The Art of Sex - Part II

WRITING ABOUT SEX WITHOUT BLUSHING

Copyright 2008 Diana Gabaldon

These are actually the notes I used last time I taught a workshop at a writers conference on how to write about sex. Now, bear in mind that I normally use something like a stream of consciousness when I do workshops. [g] Since I'd never taught this one before, though, and it was my first attempt at consciously verbalizing what I know about the subject, I did make a sort of hasty outline, which I present as follows, accompanied by a rough paraphrase of the kind of thing I said.

[ahem]

Let me preface things here by observing that human beings are hardwired to be interested in sex. This fact is not lost on advertisers, which is why you have skimpily-clad young women straddling motorcyles and the like.

This being so, you have a valuable tool (but one to be used with discretion) as a writer; if you write about sex, the majority of readers will pay attention. (Some will avoid scenes involving sex altogether, of course, out of personal feelings. If you're writing for such an audience, you probably aren't including a lot of sex.)

1. CHARACTER - THE KEY TO GOOD SEX

The point here is that you need to know who your characters are, and how they may (or may not) respond to the situation in which they find themselves. I _have_ met writers who feel an obligation (and a heavy one they find it) to insert sex scenes here and there, in order to satisfy what they see as the demands of genre or editor.

I have one friend who wrote historical romances for years, without actually liking the genre very much. She said the historical research made it bearable to write the stories, but she simply couldn't force herself to write (what she referred to as) "fnck scenes" after a few books. She'd put off the dire necessity as long as possible, procrastinating and moaning to her next-door neighbor (who _did_ like historical romances) about how horrible this was. Finally the neighbor offered to write the "f-scenes" _for_ her, an offer she hesitantly accepted, figuring it was the only way she was going to be able to finish the book.

In this situation, everything worked out happily; the neighbor (who was also a writer, though unpublished) had fun writing the sexual encounters, my friend then smoothed the style so that the inserted scenes fit with the rest of the book, and a good time was had by all--including, we trust, the eventual readers.

But the point here is only _you_ can prevent forest--no, wait. Only you can decide--on behalf of the characters--whether they really want to have sex here or not. They may _not_. And if not, you're going to have a terrible time trying to force them to do it. Personally, I advise against it. Just listen to them; they'll tell you whether they want to, don't want to, think they want to, but would like to just make out for a little first...

Beyond deciding _whether_, the characters also decide _how_. Or they should. Sexual encounters _can_ be impersonal, but unless that's the deliberate effect you're striving for (and you might be, under some circumstances), you should treat a sexual encounter between your characters as an emotional transaction.

This doesn't necessarily mean pages and pages describing the characters' feelings. Bear in mind that dialogue is the single best and most economical tool you have in hand for describing character; it's also one of the best means of describing the emotional transaction taking place between them in a sexual context. Good characters talk in bed. [g]

2. THE LANGUAGE OF SEX IS EMOTION -

Ergo, in a good sex scene, you're dealing with the emotions of the characters, and not so much with the mechanics of what they're doing.

Note, also, that _because_ people are naturally interested in sex, any emotional transaction that takes place in a sexual atmosphere will have a heightened impact. NB: All sex scenes are not necessarily of the "I want him/her--let's do it" variety. They don't _have_ to involve mutual affection--or even physical attraction (though that's often there, even if not expressed). Anger, hate, and coldness can be expressed in the context of sex, just as well as the more positive emotions--and the sexual context will heighten these, as well.

(Note that a sex scene can be used for any of the usual purposes as a regular scene--exposition of plot, development of character, etc.)

Returning to the notion that we're dealing principally with emotion, rather than mechanics. This means you don't need to spend pages and pages following the blazing trail of sensation as his fingertips gently explore the slopes of....well, I mean, you don't. But neither does this mean that you don't need to say _anything_ about what's happening physically.

By and large, you can "anchor" a sex scene for the reader by providing small cues regarding the physical action, and allowing the reader's imagination to fill in the rest for themselves.

