The shoes of RWA12

 

Sometimes it's neat and traditional

Sometimes it's slinky

Sometimes it's floral  

Sometimes it's stripy            

 Sometimes it's practical                      ... sometimes not so much

Sometimes it's barefootin'

Sometimes we're not in Kansas any more.

What did we wear to RWA?

This blog is really meant to be read next year.  It's to help out those folks who, the month before RWA13, will start asking -- "What do I wear?"

This is a serious question, because we writers are prey to many natural uncertainties and the addition of Wardrobe Insecurity drives us mad.

So ... this is what folks wore to RWA12 for walking around and for the ordinary sessions and workshops.  A good many of these pictures are PAN members so you know they are the experts when it comes to picking out suitable writer regalia.

In my informal survey of the walkaround choice, slacks lead.  They run about 80% at this conference.  But then -- it's California.    

If you're going to an agent pitch, you'll probably dress up a little bit more.   Maybe wear a jacket.  The big name authors expect to get photographed and pick something photogenic.  If you're giving a presentation or workshop, you'll look professional.

Many folks dress up for the Awards Ceremony.  There are some just lovely dresses there.
And HQN had a slumber party ...

But, as you see, most of the conference is Casual Friday informal.

Note in the pictures generally how folks are carrying a sizable bag.  This is for conference materials, notebook, water bottle, and maybe some of your own books or promotional stuff to give away.

The RITA -- I Haz IT!

 I am so very very happy to say I have won the RWA RITA Award for Best Historical Romance of 2011. 

In my never-ending quest to reveal the nitty-gritty of publishing, I will tell you how it went.

At the Awards Dinner, I was sitting at the table marveling at the process of selecting winners, which seems to contain both the inevitability of tides and the randomness of wave formations.  I laid a fork to hold down what page of the booklet we were working through, watching the Finalists, of whom I know just a lot one way and another, and trying not to let panic come creeping with little cat feet into my mind.

I keep drinking cups of coffee and not eating the dessert because, y'know, cake and not good for you and the whole boring sugar metabolism thing and self-restraint on general principles ...

I had corner bent the page where my own particular fearsome trial lay.  I turn to that page because it is now time.  Lay the fork across it. 

They read through the Historical Fiction Finalists.  Because I am not panicking ... really truly not panicking ...  I am thinking, "If I lose, I'll allow myself to have one of those cakes.  Probably the chocolate one.  But the vanilla icing one looks pretty good.  Maybe it has lemon flavor inside.  Now, is that a third kind of cake there or is it just white cake and the light shining on it funny ..."

I'm thinking along like this while they read out the names of the Historical Finalists.  They say, "The Black Hawk" and I have not been following, so it is a doubletake moment while I work out that they've just named the winner and it's me.  "Go on!" says Pam-Hopkins-the-agent using an exclamation point.  "You won!" she says, using another.


They let you practice beforehand where you will walk and I am good at following simple, straightforward directions.  I proceed to follow directions and discover the podium is approximately where I expected to find it.  I am safe so far ...

Some nice lady hands me the RITA statue.  I will just take a moment aside to say that those puppies are heavy.

The light up there is so bright I couldn't read the note I wrote. 
What is is --  I'd written down my agent and editor names so I wouldn't forget them and stand there mouthing in small frantic gup gup gup like a goldfish.  But I got them right.  Then I said some extemporaneousity that seems to have made sense because no one later asked me why I was babbling idiocy.  Then I got down the exit ramp without tripping.

I thought it all went off rather well.

[ETA]:  The most excellent Jina Bacarr took a video of the speech wherein I seem to speak very slowly.  This is because I think kinda slowly, at the best of times, I'm afraid, and I was trying not to forget my agent's name and editor's name.  The speech is here.  One can see it in Safari and IE, but maybe not in Fireforx.  See also the acceptance speeches of Ann Aguirre here and Tessa Dare here.  [/ETA]

It is a measure of how little I expected to win the RITA that I had not previously at any point given one single tiny passing nuggle of a thought as to how I was going to get a statue home.  In the end, I used the conference bag and made it my carry-on.  The conference bag just precisely held the box they give you to carry the RITA in, which is a delightful innovation on somebody's part.


hawk attrib velosteve acceptance kristenkoster

Hiatus before RWA National Conference

Visiting several folks as I gear up to RWA 2012 National Conference.  Old friends.  Family.  This is just some pics of the garden I've been staying at.
If that sounds like I've been sleeping in the garden ... Not quite.  But I spend a lot of time there.

