Author Archives: Amy McLane

About Amy McLane

As Amy Beth Forbes, her work has appeared in divers locations, such as Flytrap, Kiss Machine, Realms of Fantasy, and LCRW. She is currently slaving away at a multi-book epic fantasy, and often forgets to post at personal blog smolderingink.com. Elusive and quixotic, she likes pie, but wouldn’t say no to cake.

Leg Day, Part III

Featured

Posted on by
Reply

Hey everybody, much apologies. I drafted this on Thursday as I was coming down with a nasty flu, and in my fever-ridden state, I thought I’d published it already. Lo siento! And now, without further ado (though if you haven’t seen them, first go read parts one and two) here is the conclusion to Leg Day. Oh, and if you don’t know the “Mullins” reference, check this video out.

After dinner, Char wheeled into her room, flopped on her bed, and messaged Eddie:

Hey

Hey, what’s up?

no legs tomorrow

what? why?

dunno. Dad filed a grievance.

SHIT

WHAT????

I did that once too. When we found out Cleo was pregnant.

Oh my god. Oh my god Eddie what am i going to do????

I can’t believe he did that he should have known better argh wtf do you want me to come over

no. You know my dad’s always had his head in the clouds. Just tell me where it is. You know what.

7th Street and Collins. We can come with you.

Not until you’re ready

are you ready?

Char held down the delete button, watched it eat everything. She spent the rest of the evening patiently repairing her wheel. At ten o clock, her dad paused in the doorway.

“Lights out, honey.”

“I know. Five minutes.”

He pressed his palms against the rims of his chair, wheedled back and forth. “Listen. I was thinking. I’ve got tomorrow off, why don’t we make a day of it?”

“A Leg Day, Dad?” She hated herself for saying it, but out it came.

Dad flinched, but soldiered on. “We can go to the zoo, I know you’ve been wanting to see the thylacines. And then maybe one of those monster movie immersives? I hear Riders is pretty good.”

“Dad, you hate those things.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I just thought it would be good to get out of the house. I understand if you don’t want to hang with your old man.”

Char bit her lip. “No, it sounds cool. Just do me one favor, okay? Let me sleep in.”

“Done and done, kiddo. Goodnight.”

She leaned over and turned out the light. Sat in the dark. Listened to the tap run as Dad brushed his teeth. The creak of the floorboards in his bedroom as he rolled over them. The ebb and flow of his snore. When Mom was alive, she used to spend half her nights on the couch, complaining with bitter love that she’d married a chainsaw. But for Char, Dad’s snore was like crickets, or the wind in the beech trees, his somnolent growl softened into a lullaby by all the walls between them.

Mom. Mom, and Cleo’s baby. She cried then, stuffing her fingers into her mouth so she wouldn’t make a sound. Then, her rim replaced and wheels greased, she rolled out into the street, and downtown, to 7th and Collins.

Toughs hovered on every corner, accompanied by ladies wearing amounts of makeup inversely proportional to amounts of clothing. They watched her roll by like vultures tracking a baby gazelle. LIVE SHOW XXX The neon lights gleamed as she rolled in.

“Give me the Mullins,” she said to the waifish girl behind the counter, whose cobalt-blue eyeliner winged all the way to her hairline.

“You sure, doll? Once you’re off the grid, you’re one of us.”

“I know.” She took the paperwork the waif pushed at her. “What’s this.”

“Affidavit. In case you’re caught.”

Char signed. The bell over the door jangled behind her.

“What,” said the waif, “Did you bring your whole family?”

“Eddie,” Char turned. “Dad? Dad, I’m sorry, it’s too late.“

“Sweetie, it was always too late.” Dad nodded up at the waif. “Give me the Mullins.”

“You guys want tourists, kittens, oakhearts, or bladerunners?”

“Baby, we were born to run,” said Dad.

“Is he always so cheesy?” the waif asked, passing Char two pairs of black, titanium legs, curved like halos, like scythes waiting to reap.

“Yeah,” Char said, feeling tears spark behind her eyes. “Totally.”

The Sad Trombone

Posted on by
Reply

When I was in college, I had a creative writing instructor who would mark me down a full grade every time I included a fantastic element in my submissions. This was basically like punishing me for breathing.