EXAMPLE 1: Sexex1

Note in this example, a) how we shift the atmosphere to a tone of sexual suggestion via the cat, b) how character is revealed through dialogue, and c) how the scene deals with the physical details of the encounter.

3. CHANGE OF FOCUS

I have two bamboo hangings on the wall behind my desk: one from Japan, one from China. The Japanese one is a view of Mount Fuji, with a wooded shore in the foreground, a pagoda peeking out of the trees, small, white-sailed ships scudding across the water. Everything is soft, impressionistic, rendered in broad strokes.

The Chinese one is a close-up of a flowering branch with birds. It's done in exquisite detail; you can see the shading of individual petals, the iridescent feathers on the birds' necks. Hundreds of tiny, precise brushstrokes.

They're both good pictures, and both with a strong Oriental influence (naturally). The major difference is the _focus_ of each picture--long-shot vs. close-up.

Effective fiction (by and large) _varies the focus_. You don't want to tell a whole story from an emotional distance; likewise, showing things in close-up becomes claustrophobic fast. Ergo--and this goes for _any_ kind of scene, not just sex scenes--you want to vary the focus. If you start out in close-up--with a woman feeling her lover's breath on her earlobes, say--you may then want to take a step back, and she hears the chime of church bells in the distance, reminding her that she's committing a fearful sin--but then his mouth moves lower...and we're back in close-up.

When you're writing about sex, you're exploring the geography of intimacy, and you do this using the same techniques you use to maintain pacing and interest in any other narrative.

(See later, distillation/metaphor vs. literalism/detail - both valid, but different impact. Actually, I never did get around to talking about this, but this is where it is in the notes. [g])

EXAMPLE 2: I can't attach this, for copyright reasons, but it was pages 286-292 in INCUBUS DREAMS, by Laurell K. Hamilton. What you should be noting here is a) the use of brief bits of dialogue to define character, b) the change in focus, between the (very explicit) descriptions of touching/action and the protagonist's thoughts (including, even, a small chunk of backstory about one vampire's eyes), and c) that while this is a sex scene between what are essentially strangers, and strangers who have _no_ emotional involvement with each other, it's by no means impersonal.

4. NON-SEX SEX SCENES

Again, a sex scene is not just the traditional four legs in a bed. It's possible to have an entire narrative suffused with sexual feeling (example: THE SHADOW OF THE WIND), but which has relatively little in the way of direct sexual contact (that book has precisely two scenes involving actual sex, each one about two paragraphs long).

It's also possible to write a scene that deals explicitly with sex--and infuses the text with sexual feeling--but that isn't a traditional sex scene at all.

EXAMPLE 3: (this is a short one, so I'll just include the text, rather than doing an attachment)

From RED ANT'S HEAD

Copyright 2008 Diana GAbaldon

[Here we have a man sitting in a meeting, watching the female police officer who's conducting the briefing.]

I like jewelry on women.

People figure that historically men gave jewelry to women because a) they could afford it, so everybody would know how rich they were, and b) it made the women happy, so the men got sex, and that made them happy. I'm not saying this isn't true, but the fact is that jewelry on a woman is a real turn-on, no matter how the lady feels about it personally.

It's about ownership, is what it is. It's captivity. Put a chain around a woman's neck, put rings on her fingers, and she's yours.

She wears it on her bare skin, where everyone can see. On places you'd kiss, like the hollow of her throat, the lobes of her ears, the insides of her wrists. Where her pulse beats. It's metal and gems, a hard wet gleam where she's soft and tender. You're hard and she's soft, oh yeah.

Delicate chains and heavy links. Both good. Those tiny gold and silver chains, like spiderwebs against the skin; they could be broken with a touch, but they're worn willingly. Heavy links and bands of gold play up the fragile bones and slender throats--you can imagine them helpless, chained to the wall...or to a bed.

Spiderwebs and slave collars. Power and possession.

When you decorate a woman with jewelry you aren't just showing off, you're staking a claim. Throwing a net of gold and silver over her. You touch her skin when you put it on her, close the catch of a necklace on the back of her neck, on the soft bare skin under her hair, where you might bite her...later.

