to work and read from. It helps the writer because they do not have to be building new worlds with every book but can learn all about the world, they can know what color the shadows are. There is just something comforting about a known world.

But series can be boring. Because the writer does not have to be doing something all the time, some writers cannot do it. A standalone novel can be a wonderful experience. It can take you to new different places, can make us examine ideas that we have never encountered before, to go to strange new worlds, and seek out the human in them. New worlds are where we learn the most about ourselves and all literature in the end is about what it means to be human. What is human is the eternal question and literature is just one of the ways that we try to answer it.

So go write a series and a standalone novel. Go see where you best answer the eternal question of being human. You should be writing.

New writing schedule

So this week I have decided to try and use my free time for writing time. So far I have not had good results. Maybe it is this week because I have had personal life; like my cat going to the vet and my sister maybe here about a month early and my mother needs help getting ready for her and the children. But this week’s lack of word count is disheartening. In addition to my normal work for grad school and I have to do well to make certain powerful people happy. So I have written some on a short story that I plotted out with character bios and everything about two years ago. I was writing it when I realized that I needed to have a prologue to explain some background information that is important to the story but never talked about in the story itself. So I went back to the beginning and started writing a prologue. That is all I have done on it. It is less than 500 words and I want the story to be about 5000.

Well I am going to continue to try with this new writing schedule. Maybe this is just a bad week or maybe it just feels bad because I am trying something new. About the writing itself I have high hopes for my piece. I am writing a science fiction story and when I get it done (God I hope) then I get to give it to my beta readers. I am very lucky in my readers because I have someone who knows me so well that when I make a mistake, like switching words I do that a lot, he knows exactly what I am trying to saying. By switching words I mean this- “She walked towards the car. The rain was just a plain rain but the car made it shiny.” My brain moves faster than my hands and it shows. Then I have a grammar friend who loves me but hates my grammar. It is cool he is very helpful and nice about it. Then I have a creative writing friend and a last someone who could be a professional reader.

How I handle all this outside help? Well I do it in stages. I do not send my work out to a new beta until I have read and worked with all notes from the previous beta. I talk with my betas about their notes and why they felt that way about it. I listen to them when they are talking about their notes and I do not interrupt them while they are doing it. My betas are giving me something wonderful and I do my best to respect them when they are helping me become a better writer. Well hopefully I will have a better word count for you next week. Thanks for reading and see you next time.

The Thesaurus

  Today I wanted to talk about one of my favorite things in the world to use when I am writing: The Thesaurus. I love my thesaurus and Thesaurus.com. They have both saved my life while writing papers for classes, for blogging, for my creative writing, and for my personal writing. Now part of that is I have a learning disorder. It is just for math and spelling, when I try to remember how to do something like a math formula or spelling my brain just freezes. Now it does not matter how big the word or how complicated the formula I blank out. For the word ‘complicated’ I had to look it up. I spelled complex then looked at the synonyms to find it. Now this made my younger life so much harder than it had to be. My parents understood what was going on but my school(s) did not. They just thought that I would lazy or in the case of one teacher retarded. That teacher was the reason I was taken and tested for learning disorders and IQ. My mother, proudly, to this day says that my IQ is much higher than that of the teacher in question.

So how does this wonderful technology help the writer? Well I have already shown you one way; in that when you cannot remember how to spell a word you can just look it up. Google has smart text. As you are typing Google will try and guess what you are trying to say. Now I have defeated Google with words I am looking for. And I say this all modesty I have made Google have self-doubt. I now that some people will make fun of me but I do use Google to spell check. I know that Google is not all knowing but it is a very useful tool and I am not one to not a tool just because.

Another wonderful tool is a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms. I have two copies in my house. One that travels with me to class and out and about; the other one stays in my library in the house. I use that when I cannot remember what word I want when all I can remember is what the word means. So when I have my brain freeze I can remember what is does not mean. It is also useful because they do tell you more words that mean the same thing. I use it in that way when I am checking what a word means. Knowing the definition of a word does not mean that it the right word for the sentence. So when I have doubts about that I look up the word in my little dictionary or use Google and just read what the synonyms for it are. I have changed paragraphs because of this tool. Here are links to the websites that I use and have named in this post- http://thesaurus.com/, http://www.synonym.com/, http://www.oed.com/. Please tell me what you use when you are stuck on a word or if that is something special about me. Until next week then, je ne!