Halfway through the semester, I managed to scrape together a vignette about autumn, something about a trombone sitting abandoned in the back of a kid’s closet. It was maybe 500 words.

She gave me full marks and praised it to the heavens, and then became even more bitter and aggressive with me when I was unable to turn in anything else that did not involve Weirdness.

Every time I handed her an assignment, the question flickered in her eyes: Why are you wasting your time writing this juvenilia, when we both know I will mark you down?

But I couldn’t stop doing it; not even for the sake of my lackluster GPA could I scrape together some slice-of-life literary shorts to please this strange and unhappy woman, who seemed genuinely disturbed by my inability to harrow to “the truth” in my fiction. And there was a very simple reason for this:

Because she was trying to squelch me. To make me into something I wasn’t, and never will be. And if that’s not bad writing advice, I don’t know what is.The end result was that I was galvanized by her prejudice, determined I would never write anything that she considered “true”.

The whole thing about writing, is that it’s a compulsion. It comes from the gut. It is our personal truth, the only truth we know, and also the truths we don’t know and are trying desperately to understand by writing them out, over and over again. And in fiction, truth is not always universal, because there are so many different ways to write it.

When we submit our work, we open ourselves to opinion and critique. All critique should be listened to with an open ear, but not all critique is valid. The only way you learn to discern the difference is by listening openly, considering carefully, and then going with your gut.

Never write someone else’s story. Only write what you want to write, what your heart and gut knows is true. For that writing instructor, truth was young girls with budding sexualities like ripening tomatoes. For me, truth is vampires and voodoo. One isn’t more right than the other. They are all truths.

How to get story ideas and learn new writing tricks faster

Posted on by
Reply

Hi, my name is Amy McLane, and I write epic fantasy. Here is a sampling of the books I’ve read in the past month or so, in reverse chronological order (and yes, this is related to that flashing neon sign of a blog title, don’t worry, we’re getting there):

American Vampire by Scott Snyder (Horror, graphic novel)

The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman (Fantasy, graphic novel)

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King (Horror, four novellas)

Driven by James Sallis (Noir Thriller, short novel)

Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell (Science Fiction, novel)

The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan (Fantasy, novel)

Now, fantasy is my first and moste potente love, but as you can see, I try to read all over the map, and I go through phases, too. For example, in the early spring I went through a big Classic Lit/YA thing, whereas right now I’m more drawn to Horror, Crime, and SF. I read all over the map for three reasons:

  1. As a reader, it’s fun
  2. As a writer, I learn more tricks faster
  3. And, the more (and varied) books I read, the more ideas I get

What? Yeah. More tricks. Faster.  More ideas. Faster. YUP. Don’t believe me? TRY IT. If you’ve been in a writing rut, go to the library and check out a handful of books in genre you don’t normally read. Put your smartphone on silent and snoopily check reviews, so that you can pick books that have good word-of-mouth. After all, you don’t want to try sailing into a new land on the back of a dead whale. (I hear it’s really hard to get ambergris out of blue jeans.) And then read them!

Bonus round: Target your weak spots. If you only ever read novels, try short stories, novellas, graphic novels, and learn how the different forms function. If you have trouble creating tension in your stories, go for thrillers or horror novels. If your relationships suck, try romance. If your settings are flat, pick SF or fantasy. Now that’s not to say you can’t find, say, a thriller with a rich setting, or a fantasy novel with a breakneck pace (that’s pretty much mandatory these days, amiright), but if you really want to see how the game works, how all those bits and pieces come together to make a functioning whole, you need to get outside your comfort zone and examine how things are done in different genres. It’ll open your eyes.

I have lots of story ideas. Frequently. It annoys many of my writer-chums. Right now I just finished a novel and am trying to clean up my query packet. Next up? Well I have five different novel ideas, some of which I have 10k+ words laid down on already, and I guess I’m just going to go with my gut in regards to what to work on next. In the meantime, I bumped out three short stories last week, as a form of procrastination against cleaning up the aforementioned query packet.

How do I get so many ideas for stories? By exposing myself to other stories, lots of stories, wildly different stories. Try it, I’m begging you. Those wildly different stories will throw a party in your hindbrain, they’ll mix, they’ll mingle, they’ll ferment, and then, the stork named inspiration will leave you a present in your cabbage patch.