Older women know this. And that's why young women are always told not to accept jewelry from a guy unless they're serious about him; because a guy who wants to put chains on a lady is for sure serious, at least about what he wants to do with her.

She wore a wedding ring and gold-and-onyx studs in her ears. A tiny gold cross on a spiderweb chain at her throat. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

**********************

OK, see how that works? There's no interaction at all in this scene; the characters aren't touching, talking--or even, directly, aware of each other. It's not a "sex scene" in the classic sense of the word at all--and yet it certainly a) gives the reader a sexual feeling, and b) tells you quite a bit about the way this particular character feels for the woman he's looking at, as well as c) something about his overall attitudes.

5. ATMOSPHERE - evocation, sensuality

Without being explicit at all, it's possible to give a story a _feeling_ of sensuality. This is done principally--and paradoxically--by practicing restraint.

You don't lard on adjectives, or even verbs. You pick precise details and use beautiful imagery--which is a lot of work, but worth it.

I didn't actually talk about _this_, either, because it's a whole subject unto itself (and I did cover this in a seminar on Sensual (as opposed to sexual) writing. I'll put that one up later).

Examples: Anything by D.H. Lawrence, THE SHADOW OF THE WIND (Carlos Ruiz Zafon), Anais Nin, THE WIDE SARGASSO SEA (Jean Rhys), JITTERBUG PERFUME (Tom Robbins).

6. THE INVISIBLE SEX SCENE - When, Why, and How to Shut the Door

Genre or market constraints

Personal comfort level

Variety

Build-up/tension/anticipation - can come not only from refraining from complete sex onscreen.

Change the dynamic between two people, but without the explicitness of an intervening sex scene; this is where what' important to the story (or to you as the author) is not that the characters had sex--but what their relationship is now like as a result.

Consider whether you want to use sex in your story, and how important it may be. If you're dealing with characters who have an ongoing relationship that inovlves sex--whether consummated or not--that feeling will probably suffuse their story, even if you have no direct "sex scenes" as such.

7. THE PARADOX OF CLEAN SMUT VS. NOVELISTIC LICENSE

We must make a distinction between erotica and sex in the service of a larger story. One such--really paradoxical--distinction is that in today's market, publishers of so-called erotica tend to be very (you should pardon the expression) "firm" about the kinds of situations you can and can't use. I.e., all sexual encounters must be clearly consensual, including those that involve bondage or violence. You can do anything in "straight" fiction.

On the whole, erotica has less _context_ than fiction does. Sex scenes in fiction don't take place in a vacuum, whereas erotica often does.

EXAMPLE 4: Sexex2. This doesn't necessarily belong here, but I can't recall where I _did_ read it, so this will do. [I'll post the actual example later; it's 5 AM, and I have to go to bed.]

The thing to note about this excerpt is that it's definitely not a sex scene involving positive emotion or mutual attraction. The point of this scene is a) the advancement of plot, and b) further revelation of character. Also note the physical details, which are brief, but..er..evocative.

8. MIND GAMES, or WHAT WOULD YOUR MOTHER SAY?

It's very daunting to consider writing about sex with the shades of people you know looking over your shoulder. So tell yourself--and mean it--that no one is going to see it. Nobody _needs_ to see it.

It's just you and the paper. Remind yourself that nobody _can_ see it but you. You can write anything you please, and throw it away, or hide it in a drawer.

Once you _have_ written it, it becomes easier to perceive it as something separate from yourself. But you do need to let any piece of writing separate, before you're truly capable of judging its merit. With this in mind, you figure nobody's going to see this scene you're writing--unless it turns out to be Really Good. And you don't need to decide _that_ until later.

Then go thoroughly into the point of view of one character; see what they see, feel what they feel, and write down such details as make an impression. (NB: I _have_ seen sex scenes written effectively using the POV's of both characters, with emotions and thoughts floating back and forth. I don't do it myself, but only because it doesn't feel natural to me. It needs to feel very smooth and undistracting, if it's going to work.)