I have been interacting with many children. 
This is somewhat exhausting.

You may picture me eating cherries and hotdogs at the end of a long day.
 

Huffed and puffed and blew ...

So last night we had a storm.  Everybody seems to have had a storm out here on the East Coast.

Our storm was without rain, did have a side dish of lightning and thunder, but was mostly wind.  Like 60-mile-an-hour wind.

You may picture me looking out the window. "Man, that's a lotta wind."
More wind.  Then,
Crash!!
I go, "What? What?"
So we went out to look.
A tree came down on the roof. Got the back porch. Got the 4-wheeler.
Surprisingly loud noise when it does all that.

Technical Topics - Fight Scene

I was thinking about how we do fight scenes.  I'm kinda writing one.  Though not quite.

It's more an ambush scene.

So, anyhow,  I've gone back to look at a particular fight scene.  This one occurs early in My Lord and Spymaster.  Adrian and Sebastian meet Jess in an alley.  Violence ensues. No surprise.

Now, unlike those guys who write car chases for the movies, I'm not just fitting in 8 minutes of special effects.  I'm trying to tell 'story' with this fight action. Story leads up to the fight, lies inside it, and continues afterwards.
The little scenelet here is not really 'about' the fighting (though fighting might be the whole point in another sort of book.)  My goal, in writing this fight scene, is to show Sebastian's reaction, rather than the details of fight.

Writing fight scenes or furious action scenes of any kind, the technique includes short, easy sentences and lots of Germanic-origin words. Lots of white space. You try not to get bogged down in description. And, of course, the POV character thinks and acts like himself all through the action.  You use all your POV tricks to make this happen.

So let me look at a fight scene.

***

"Behind you! Sebastian!" Adrian's shout.

He saw them then. Silent as beetles, two men scuttled toward him.

More followed, slipping from doorways and corners. Under cover of the rain and fog, the pack had stalked in, unseen, converging from three directions. They were Irish, from the Gaelic they tossed back and forth. They carried knives and clubs and chains. These were vermin from the dockside, deadly and cold as ice.* They'd sent the girl as a honey pot to hold him while the gang closed in. She'd smiled at him while she was planning to watch him die. **

"Run from me." He let her loose. "Run fast."

But she backed away, wide eyed, breathing hard.*** "How? Nobody knows I'm here." That was shock in her voice and fear. She turned in a circle, looking for a hole in the net closing round them. And he knew she was no part of this. No decoy.

"More of them down that way. A baker's dozen." Adrian dropped out of the fog, into his usual place, taking the left. They were two against that many. Long odds.

He picked a target--one in front, where his friends would see him die--and threw.^ The bravo collapsed with a sucking, bubbling neck wound. The familiar stink of death rose in the alley. He pulled his second knife.

The thugs hesitated, sending glances back and forth, fingering blade and cudgel. Attack or retreat. It could go either way.

Then one man broke ranks and lunged for the girl.

She was fast as a little cat. He'd give her that. Cat quick, writhing, she bit the filthy arm that held her and knocked a knife aside and wrenched loose. She skipped back, clutching a long shallow cut on her forearm. "Not hurt. I'm not hurt."

attrib colorblot

No tears, no screams. Pluck to the backbone. She was also damnably in his way. He shoved her behind him, between him and Adrian. Protected as she could be.

If this lasts long, she'll get killed. "Mine on the right." He threw and his blade hit badly and glanced off a collar bone. ^^ One man down. One wounded. That would have been two dead if he'd had the sense to stay sober. "Waste of a knife. Damn."

His last knife was in his boot. Not for throwing. This one was for killing up close.

He forced his mind to the pattern the attackers wove, trying to spot the leader. Kill the leader and the others might scatter. Adrian danced a path through the bullyboys, breaking bones with that lead-weighted cane of his. ^^^

No way to get the woman to safety. She stayed in his shadow, using him as a shield, white-faced. She's been in street fights before.

