Have I ever mentioned I hate spiders?

The funny thing is, I didn't have a problem with them until about four months ago. Growing up in India, I encountered spiders occasionally. Sometimes they'd have a web in the corner of a ceiling, or they might scuttle over the floor of an outdoor inn, but these occasions were quite few and far between and the spiders were always of unalarming small size.

In fact, in spite of being allergic to spiderwebs (yes, I get hives), I didn't actually yelp or cringe or gasp at the sight of a spider.

Until I moved into our new house, where, to date, we must have unearthed about thirty spiders. For the most part, they've been the small spiders that end up living in houses that aren't occupied (no one had lived in ours for a few months before we moved in). Occasionally, they've been quite large, prompting a squeak from me and an attempt to curl into the farthest corner of the couch while Steve deals with them.

Yesterday?

I kid you not, the spider was nearly four inches long from leg to leg. That's ginormous. And it was smack bang in the middle of the stairs. I didn't see it on my way down, which means I spotted it on my way back up, let out a shriek, and backed hastily down again. I couldn't go back up. Which left me downstairs all day, with my phone, the bathroom and my clothes upstairs.

Yep. I was stuck in a cold house in a flimsy see-through nightshirt until Steve came home from work. Five hours later.

The spider, thankfully, did not move. I checked on it every five minutes. As the day grew darker, I could have sworn it doubled in size.

The moral of the tale? Spiders are the root of all evil. 

And get dressed before you go downstairs. 

On Writing Relationships

I've neglected the blogosphere shamefully this past week. Partly it's been a case of Real Life taking over, and I haven't wanted to visit blogs knowing I won't be able to properly sit down and read and comment on posts. So sorry about that, everyone, I'll be back to making my rounds of my favourite bloggers this week!

It's also been a case of not really having anything to blog about. Yes, I have ideas for posts and stuff I want to say, but I never write up these posts if I'm not feeling passionate about the topic at the time. So I've waited until I have felt that spark again.

I don't know about you, but relationships in fiction are so important to me. The relationships between friends, lovers, family are, to me, the anchor of a story. No matter how great a plot is, no matter how clever the twists and turns are, I'll never be able to love something if the characters and the relationships between them (or even some of them) aren't interesting, compelling, moving, fraught, amazing... I could go on.

So I'm going to offer up a few things that have occurred to me about why fictional relationships work, and what specific story or relationship made me realize these things.

Tension is key. No one cares about a relationship where everything goes swimmingly all the time, and the characters never have doubts, or argue, or do something awful without meaning to, etc etc. In Veronica Mars, my favourite relationship is the one between Veronica and her father. They stick together through thick and thin (and believe me, things get thick). But they're also not above lying to each other, protecting each other through various underhanded means, tricking one another, and generally confronting each other over issues that are important to them. This is why this relationship works. 

On the flip side, they do stick by one another and that's as important as the doubts. The reason I lost interest in the Logan/Veronica romance was because there was too much doubt, too much conflict, too little loyalty and faith and awesomeness between them. They were unhappy far more than they were happy. I think there needs to be a balance.

The nature of the relationship itself is in question - and is then satisfactorily resolved. Do they love one another? Hate one another? Are they going to betray the other? Will they forgive the other one? Will they overcome their different ideals to love each other, or will their ideals matter more? This kind of conflict is an off-shoot of tension, I guess, but I needed it earmarked separately because it's so effective. When you question a relationship from the outside, and then finally get your answers, it's satisfying and moving. And it keeps you interested right through.

Key example? Luke and Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Being twenty-two and the daughter of a Star Wars fan, I knew Darth Vader was Luke's father before I ever watched any of the films. I think most people do these days. But that, if anything, makes the question even more gripping. Will they reconcile? Can he be redeemed? Will he kill his own son - or save him?

We got great answers to those questions, and that's why I love their relationship so much.

The characters have to be able to stand on their own. They have to be able to stand individually as great characters before they can make a great relationship. Otherwise, it's just a hollow relationship that doesn't quite ring true, no matter how much you praise the love. For me, Romeo and Juliet epitomize this. Everyone knows them for the tragic love story, but when I read the play, it was kind of disappointing. I just thought 'meh, they're not that great, either of them. Pfuee!' And their relationship didn't feel real at all.

You have to be invested in them. Some of you may disagree, but for me, a relationship in a book or movie or TV show has to be something I'm deeply invested in for me to care at all. It's amazing how much of a difference that emotional investment makes. Even if you tick every single one of the boxes above, a relationship will still fall flat if a reader or viewer is not invested in it. This is the wild card and it's annoying because it means we as writers could tick the boxes and still not create that special spark. To use a reality TV metaphor, the relationship might be able to dance, have a great voice, look good - but it's always going to be trumped by something that has that special X factor.