So go forth, my writerly friends, read everything you can get your grubby little mitts on, and reap the rewards.

500 Club (4/26)

Posted on by
2

Hi everybody, it’s time to write!

Here’s the rules for our little game:

  1. Write 500 words based on one of the two prompts below.
  2. Post it to your blog.
  3. Give us a line or two in the comments, along with a link back to the full text.

1. Write a story about a tight-knit community. Does your hero want to break free, or remake the rest of the world in his community’s image? And would that be a good or a very bad thing?

2. Start with an omen. A raven, a black cat, a shining light haloing someone’s head. Just make sure your omen foreshadows the opposite of what we expect (halo = bad! Raven = good!)

Good luck and have fun!

writing lessons from the idiot box: Band of Brothers

Posted on by
Reply

I’m not big on war movies, so it’s hard for me to talk about how very much I love Band of Brothers, because it’s such a outlier of my usual preferences for entertainment. A dear friend talked me into watching the first episode, Currahee, and I was quickly hooked by the strong pacing and  smart writing.

(On Lieutenant Sobel, a hapless dickhead of a drillmaster hilariously played by David Schwimmer. How much of a hapless dickhead was he? Well, besides constantly punishing Easy Company for imaginary infractions, he quite frequently bellowed out “IR-RE-GARD-LESS” during his dressing-downs of Easy, which is not, you know, a real word.)

Capt. Nixon: Sobel’s a genius. I had a headmaster in prep school who was just like him. I know the type.
Maj. Winters: Lew, Michaelangelo’s a genius. Beethoven’s a genius.
Nixon: You know a man in this company who wouldn’t double-time Currahee with a full pack just to piss in that man’s morning coffee?

Besides often being funny, Band of Brothers is captivating for many reasons; not least of all that it is a true story of a company of men who were larger than life. It’s great to watch just for the sheer pleasure of good tv, but on the rewatch (and it is infinitely rewatchable) I’ve got my writing hat on. I’m learning how opposition breeds heroism and camraderie, I’m getting a whole new definition of the word “brother.” I’m getting a better idea of how an army actually works, what wartime is really like, and how to realistically write a soldier, a man at war, who might be hilarious and loveable like Perconte… and yet have no qualms about stealing watches from the dead enemy, like Perconte.

“They’re all ticking, unlike their previous owners”

And that’s just one soldier out of a whole company; each of these guys has his own life, story, personality, quirks and foibles. There are no flat characters here. This verisimilitude is really important to me in crafting my own fiction. Yeah, my wars might be fought with swords and sorcery, but I like to think the people caught up in them are chips off the Easy Company block.

So if you ever want to write about soldiers, I really think you can’t do better for entertaining research than Band of Brothers. I wanted to put some clips in here, but a 2 minute Youtube reel just doesn’t do it justice. You can see it at HBO’s site, if you have one of those pass things, or download eps through itunes. Personally, I am going downstairs right now to watch Currahee on my shiny metal boxed set.

Three things I need to stop doing (so I can start writing)

Posted on by
2
We all have roadblocks on the way to getting our butts in the chair. Usually this stuff manifests in the form of the 9-5, the kidlets, sleep. But there are more insidious (aka stupid) creativity-stoppers, ones that come from inside of us. Here are my top three most heinous crimes wrought in the name of procrastination.
3. Internetting: from the Hairpin to the Oatmeal, I have a serious problem.  The worst is when I convince myself that this is part of my daily reading, and I am feeding my imagination with story fodder. Lies. There is a ton of great stuff on the internet, but I’ve yet to get a spark from any of it. Seems that only fiction can give me that juice.
2. Gaming: I usually only have one culprit at a time. Right now it’s Dragonvale.

Ugh, Dragonvale. (Sims + Pokemon) x Gambling, but with DRAGONS. Gotta obsessively breed ‘em all!
1. Daydreaming: Seems innocent, perhaps even necessary, right? It’s not. It’s indulgent nonsense. Either I’m wasting time thinking about that awesome action scene that doesn’t happen until 2/3 through the next book, or I’m imagining serial adventures chock full of juicy melodrama featuring my star-crossed lovers — in the first case it’s a scene I should be writing toward, not farting around mooning over, in the second, it’s usually something I know has no place in the story. Outtakes. Extras. Like fanfic. Like I am mentally writing fanfic for my own unpublished work. Wat. Is. That. (I hope to God I am not the only person who does this, because on the scale of embarrassing admissions, that one goes up to 11).
So now that I have fully outed my worst stupidities, I’ma gonna go WRITE. Hope you do the same.

