My Dirty Little Secret

-- Adrienne Miller

I’m fully aware this post might lead to the revocation of my official writer card. I fully expect to wake up tomorrow morning to the sound of the other seven Pens banging on my front door, demanding my resignation. They’ll call me names--charlatan, hack, abomination. Martha will probably be chanting, “Burn the witch.” It’s her way. 

Cause the ugly truth is, I don’t really care about grammar. Ok, maybe that’s not entirely true. I care about grammar when it matters. I care about it the same way I care about stop signs. If there’s a cop there waiting for me, you better believe I’ll be coming to a full and complete stop. I’ll count to three, tip my hat and smile. And if not? Well, anything under five miles per hour counts, right?

One problem is that I’m not naturally good at it. My mind isn’t a carefully ordered office ruled by lists and logic. It’s more like a crowded after-hours club, more interested in the rhythm than the law. The flow of words, the sound of them in my head, that’s what I love. 

Which means sometimes I get it wrong. So I buy books, lots and lots of them, to tell me where to put my subordinate clauses...and, while we’re at it, what in the world a subordinate clause is. I barter with people who know about such things. I’ll wash your car, change your oil, babysit your kids, if you’ll proofread for me. I’m not above begging. 

So there it is, my dirty little secret. Of course, it could be worse. Much, much worse.

Choose another word

I once sent a brief note to my editor in which I used “there” when I meant to write “their”. I was mortified. I mean deep down, stomach clenching, cheeks ablazing, might as well forfeit-your-first-born-child type of mortification.

I felt compelled to send her a follow-up note in which I begged her to believe that not only do I know the difference between There, Their, and They’re, but 'round about the age of five I also mastered Too from Two from To.

Don’t even get me started on the proper use of apostrophes.

My dad used to paraphrase Albert Einstein, saying “anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word clearly lacks imagination.” No surprise: My father and Einstein were both rotten spellers.

Okay, fair enough. There are people who are natural-born spellers, and those who aren’t. But for the love of God, people, use spell check. Or that old-fashioned tome called a dictionary. If all else fails, choose a different word.

For instance, I have gone through much of my life avoiding using the terms “to lay” and “to lie”. Try as I might, I cannot get the rules to stick in my brain. Do you lay on a bed or lie upon it? Yesterday, did you lay or lie or will you be laid (not that way, people! Stay on topic) and did you lay down upon the bed right next to the coverlet that lie upon it first? And can someone lay next to you and lie, and did the pillow lay there also?

(I like to assign at least partial blame to a certain Dylan song from my childhood, Lay, Lady, Lay, which, apparently, got it all wrong. It should have been Lie, Lady, Lie. Eric Clapton jumped on that confusing bandwagon also, with Lay Down Sally, which should have been Lie Down Sally. But I'll refrain from digressing about artistic license...)

So rather than lay or lie anywhere, my characters tend to relax upon chaise lounges, recline upon blankets, or linger in their beds. A newspaper might be found splayed atop a table, sitting upon a bureau, or decorating the counter. I could go on.

The other day I noticed my local grocery store put up a new sign announcing an express lane reserved for customers with 12 Items or Fewer. Color me happy. Fewer. As opposed to the nearly ubiquitous 12 Items or less. I was aglow with the comforting knowledge that there are still a few stubborn asses like me, word nerds who insist upon saying “fewer” rather than “less” when referring to items that can be counted rather than weighed.

I know it’s lame. I know it. But now that I’ve made my grammatical bed I’ll just have to…recline upon it.

Meditative Parts of Speech

I used to diagram sentences for fun. I did it for hours. From the age of ten to thirteen, it was something that pleased my brain in a way that little else ever did. That adolescent time is so awful, so awkward and ungainly, but sentences: they always made sense. Even the longest ones could be stripped down to their most essential parts, identified, categorized, labeled, and pinned like parts of a butterfly.

I filled whole notebooks with diagrammed sentences. While other girls drew horses or scribbled their first names next to various boys' last names, I separated subjects from predicates, adverbs from adjectives, hanging them from precarious-looking lines and rewrote them entirely if I ran out of room on the page.

It made me pretty popular, I can tell you that. Between the knitting, the glasses, the braces, the acne, and the tendency to obsess over parts of speech, I was a preteen CATCH. And now, looking back, I don't think I even possess the skill anymore. I'd have to brush up on the rules before I broke out the old diagramming pen. Much like my mad spirograph skillz, my diagramming abilities are rusty.

But just thinking of those notebooks, filled with words (it didn't matter what kind of words -- I was home schooled during part of those years, and I remember diagramming Latin sentences, too), calms my heart rate. It was a meditation of sorts, and I didn't know it.

I just did it because I loved it.

(Photo source)

Now That's HOT

by Sophie

GRAMMAR


I probably shouldn't admit this but I think tattoos are kind of, a little bit...hot.

But NOT this one:

'Cause you know what's even hotter? Grammatical mastery.

Yeah, give me a guy who can use all the elements of language properly, who can create complex sentences that still parse correctly, who can toss in a ten-dollar word offhandedly, and I'm smitten.

Oh, and you know what's really hot? A guy who knows all the rules...and then breaks them intentionally. Nothing so sweet as a run-on or fragment when it's a straight shot from heart to page...

Maybe tattoo parlors should all be required to have a Strunk'n'White and a dictionary on site...

Pens In Action!

Today Julie, Rachael and Sophie attended a signing sponsored by the Black Diamond RWA in Brentwood, CA. We met some really fun and funny readers, we mostly behaved, we sold all our books, and we want to thank our host, author Virna DePaul!

Pens Celebrating the Release of How To Knit A Love Song!

As promised, here are more pics of our celebration/book hunt. :) Sadly, Sophie, Martha and Adrienne couldn't make it....