For instance, when the Harry Potter books were still coming out, I had my heart deeply and firmly set on the idea that Harry and Hermione were better together than any other characters in the books. They had a spark I couldn't identify, something that made me go 'wow, I love seeing how these two interact and stick by each other'.

This made me a little impatient (to put it mildly) with the Ron/Hermione romance and don't even get me started on the Harry/Ginny one. I used to find Ron and Hermione's bickering irritating. But other readers tell me they loved this because it threw up 'sexual tension'. Me? It left me cold, in spite of ticking the 'tension' box. But if Harry and Hermione argued? I lapped it up like a starving cat confronted with cream. 

Oh. And did I mention relationship-love is so subjective?

And that's my (rather long) two cents on the subject. What do you guys think?

Confessions

I have always wanted to

1. Go to Italy. Rome, Venice, Florence. Take a boat down the canals and see the sights and eat Italian pasta and pizza in Italy.

2. Create a male character who mourns the loss of a nipple hair so deeply, he holds a funeral for it. Sadly, he never quite fits into any of my stories, no matter where I try to squeeze him in.

3. Go to France and visit a patisserie. And eat cakes, obviously. And drink wine at an outdoor French cafe. It just sounds so cosmopolitan, don't you think? (And okay, so I don't actually drink wine, but hey. It's a fantasy. In reality, I could just substitute wine with, I don't know, baguettes. Mmm. Warm French bread.)

4. Walk into a bookshop and see one of my books on the shelves. I can't imagine this would be anything less than amazing. Not to mention surreal.

5. Become an archaeologist and, ya know, find cool artifacts and learn how to use a bullwhip. If my writing career fails, you know where to find me.

6. Cook delicious and extremely complicated things. And take photographs of them so that they make other people's mouths water. Unfortunately, I usually just don't have the time or inclination to spend more than an hour, tops, on cooking. Buuut my cousin has started a food blog, and it always makes me hungry, so I'm settling for that vicarious pleasure.

7. Be one of those people who can say outrageous things on Twitter like 'Well-balanced exercise today. Writing for my mind and sex for my bod' and totally get away with it. (Yes, this was a real tweet I happened to stumble across)

What have you always wanted to do?

OMG! I HAVE AN AGENT!

Okay, so I am going to be very uncool and unprofessional and shriek a lot. And faint. And jump around.

*shrieks*

*jumps around*

*faints*

*wakes and jumps around some more*

*returns to chair*

Right, sorry. Where was I?

I HAVE AN AGENT! I think it warrants hitting caps lock. I also think it warrants, nay, demands, a bottle of whatever your favourite beverage is, some Malteser-filled cupcakes, and balloons. Why not? You're never too old for balloons. Especially not WHEN YOU HAVE AN AGENT.

I'll stop. I'm sorry. I'm just excited. I announced it on Twitter last night, but the thrill's not quite gone away.

So how did this happen?

Warning: long(ish) story ahead.

Well, most of you know I've been querying and sending out ECHOES since about March. I was happy with it at the time, and thought it was ready, but as you might have also noticed, I kept tweaking and working on it. Guess I wasn't so happy with it after all. Anyway, towards the end of April, an agent named Holly Root read my query and first ten pages and requested a partial (50 pages). She read those and requested the full.

Fast forward to roughly four weeks ago. I had a couple of other requests in this time, several query and partial rejections, and was generally swamped with Real Life stuff too. Then four weeks ago Holly got back to me to say she was going to pass on ECHOES.

I was disappointed, as I always am when I get a rejection (I'm only human!) but she wrote me such a lovely email. She said she thought I had something there, but it just wasn't quite right for her. She referred me to her friend and fellow agent Melissa Sarver.

This would be the referral I mentioned a while ago.

So me being the busy little bee I am, rattled off my query to Melissa straight away, letting her know Holly referred me. Twelve minutes later, she replied to request the manuscript. I had to do some quick formatting on the ms, so it was seventeen minutes after that that I sent it off to her.

And then I forgot all about it.

Okay, that's a lie. I sort of put it halfway out of my head because, as I've noticed, if I compulsively think about and worry about queries and submissions, I end up fretting a lot. It's much more sensible (and kinder to your sanity) to just try and put these things out of your head. And, you know, not check your email every ten minutes. I managed to reduce my email-checking to once per hour. Given I spend most of my time during at the day at this laptop, that isn't an awful lot of checking.

Well, much to my amazement, Melissa emailed me back six days later. I saw her name pop up in my inbox and thought 'oh, sweet Heathcliff, she hated it and couldn't finish it! It's a rejection!’