How I learned to write fiction by studying poetry

Posted on by
1

I came to fiction through poetry. I didn’t dare write fiction. Who did I think I was, to do something as audacious as write a story? Some nerve, kid. But poetry, here I could express myself, and did. And yet, writing poetry taught me how to write fiction. Here’s my True Life Story.

PART ONE: HOW I MET A REAL LIVE POETESS

I went to a state university aiming to get into a vet med program, and it only took one semester of hopelessly bombing my chem and math lectures to irrevocably crush that idea. So, to the horror of my parents, I changed my major to English. Unfortunately, I was an English major at a school specializing in Agriculture, Engineering, and Veterinary Medicine. I loved my literature classes, but most of my writing classes were not particularly enlightening. It didn’t bother me too much, as, despite having secretly started my first novel, I still didn’t think I could ever be a writer.

All that changed when I met the poetess and professor Diane Wakoski.

I had her for a class on 20th Century American Poetry. And oh, she was tough. A rapier, that woman, slim silver steel. Most of my classmates, who’d signed up in the hopes of Basketweaving 101, were not infatuated.

I was.

I wanted to take everything she taught. As it turned out, the only other thing she taught was a class on writing poetry. I auditioned, got in (probably more on puppyish enthusiasm than anything else) and, after three years of ‘writing classes’, I had my first real introduction to serious critique. I often did well, but also got my first real shred, and sat biting back tears of embarrassment and chagrin as a poem I intended to be an ode to Ursula K. LeGuin was mercilessly flayed to bits.

As well it should’ve been. It stunk.

Though, I was not the only one to flub: one aspiring poet made the same mistakes over and over, never changing his approach. And he took the savaging of his poems personally, every time. Soon he vanished altogether. When we learned he had dropped, the relief in the room was palpable. Although he probably thought us all monsters, no one had enjoyed watching him suffer.

From this I learned: you are not your work. Accept critique and improve your writing, or surrender to ego and abandon your craft.

PART TWO: ON THE TURN

But Professor Wakoski taught me more than how to take a critique like a big girl, which admittedly is not the sole province of the poet. She also taught me about trope. The word trope is from the Greek tropos, or turn. And the turn, as I was taught, is where the heart of poetry hides; that moment of revelation when a poem rears up and kicks you in the heart.

How do we create trope? Through the judicious use of figurative language, such as:

Now, over the years I have often been told by well-meaning writing instructors that I simply cannot use metaphor or simile in my fantasy fiction, because the reader will be confused… because if she sang like a nightingale, did she actually turn into a nightingale?

To which I say, heartily, BULLSHIT.

Readers aren’t dumb, and if you clearly establish the rules in your fictional world, delineating what’s possible and what’s not, you can do anything you want with language. This ridiculous attitude that fantasists and science fiction writers cannot use figurative language lowers the quality of writing in speculative fiction, and it needs to stop already.

When we play with language, we have the power to create something that resonates, that lasts. All the parts of poetry should have a space in the fiction writer’s toolbox. Metaphor and simile are your friends, they add richness and flavor and yes, poetry, to your writing. Whatever genre you write in, don’t count them out.

After all, whatever we write, we are always striving for the turn, that moment the words rear up and kick your reader in the heart.

 

Further Reading:

Red Bandana by Diane Wakoski
Thanking My Mother For Piano Lessons by Diane Wakoski

If you like these, you can get any one of her collections here. I think Emerald Ice is a good place to start, as it’s sort of a ‘greatest hits’ compilation she curated herself.

Breaking that tape

Posted on by
1

I confess: nothing too salacious this month. I’ve been a good girl, I’ve been working my tail off, and the finish line is in sight. I just have to write one new scene, make two minor edits, and do the final readthrough (this will be the THIRD final readthrough, so it should be smooth sailing) and I’ll be ready to start the querying process for my high fantasy novel, The Afflicted. It should, barring unforseen disaster, be ready to go this month.