Personal Inspiration Part Two

I am going to continue last week topic of personal inspiration this week. Last week I talked about how video games have inspired my writing and gave you an example. I hope that it was enjoyed because I have heard nothing back. So in lieu of having bad things said about it, I will think good things about my piece. Another was of inspiring, not just me, is music. Every artist and writer I know has some piece of music that when they listen to it they are moved and the muse just flows. Now that changes from person to person. For example my spouse finds old school heavy metal very inspiring, bands like Type O Negative and Cradle of Flight. I do not find either very inspiring except for maybe a headache but that is just me. For me there is no one sound that just lights my muse; it depends on what I am writing. If I am writing something very personal like my poetry then I like to listen to music that is going to help me get my emotions. But when I am writing in my genre Science Fiction and Fantasy then I really mix things up.

When I was writing my high fantasy (which I really need to get back to… Bad Lynn) I like to listen to vocals from different bands. My go-to band is always Franz Ferdinand; a great, GREAT British rock band. Also Adele, and Duffy, and The Tings (are you seeing a common theme? If not get thee to Google and you will). I like the vocals because the songs can help the characters voices in my head and get into the page. Sometimes I like instrumental but that is more for my Sci-Fi; but it mostly a scene to scene thing. Sometimes I like to have the pulse pounding of Korn or maybe I need to have Moonlight Sonata. Do not afraid to go where the music takes you.

For my Sci-Fi I am currently loving the Dear Esther soundtrack. It is very lovely instrumental soundtrack for a cool little surreal game. It in and of itself is not Sci-Fi in anyway but it works for me. I would give an example of what I write when listening to it but the last thing I wrote listening to Dear Esther was an 18 page pathfinder for my law libraries class and I do not think that you want that. I do not want that and I had to write it. The music made it so much easier I can promise. Just an FYI a pathfinder is a very detailed research assignment for library grad students to basically prove that you can do research and you know how to make it for other people to be able to read it. Sounds like fun, right? Not so much.

In the end the only person who can tell what music moves you creatively is you. But you knew that. So do not be afraid to try new things, do not let anyone tell you that you cannot be inspired by Korn or video games or anything else. The world is inspiring and you just have to find the things that most inspire you. Go forth and be creative! Until next week, thanks for reading and be well.

Personal Inspiration Part 1

In a previous post I talked in general about inspiration and in this week’s post I would like to talk about what in particular I find inspiring. I personally find video games very inspiring and I do not think that I am alone in that. Video games are the artistic work of dozens of people from the storyline writers to the guys who write the code. Everyone working together for one common goal. To get this out of the way, yes I know that people make video games to make money. I know that everyone who works on a game is doing so with the end goal of paying the rent but the same can be said for all kinds of artists, in fact the same can be said for everyone on the planet. We are all just trying to make ends meet. So that does not bother me that all the music and stories that I love are made to make the rent. If I could I would too. So with that bit of nastiness out of the way I am going to tell you about the last thing that really inspired me.
In my house we have two PlayStation3’s. Both are loved because my spouse and I both love video games. On the PSN the online store for PS3 there is a wonderful little game called ‘Journey’. There is no real story just a basic outline of a traveler on a journey. You have your characters and sometimes if other people are playing the game too you can see other travelers. The first five minutes of watching him play this game build a fire in my brain. I had to write the story that was just bursting through me. It is flash fiction and I wrote in about 15 minutes. It is 593 words long (for now :-D) . Here is it.