Nope, turns out she's a really fast reader. Melissa said she wanted to talk to me about the manuscript. I panicked. I forgot to eat my dinner, ran around the room, and Steve sat patiently by and soothed me long enough to remind me that I needed to reply to her email. So I did, and she rang me the next day (this was three Wednesdays ago). We talked about the book. Like, for forty-five minutes. I expected to be stammer-y and scared, but weirdly enough, the moment I answered the phone and she said hello, my nerves just went away.

The conversation amounted to this: Melissa thought I had a great concept and a great book, but it needed work. She made suggestions. We talked about them. I explained why a certain suggestion might not work, but overall found that she made a lot of sense. She really, really hit the hail on the nead.

(See how excited I am? I am losing the power of words!)

So I went away and worked on those revisions. Like crazy. I had to pop into my job at the care home a couple of times, because although I wasn't due to officially start yet, there was paperwork to fill out. But I had plenty of time to write, which was awesome. I sent the revisions back to her last week, and she got back to me this past Monday to - get this - offer me representation. She also made a couple more suggestions for edits.

I've just sent the revised manuscript back again. And yesterday, I signed with Melissa Sarver of the Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency.

Once the manuscript is ready, Melissa plans to send it out to editors. She even asked me to write a short author bio a couple days ago. Needless to say, it sucked. I do way, way better at writing fiction.

Some reactions from friends and family-

STEVE: See? I told you you were amazing.

Aww.

And my mother, who wins the prize-

MUM: Oh my God! Hooray! You know this is because I lit a candle to St Jude, right?

ME (bewildered because my mother is the most sensible person I know and does not usually light candles for many reasons): Why St. Jude?

MUM: You know. The patron saint of lost causes.

ME: *speechless*

She has a funny sense of humour, my mother. Unless, of course, she was being serious, in which case I probably should be offended.

And that's the tale of How I Got My Agent. It's early days yet, but Melissa (whom I will henceforth refer to on this blog as 'Agent Melissa' because it makes her sound like a mysterious and deadly super-spy) is awesome and I'm really looking forward to working with her. 

Fiction Pet Peeves

I've been reading an awful lot of books lately, largely courtesy of the fact that I've just become a member of the local library. Hooray! Anyway, as it happens, a large number of these books have been great - and some have reminded me of my fiction pet peeves. As most of us are readers here, I expect you all know what I mean. Those tropes or tics that drive you crazy.

So here are three of mine.

1. Stupid characters

It's worth noting here that by 'stupid', I don't mean characters who are daft, or silly, or intellectually challenged, or just plain ordinary-in-terms-of-intelligence. These can all be charming and wonderful characters. I mean characters who are stupid. You know? The kind of stupid that makes you want to shake them and scream HOW CAN YOU BE SO STUPID?! in a non-endearing and non-fun way.

Example: in a book I recently started (which will go nameless because I'm not being entirely positive about it), the narrator actually put me off reading any more of the book. He was stupid in a bad way. He was specifically told, by a character we know to be sensible and good, not to do a certain thing and he was also told why. Five pages later? He does that very thing, and puts up only a token resistance. I'm sure this was a plot device, but it did nothing for the character's appeal. It just made me think 'I'm going to end up reading 400 pages of this guy doing stupid things like this, so no thank you'. Which was a shame, because the book was intriguing, quirky and unusual in premise - all things I love!

2. Ridiculous misunderstandings

Now I know the Misunderstanding is a feature of fiction as old as time, Greek myths and, you know, dinosaurs. I'm okay with misunderstandings. I even enjoy them when they're done right - in Harry Potter, for example, we frequently see characters tricked into believing something that isn't true.

What makes me grind my teeth and throw a book at the wall is the Ridiculous Misunderstanding. The one that is so far-fetched, or could so easily have been avoided, that it just leaves you feeling disgusted. Romeo and Juliet being a case in point. Or, worse, a book I recently read that I loved apart from the section with the Ridiculous Misunderstanding.

Boy sleeps with Girl. Both have been in love with each other for ages now. They're happy. Girl goes home to tell her fiance she can't be with him. Boy sends Girl a lovely necklace to show her how much she means to him. Girl receives necklace and thinks 'wtf? This means he's casting me off with a farewell trinket!' and is heartbroken. Does Girl bother to ask Boy what the necklace means? Does she even talk to him about it? No, of course not, because Misunderstandings are Cool. To make things worse, Girl then sends a message to Boy, through a friend, to say 'I am sailing to America with my fiance now, goodbye' and Boy thinks 'I've been used'. Does he chase after her to find out what the hell is going on? No, of course he doesn't, because Misunderstandings, dear readers, are Cool.

I could have broken something, I kid you not.

3. Deus ex machina

Latin for 'God out of a machine'. In other words, when all seems lost, an implausible and amazing coincidence or plot device appears to save the day. As a writer, I know that sometimes these are hard to avoid. Sometimes you really do need an amazing coincidence or a startling plot twist. But when an entire Final Battle is punctuated with them (I'm looking at you, JK Rowling, though I do love you apart from this tiny thing), it gets a bit much.