I’ve got spreadsheets of agent data, and plan to stagger my queries in groups of five or so, so I don’t hit all my most likely matches at once. That way I’ll have time to correct my course if I’m not even scoring nibbles with my initial rounds of querying.

It’s a weird feeling, to know that something I’ve worked on for so many years is almost finished. I mean, I’ve been working onThe Afflicted since 2004. It’s older than my marriage, older than my child. It’s also not the first novel I’ve written, but the first two were not worth trying to salvage. Which is fine by me; there is nothing wrong with practicing an art until you feel you’ve gotten the hang of it. And, having a perfectionist streak, it also means knowing what to let go and what to keep working with.

I’m scared, and excited, and ready for something new. Hopefully fate will be kind as I prepare to take this next step. If it isn’t, I guess I’ll keep writing anyway, as I’m too pigheaded to do anything else.

Cold Seeps (Part 2)

Posted on by
Reply

And now, the second installment of this week’s round robin, a sadistic little game the three of us occasionally play, wherein we write a story together, in the round and on the fly. Part One, by Amy K. Nichols, is here, and Part Three, by S.C. Green,  will be up on Friday.

Trevor hunched and ran down the cramped hall toward CONTROL, the stale, canned sweat-and-bologna air burning in his lungs. Contact in 18 minutes. Unless Captain followed ROS’s protocol and destroyed it.

“Captain,” he  yelled, climbing the ladder to CONTROL two rungs at a time.

“What do you want.”

“Please, sir, do not engage protocol.”

“No vitals, heading straight for us. What else is there?”

“At 64.7 knots? That’s not fast enough for a torpedo. More likely a probe, maybe the Japanese.”

The Captain clicked his tongue. “And maybe it’s a new kind of weapon, Mr. Renyard.”

“This is a research vessel, not a war machine. We can’t afford a diplomatic incident right now. And, what if it’s alive? ROS would have a hard time scanning vitals.”

The Captain gave him a look that said I want bourbon. “That’d make it some kind of goddamned sea cheetah.”

“A new life form. Anything is possible.”

ROS’s crisp accent lilted over his last words. “Velocity of unidentified object at 62 knots and dropping. Protocol recommendation disabled.”

“Thank God,” snorted the Captain. “Hate that tart telling me what to do. Well, Mr. Reynard, let’s try it your way. Let’s see if we can’t evade this thing’s trajectory, see what we can see. Go man Clippy. ROS, keep scanning for vitals.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Trevor, ROS echoing him eerily.

He took his seat in Clippy’s pod, worked the levers. Outside the ship, the metal arm scissored its sensitive claw open and shut. With Clippy, Trevor could pluck up a single strand of seaweed, or crush a coral reef. He twirled Clippy’s headlights, scanning the darkness. Excitement thrummed in his gut, a twin to the rhythm of the ships engines as the Captain maneuvered them out of harm’s way.

“ROS, how’s the scan coming?”

“Unconfirmed. Velocity of unidentified object at 59 knots and dropping.”

Trevor tapped his fingers. thuddah thuddah thuddah thuhDAH thuhDAH

Stone ping-ping-pinged at his station.

The Captain clicked his tongue. tok tok.

Like we’re some kind of crazy New Age drum circle, thought Trevor as he tapped. But tapping felt good. It made him warm inside. He didn’t want to stop, why would he want to stop?

“Unconfirmed,” said ROS. “Unconfirmed.”

Each consonant and vowel swelled, rolled, as she repeated, until he could not understand the word she was saying, because the word was a false understanding, a coating, the wrapper on the candy bar, the silken teddy dangling from the shoulders of his high school girlfriend. “Alexandra,” he groaned as his fingers tapped on. “Alexandra.”

She was coming, and she was dying, and she was speaking to them through these rhythms, this no-song singing. Red droplets splashed onto Clippy’s console. My blood, thought Trevor. “Alexandra,” he said.

His head filled with light.

To be continued…

Rhythm and the Hook

Posted on by
1

Well everyone, yesterday was my husband’s birthday, so I was out of the office (side note, if you are ever in Glendale, AZ for whatever reason and you like German food, do yourself a favor and stop by Haus Murphy’s. Amazing food and beer delivered by thickly-accented blonde waitstaff — pretty much perfection.). Today’ I’m back in the saddle to talk about queries.