Cheers









Rachael's first sighting of her book in a bookstore (Books, Inc)!!













On to the next store! At Borders our party almost cleaned out the store and Rachael ran into a blog fan snapping up a copy!






Ending the night at the Lucky 13 for a post-bookhunt celebration!

Best Served In Fiction

Today our guest is Dan Krokos, and we couldn't be more pleased. With characteristic modesty, Dan describes himself thus: "I’m a twenty-three-year-old gas station attendant/student who writes crime fiction. I can usually be found leaning against poles with various satellite equipment lingering in the background."

We met Dan at Bouchercon and can report with confidence that he is one of the good guys - friendly, charming, interested in everyone around him, and enthusiastic about the genre. Oh, and the guy is a damn good writer. We foresee an incredible publishing future for Dan, who already has one of our very favorite agents on his team.

I went to a bar one time. Had a fruity beer with my fruity friend. The drive was long, and I had work the next morning, so I cut out early. Thirty minutes, tops. Walked to the parking lot and saw my car was gone.

My car was gone.

I checked off a few possibilities: wrong parking lot, wrong space, I am dreaming, someone stole it. Then I saw the sign twenty feet down, tangled in a miniature forest of bushes. Private parking for a dentist. First I screamed at the building (I wasn’t drunk, I normally scream at inanimate objects), then I open-hand slapped the sign. Someone reported gunshots, but that’s a story for another time.

My story is this: I felt cheated. I felt scammed. I experienced rage.
I didn’t know it was a tow away zone, and now I had to pay out one hundred and fourteen dollars to some smelly tow truck drivers who prowl the streets for lots they have contracts with. I wanted to kill them. I wanted to go Travis Chase on their asses and roll a car through the storefront, then walk through the shattered mess with a gun in each hand. Maybe say something like: “I’m going to tow away your life.”

I didn’t do any of that. I paid my fine and moved on.

Revenge in fiction is not revenge in real life. My book features a pile of vengeance. My character is wronged and he does something about it, consequences be damned. It feels good. It feels brutal, too. It feels wrong at the same time.
Because aren’t we supposed to forgive? Has vengeance ever made anyone feel better? While writing my book, I constantly wanted to pull my character back. I wanted to tell him his actions weren’t going to lead to a rebalancing of the universe.

Morality aside, the logistics of vengeance seem impossible in most cases. Say tomorrow you come home and a loved one has been murdered in the kitchen. Maybe they were in the middle of making your birthday cake, and flour is mixed in with the blood. How dramatic. The police have no leads, no witnesses. You want justice, you want revenge. How would you go about it? In a book, you call up the guy who knows things and maybe he heard something and maybe you check it out and find out something else and soon you’re on the trail of the killer and you suddenly know how to fight with a pipe and ride a motorcycle.

You don’t do any of that, because you’re not Slevin Kelevra. Or the Punisher. Or Kevin Bacon in that one movie.

You sit at home and wallow and eventually heal. You do like Sophie and send red-hot mental poxes. You pay your fine and shake your fist at the tow truck driver when he’s not looking.
You read a story and revel in a character’s emotions as he or she does the things you cannot.

That’s why we read books.

"Om" Part Two

I got nothin'.

I tried to think. Revenge is an interesting topic, so surely I could come up with something to say about it. Turns out, not so much.

I've never had the desire for revenge. The most I've ever thought about it is to think that if someone has done wrong, their Karma will catch up with them.

Now, I realize this is a strange stance for someone who writes mystery fiction, where characters must routinely kill each other.

It dawned on me: To date, I've never used revenge as a motive in something I've written. (Um, once one of my books comes out, you should probably forget you read that. Just to keep you guessing a little more.)

So, instead of making up some nonsense about revenge that I know nothing about (being too calm for my own good and all that), I'm going to share my exciting news of the week:

I finished a draft of my first young adult mystery!

What's it about?

A family curse. A town built on a damnable act of greed. And an evil legacy that continues deep in the heart of California Gold Rush country.

See, I've got greed and desperation in there, but no revenge.

--Gigi

Martha's Revenge Standards

I don't have a lot of personal experience with revenge, but I think I'd be awesome at it.

I'm selfish, quick to violence and ruthlessly efficient. In addition to making me a shoo-in to survive the impending zombie apocalypse, those traits would make me some kind of revenge master.

I think when you're naturally talented at something, you should help others exceed. Just call me your personal revenge sensei.

1. Revenge is a solo act. Ocean's 13 was a fun watch, but how are you supposed to hang onto seething self-righteous anger while syncing your Blackberry schedules?

2. Revenge gets served within 24 hours. Revenge is only a dish best served cold for losers who can't get their shit together sooner. Any decent revenge seeker should have the motivation and anger to envision, implement and execute revenge in less than day. Any less than that, and you're just screwing around.

3. Revenge is not proportional. No Hammurabic "eye for an eye" code here. If someone takes your eye, you take their face. Got it?



4. Revenge is permanent. Anything less is a frat-boy prank. Replacing water with pee/switching shampoo with Nair/spitting on a burger = prank. Burning down a house = a prank - people are insured these days. Infecting someone with a raging drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea? That's better. Infecting them via their spouse? Now you're talking.


5. Revenge should not affect the person dishing it out. Give yourself a week post-revenge to revel in the act. Then forget about it. If it bothers you, if you can even be bothered to remember it, it's not revenge.

I really hope this weeds out any pansy revenge seekers and encourages the rest of you to take your revenge seeking to a whole 'nother level. Excellence in everything, my friends!

How To Knit A Love Song Release Day!!!!

More pics on the weekend but right now a quick shout out "CONGRATULATIONS!" to Rachael for the release of How To Knit a Love Song.




Lynn, Juliet, Lisa, Rachael, Gigi and the BOOK! :)