The wanderer

The sand stretched endless before the wanderer. It stretched endless behind too. Nothing was here but sand, sun and the journey. No one made journey’s anymore they were the things of legend and lore. Only to be spoken of during the long winter’s nights in the place that the wanderer came from. The wanderer was clothed head to foot in a traveling cloak red as the sun that burned down on her. Under the hood some thought she was beautiful but in her small village she had the madness. It was a madness like they had not seen in four hundred years but was so bad that it was still talked of also on those long winter nights. The last one who had was also a woman, beautiful too but her beauty was nothing when seen with her madness. She wanted to see what was on the other side of the mountains. She wanted to know why the sun rose and what happened when it fell. She was wise and beautiful and untouchable because of the questions that poisoned her mind. Those questions were only for teachers to know and she was no teacher. The teachers had not come to the village in more years than could be recorded. But that was long ago and not the story of this wanderer, just the last one. The wanderer had not always been different but she learned it in small ways. When a traveling teacher had come and then stayed for the winter that was when the village elders noticed it. Boys and girls were taught whatever the teacher knew and that was as it should be. A little learning is good for the soul but it stayed in the wanderer’s mind like mud on a pair of boots. She wanted more. The teacher soon taught her everything he knew and it was not enough. Soon she knew more than he did reading every book he had with him and then she scoured the village for any books that she had never seen before. At first it was smiled at because the village needed someone who loved to learn all things but then it was frowned on because she was not doing anything but reading and talking with those who had read whatever book she had in her hand at the time. People began to talk about her behind her back then to her face. Soon her village was no home for her anymore. So she did what she had learned and went on a journey. She dressed in the robes of a wanderer and shook off her name as all wanderers’ do. She walked from sun up to sundown alone. No one bothered her because of her wanderers’ robes. All knew that only those with the madness began to leave where they were born, against how it should be, she was untouchable now to the greater beyond her small village because of her robes. She learned new things like loneliness and hunger and thirst but nothing could stop the thoughts and questions in her mind. Those were the only things that really mattered anymore to the wanderer. Slowly, like the first bub of spring, she learned how to feed herself from what was around her and what water was safest to drink in the burning sands. She learned how the stars danced in the sky and what dawn looked like on the ocean. But now she walking in the desert alone but not lonely. She had learned to be company to herself.

I personally love it but please tell me what you think. Until next week be well.

Atmosphere

Today I really did not know what to write so I asked my spouse and he suggested atmosphere. Not setting or the atmosphere in a story but what atmosphere does someone write in? That is a very personal question that changes from writer to writer. For me I like to write in my library with some music going in my ears. The music that I listen changes from story to story that I write and even from scene to scene. I mostly like to have instrumental pieces going but not always. Now other writers like to have different things when they write. John Ringo has to have total silence and at home. I, personally, cannot write at home. Too many things that I could be doing like my yoga or something for grad school or just playing a video game. I need to be somewhere else. Something about it focuses me like nothing else.

I think that atmosphere is something that does play into the writing in of your book, poems, or music. If you need to put more action in a scene maybe you should change your scene. One thing that I have learned with all my years of writing and trying and everything else that all artists understand is that sometimes it is not the art that is the problem. Sometimes it is you. Now that does not mean stop or that you have made a mistake or anything like that. But maybe you should stop for a moment. Walk away with your thoughts and change your atmosphere. If you normally work in a loud, busy place go somewhere quiet and just feel. The same thing is true if for a quiet place. Being aware of your personal setting is just as important knowing your fictional one.

When is the best time for you to work? That is something personal again. If you do not know when the best time already is then you should try the following. Try working at different times of the day for about a week. For example work in the morning for a week and see if that works well and even if it does you should move the time by a few hours the next week. When you do get a time that you work better in then you should notice something really cool. Your body and your brain will become used to working at this time and you will see an improvement in your productivity. It is an amazing thing but it is true. Something about doing the same thing every day or so and habits do work. I need to do it again for myself if I ever want to get this writing thing as more than just fantasy. The last time I did it was for evening work but with times changing in my grad school I need to make a writing change too. I think that I should try and shoot for afternoon work. But at the moment I do not know when I will be writing again.

Dreams and goals

Today’s post is about me coming clean. I am lazy. I have not written anything but what I have had to write for Grad school for the past few months. I am not telling you this to get sympathy from any of my readers. I think it is time for me to be honest about it. I do not really know why I have had so much trouble writing these past months. I have had plenty of free time; I have not been pulling into a video game or an MMO like I have before. I think that it all comes down to self-discipline. Every successful writer that I know of has great amounts of self-discipline. They make the writing a top priority in their lives. I have talked with authors and other writers; and they all have pretty much the same story. In order to be a successful writer they make time, they make the writing everything for themselves, but that leaves me with the question. How?

How do I do that same thing in my life? So far I have not found a how. I think about writing, I think about what stories I want to get done but I have done nothing towards getting them written, editing, or anything towards being published. I am beginning to think that I like the dream of being a writer but for some reason I am not willing to anything to making less than a dream and more of a goal. The difference between a dream and a goal is a plan and I have no plan for becoming a published author. Especially sense I want to be a ‘mainstream’ author. I have problems with that word because I am a Science Fiction and Fantasy dreamer and ‘mainstream’ look down on us dreamers. I written about how Science Fiction and mainstream interact but in one of my grad school classes I wrote about Science Fiction and Society. The word ‘mainstream’ is not even in the language until 1964, by in the language I mean it was not in the Oxford English Dictionary until then. Science Fiction as a literary concept is over 100 years old. I have the position that Science Fiction has an important role in and for society.