A query letter is comprised of three paragraphs.

1. explain why you’ve chosen to contact this agent

2. The Hook

3. A courteous close, where you list any sales or relevant credentials you may have.

I think paragraphs one and three are fairly self-explanatory. Sure, you will torture yourself over them, and you should, because every word counts, but salutations and bios are not the hard part. The hard part is The Hook.So I’ll be talking more about that in a hot minute.

Salutation, hook, bio/close. That is what comprises a query letter. But that doesn’t define the whole. What a query letter actually IS: a writing sample. It is an attempt to intrigue the reader, in this case a prospective agent. Your goal is to interest them enough to get them to ask for more.

How to do that? Here’s the practical advice I’ve gleaned over the years from blogs and conventions like Pitchapalooza (hosted by the always awesome Changing Hands Bookstore). I’m going to assume y’all already have had some exposure to this stuff before, but I just want to share what’s made the biggest impact on me.

Regarding The Hook:

You can’t glom your whole plot into a few sentences. So don’t try. Instead, give a taste of the plot. Touch on it, but don’t be summary. Write in your own, particular style. If you try to cram the whole book into a few sentences, you will not be able to give the agent a sense of your style. Instead you’ll have something reminiscent of a high school book report. Use telling, vivid details to show what makes your hero stand apart from the pack. Try starting with action. Start with the whistle of falling bombs, whatever the equivalent is in your book. Be sensory.

Keep in mind that you will be drafting this query dozens of times. That’s cool. Embrace it. Get crazy, get out of the when/then box. This falls under “totally unverified opinion of a non-professional”, but I have a particular dislike of the when/then after/but before/yet formula. Because it’s formulaic. Because it’s soooo popular that the agent has to see a zillion when/thens a day, you know what I mean? And because the when/then combo sets you up for a droning rhythm of iambs. Prose has meter too, guys, and it really shows when you only have a page. Let me hit you with an exaggerated example:

When Riven Dumbname gives his cat the gun, he never dreams of what is yet to come.

Yeah I rhymed it too, but seriously I could go on for pages of when truffle humple scoodle poodle naddle do; flibber flobber tibby wobber hoopty hoo. DO YOU HEAR IT? I CAN’T UNHEAR IT. I have no proof, (again, this is Opinion Time) but my gut tells me this construct is a really good way to get an agent ready for a nap.

So let’s try that opening line in a more immediate manner. This is just total spitballing; I have given myself permission to be as wack as I want to be.

The cat has the gun and Riv has the kibble.

Riv Dumbname has three regrets: these damned chinos, that fourth boilermaker, and giving his cat the gun.

“Drop the nepeta cataria and nobody gets hurt.”

Riv Dumbname is staring down the barrel of a Colt .45. The slinger? His eleven-year-old poly-dactyl tabby, Sir Throckenbrock Percival Mittens.

"FalcomPSX"'s cat, "Bullet". Just so you know, I always image search AFTER I write my posts, and can I just say I love the internet so much? Seriously, what are the odds?

Five minutes on the crazy train and I’ve already got a couple of ideas to play with. The second pitch is strongest imho — the chinos and the fourth boilermaker tell us a lot about Riv, and even hint at the setting, the construct of the sentence has some flavor, some punch. Of course I’d tinker and tweak and write a dozen drafts, but that’s the name of the game. Now I’ve probably got room for two more sentences to flesh out Riv, the cat, and the actual conflict, but the stepping stones are there.

It’s ugly because it’s true; for any given project, you get ONE SHOT with any particular agent, and you are in heavy competition. Yes, there are lots of agents out there, but some of us write in particular genre niches where honestly there really aren’t that many fish in the sea, certainly not the mythical “hundred agents” we’re told to query. So rather than writing just one hook, write twenty and tweak and rewrite the best of those twenty. I can hear you groaning from here, but I am in the middle of this process right now myself and I promise you it does get easier the more you do it. Blind poll your friends and have them select what hook they like best (NOT while you stand there looking like a hungry dog, for goodness sake). Do that and you’ll soon start to get a feel for what draws attention, what entices, what leaves them asking for more.