What annoys you in fiction? Do you share my pet peeves or do you disagree?

All the better to dance you off your feet, my dear

A moment in our house, last night-

SANGU, daring and slightly loony writer, waltzes back and forth across the living room. By herself. Arms outstretched, feet tapping to the rhythm, spin, spin, you know.

Slightly bemused, STEVE stops in the doorway and observes this spectacle for a few minutes. Eventually SANGU realizes she's being watched and stops. A charming (she hopes) blush creeps over her face.

SANGU: I was trying to put myself in a scene.

STEVE: Oh. So you weren't just pretending to be a leprechaun?

SANGU acknowledges that yes, her version of the waltz might have involved more speed and Irish bobbing than most ordinary waltzes do, and yes, she does generally request that STEVE be honest when critiquing her various creative efforts, but really. Does her Beloved have to stretch this honesty quite so far?

The reason for this solo waltz/lunacy?

The short version is Iron Maiden's 'Dance of Death'.

The long version is that a few days ago, I happened to be listening to a couple of Iron Maiden songs that my brother and I loved when we were both wee teenagers and still living together. He's still a wee teenager in my opinion, but I thought I'd grown out of my screaming-men phase. I'm not really a big heavy metal fan, but there's something about the angst and melodies in certain Iron Maiden and Metallica songs that really work for my writing.

All of which is to tell you that I listened to 'Dance of Death' for the first time in a while. My feelings for the song weren't new: every time I've heard it, I've always loved the solo bits, they always make me want to get up and do a high-speed waltz. I felt the same thing this time, only there was also something different.

Instead of me wanting to get up and dance, I had this spooky, haunting, amazing vision (in a non-crazy way, I hope) of my protagonists from ECHOES being cornered in a room by confused, lost, misshapen guards. And one of the guards reached out and said a single word:

'Dance.'

The reason this haunted me so much was twofold. First, these guards have been soulless, lost, lonely creatures for so long - and they've suddenly discovered that they can feel alive, through music. And second, it's essentially about my characters having to dance for their very lives.

I kind of fell head over heels for the tension and emotion that vision conjured up for me. I mean, crazy-loony-solo-waltz-through-the-room head over heels.

But I haven't written the scene down yet. Why not? Because it's so gorgeous and lovely in my head, I'm terrified of not being able to do it justice. Of ruining it with a couple of careless words.

So I'll let it stew, and I'll do my solo waltz, until it's ready.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Character Genesis: Echo

Another post for my Character Geneses Series! 

This one focuses on Echo, the protagonist and narrator of ECHOES. And quite frankly, I'm struggling. Matthew, for all his ambiguity, was an easy character to chart the origins of. I understand Echo much better. I have to put myself in her shoes to write her story, so I have to understand her. I get her. I absolutely adore her, even if she does pipe up in my head at the most inconvenient times.

But to tell you where she came from is a different kettle of fish altogether. And they're not the nice, easy, friendly kind of fish either. It's a kettle full of the kinds of fish that bite your fingers if you try to reach for them, which, if you ask me, makes it very difficult to learn anything.

When the idea for ECHOES first bounced around my head, gradually developing and evolving and generally making a nuisance of itself, the idea of a female teenage protagonist was also there. The two ideas were essentially one. If I was going to write this story, I was going to write it as her.

I remember once asking Steve, during an early draft, whether he thought the story would work better with a male narrator. He didn't think so. He thought a key part of the story was Echo's vulnerability and grit, and he didn't think she would translate well into a male counterpart.

So, it had to be her.

She's a spirited character, warm and loving and uncomfortable around people she doesn't know. She has a quick temper. She's stubborn, she's reckless and she is, inherently, lonely. It's a kind of curse of being what she is, because so many people hate her kind. She's an echo, one of Matthew's, in fact. Matthew often tells her he made a mistake when he put 'too much fire in her'. These things became obvious as soon as I started writing her. But what I still don't really know is where she came from in the first place.

I do have an idea, though. In asking myself ‘Is she inspired by another character I've loved?’, I’ve sort of hit on an answer. I don't think Echo was born that way, at least not in that sense. But there are a few deliberate parallels between her character and that of Frankenstein's Creature in Frankenstein. So maybe that's where she was first born. Given that it was thinking about Frankenstein that got me onto the idea of ECHOES, is it so unreasonable to assume that maybe Echo herself sprang fully born, like Athena, from the question 'how did the Creature feel about what happened?'

That's the only source I can think of, and it's not a complete or satisfactory one. But maybe that's what we have to accept as writers. That sometimes our characters appear and we don't fully know where they came from or how. Maybe that's what makes this process so amazing.

I'd love to hear any thoughts or similar stories!