But that is not what this post is about. This post is about how I have no real drive to make my dreams into reality. I do not know if I am just scared because to have dream be real mean that they change. Reality is never like a dream, reality is hard and scary, and things do not always work out; either for the best or for you. In the past year I have done a lot of research about publishing, publishers, copyright laws, author’s rights, and just getting published. I know that it is hard, I know that there are so many very talented people all trying for the same thing and maybe that is just it. Growing up I was told that no matter how good at something I was there will always be someone who is better at it. Maybe I just have not worked that out. The reason I think that is my problem is that I have a lot of self-discipline in so many other areas of life. I am in graduate school, I take care of myself( and I have Lupus and fibromyalgia so that is not easy at times), I am married and have been with the same guy for ten years now, and I have two blogs that I post for on a weekly basis. I have self-discipline or I would not have all the really good things in my life. I think that I am just afraid. Now I just do not know what to do with it. I know that this post has to resolution but it is honest. Thanks for reading always and see you next week.

Genre and Grad School

As some of my readers know I am in grad school for library sciences. But only my spouse knows that I have brought my love of Genre to my classes. For example in one of my classes (collection development) I build a Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Steampunk collection for my final project. I had a wonderful time and now I know that I only need about 20,000 dollars to build an excellent personal collection (like I am ever going to have 20,000 dollars I'm in Library School). This is not the first class that I have bought my love genre into. In fact in every term I have done it. For my computer programing class the last project I did on game and how to work them. In my spring term I did my big presentation on female superheroes and I wrote a 15 page paper on them. In summer I created a guide to all the genre publishers with history of them, contact info, and more.

It has not been easy and I have had some flak for being so genre but that is how it is. In my final paper for collection development I am writing about how important Science Fiction is to Society. Notice the capitals. When in class talking about it I have had to deal with people just ignoring me to out and out saying that it is not important it is just a cheap way to tell story. I respectfully disagree with that. Science Fiction and Fantasy are the ways that we as a culture talk about hard and scary things. When we need to talk about inequality it is much easier for us to that when we put it in a non-real way. I do not understand why that is so magical but it is. The only real problem I am having with that paper is that I feel that I have said everything I need to about the subject but I'm a little short on the pages. So hopefully I will add pages when I started the editing like later today.

On the up note I will have more time starting on Tuesday. I will have time to write, read, and God willing get a job. I am not asking for anything great or huge but I would like a job where I answer phones or something like it. Nothing really hard because grad school has shown me that I am not that smart. So starting next week I am going to hitting the pavement job hunting. Not the best time I know but what else can I do? Thanks for reading and see you next week!

The importance of genre

One thing that really got and still gets on my nerves is how much flak genre writers get. I did not know that they are, for some reason, lesser writers than any others. Now I have always read genre but I have also read the high-bow lit and non-fiction, as my book review readers know, I read everything under the sun. But genre is where my heart is. I do not have some great story about reading Dune or any other of the classics that won me to genre more of I just read what was interesting and genre is interesting. And for some reason I have always just written genre maybe because adding fireballs to anything just makes it better.

Now the reason that I believe genre is important because there is where we talk about our issues. Genre is where we can as a people group talk about the scary things in life. Think about it. Where do we talk about race, gender, or any unfairness in life? We do it in genre because if we try to talk about in 'real life' it is too scary because it is real. But if we put it in space or riding dragons then it is okay because it is not real. We are not talking about race or gender or any real life problem because it is in space. Or about elves or anything that makes it not real. I do not know what is so magical about making a real problem not real because it is in a not real setting but it works. I know that problems are scary and they are big and they are really more than one person can handle or fix but I just do not get the sideways look as changing. But it works. Suddenly we can talk about real problems that we have a world-wide people.

I realize that not all genre does this. Sometimes the elves are just elves but that does not change what genre has done for us as a whole. I write this knowing that I have never written about any of those important problems and I think that most people have not either. That does not make their work any less. Now the reason that fine literature looks down on genre and its writers, I think, is this- because they sale. The plots are not unusually groundbreaking, the writing is not bad but not up high-brow standards, but for some reason it sales. That is the greatest annoyance to those who write fine lit and they just do not get it. This is just my opinion so take it for it is worth but genre writers are the ones who are not afraid to talk about the bad things in our world and how we can deal with them. Thanks for reading and see you next week.