Then he didn't think about her at all. Chain whistled past. He grabbed it and jerked the man off balance and drove his knife through a gap in the leather waistcoat, up under the breastbone, to the heart.

For an instant he stood locked, face to face, with the man he'd just killed--a thickset red-head with pale skin and vicious, gleeful, mad blue eyes. Outrage and disbelief pulsed out at him . . . and drained away. The eyes went blank.

Then the dead bastard thrashed, rolled with the knife, and took it down with him as he fell.

No time to get it back. A crowbar cracked down on his shoulder with a bright, sour, copper pain. He fell, dodged a boot, and rolled away as Adrian took down his attacker.

The girl screamed.

Up. He had to get up. He was on his feet, shaking his head, trying to see through a black haze. The girl was stretched between two men, being dragged away. He staggered through madness and confusion, fog and pain. Adrian was swearing a blue streak.

Under the chaos, he heard a monstrous racket of wheels on cobblestone. A goods wagon rounded the corner.

The girl tore loose, leaving her cloak behind. She reeled straight into the path of the horses and slipped on wet cobbles. She had a split second to look up and see hooves. Her face was a mask of raw terror.

He launched himself toward her. Too late. He knew he'd be too late.
The driver wrenched on the reins. Horses reared and squealed.

Frantic, she jack-knifed away from the striking hooves. She was so close to scrambling to safety . . .

attrib onceandfuturelaura

She slipped on the rain-slick cobbles. The wagon skidded. Iron rims shrieked on the stone. The wheel hit the side of her head with a soft, horrible thud. She whipped around, and wavered upright for an instant, and slumped to the dirty stones of the street.

Gaelic broke out. Shouts back and forth. Limping, dragging their wounded with them, the gang retreated.

He stepped over a body and ran to the girl.

She lay huddled on her side, as if sleeping, covered with blood and mud, her pretty dress torn halfway off her. Her hand lay upcurled on the cobbles, open to the falling rain.

******

* We've done a description of the alley in the chapter and a half before this so we don't have to describe the setting any.  We do have to sketch of description of the oncoming villains, because they are a new addition.  Having sketched them in right first,  we don't need to talk about the setting or the combatants during the actual fight sequence. This is a Good Thing.

** This fight scene serves several story purposes. One purpose is to show Sebastian that Jess is honest. In the fight scene we travel from Sebsatian suspecting her to Sebastian admiring her.
Because Sebastian changes his mind, the fight scene is also a transformation scene. Important stuff happens that could only happen under this sort of challenge.

attrib filmhirek

*** A fight scene is not just blows and weapons and footwork.  When appropriate, it's facial expression and body reaction.

^ We don't say, 'Sebastian is a skilled fighter'. We show him well-armed.  We show him planning and thinking like a skilled fighter.


^^ Fights are not just about skilled moves, perfectly executed. There's also one klutz screwup after another and good, solid, well-planned actions that don't work.

^^^ My fight scenes are wordy and internalized, rather than fast, brutal and explicit.  That's because I'm writing historical love stories aimed at women.  I figger at least some of them do not want to hear the details of blood and gore.  The '8-minute-car-chase' school of writing may not appeal.

What suits my purposes will not suit everybody.  Learning to write fight scenes involves comparing the flavor and technique of many styles.


Oh.  I said it's good to use all the POV tricks.  Here's the ones included.

-- Internal Monologue: If this lasts long, she'll get killed.

-- Self-directed comments that do not quite become Internal Monologue: No time to get it back; Up. He had to get up; Too late. He knew he'd be too late.

-- Specialized knowledge only the POV character can have: Adrian dropped out of the fog, into his usual place, taking the left.

-- Word choice that sounds like the POV character talking: fast as a little cat; damnably in his way; pluck to the backbone; the dead bastard thrashed.  Sebastian calls Jess, 'The woman' because he doesn't know her name yet.

-- Decision by the POV character, provided without buffer: He picked a target; he threw.

-- Judgement and assessment made by the POV character: That would have been two dead if he'd had the sense to stay sober; Kill the leader and the others might scatter.

-- Sensation is POV-directed and POV-immediate: he stood locked, face to face, with the man; disbelief pulsed out at him; a bright, sour, copper pain.