And remember--this is an art, not a science. There are techniques and patterns, but any sex scene--just like any real-life encounter--is going to be unique.

9. VOCABULARY

How your characters talk about what they're doing is going to be specific to them, and to the situation. Fairly blunt language can be effective on occasion--but depending on the time, place, etc., you may choose more lyrical or euphemistic language. [I actually ended the worksho p by declaiming "Ode to a Penis," a comic poem written by a friend of mine. That's her copyrighted material, though, so I can't print it here.]

Quick Digression on Publishing Nonfiction

This is really for tudor rose, who is/was in academia, polishing her MA thesis, and wondering how I went about getting published and what she might do—but since a) I know this is kind of a popular question [g], and b) the answer I started to leave started to get rather long—I figured I'd put it in as a separate post.

Anyway, the answer is (as always) that it kind of depends. I did a _lot_ of freelance nonfiction stuff, back when I was a scientist--but I rather fortunately had an expertise in scientific computation, at a time when that was a) rather rare, and b) highly in demand, because of the huge new popularity of personal computers.

What I did to break into that market (not that this is _why_ I did it) was to a) start my own scholarly journal, called SCIENCE SOFTWARE QUARTERLY, b) write a comic book for Walt Disney's Educational Media Department, titled NUTRITION ADVENTURES WITH ORANGE BIRD (I got that job because I was already writing comic book scripts for Disney, and when the Educational Media person called the comics editor looking for a writer, he kindly gave her my name. Tip #1: the more people who know you and what you do, the easier it is to get jobs), and c) wrote a brief note to the editor of BYTE magazine, enclosing a copy of "Orange Bird" and a copy of SSQ (with my name as founder and editor-in-chief circled on the masthead, and checkmarks next to the articles I'd written in the Table of Contents)

The note just said, "Dear Sir—as you can see from the enclosed, you won't find anyone who knows more about scientific and technical software than I do, and at the same time, can write to appeal to a broad popular audience. Yours truly…. P.S. I've never missed a deadline in my life."

OK, this worked. [g] I got an immediate assignment from BYTE, then used the clip of that article to get assignments from InfoWorld and PC Magazine—and with published clips from the Big Three (as they were then), I could pretty much write for anybody in the field of personal computing—and did, for several years. Within a year or so of beginning my freelance career (mind, I still had a full-time job as a university professor), I was making just about as much from writing as I did at the university (which is mostly an indictment of how badly universities pay their assistant professors).

Now, I really don't know whether tudor rose's thesis is in an area where there's a lot of publishing interest, or extant periodicals. If not…then your best bet (if that's the material you want to publish) is probably to try to produce a book-length manuscript, oriented to the popular market if you can (much better sales potential), but otherwise as a scholarly book—which is not likely to make you much money, but will establish your credentials, ala my SSQ/Orange Bird strategy. [g]

If there are periodical markets for your material, though—perhaps you could write articles based on your research for magazines like Archaeology, or The Smithsonian. Essentially, what you want to do in the beginning is to get into print. Nothing makes an editor want you, like proof that some other editor has already wanted you. And short articles like that could form a useful credential to accompany a book proposal.

One of the nice things about nonfiction is that it's possible to sell a book without actually writing it. You can put together a proposal for the book, indicating what material it would cover, who the potential audience would be, how long it might be, and an idea of how it might be structured—accompanied by things like your cv (if that's relevant), or any published material you might have (which indicates a) that you can write, and b) that there is some interest in your topic).

You can't, btw, sell fiction this way, unless you're already a well-established author. That's because no one can tell, from a proposal, whether you can really tell an engaging story or whether you know what a good novelistic structure is, or whether you have good characters. So you do (with very rare exceptions) need to have a finished manuscript (and I do mean finished, not, "Oh, surely the editor (who buys this for a million dollars) can tidy up all those pesky little grammar things, and I never paid enough attention in school to know what they're even called, hahahaha…" Stay tuned, btw, for an upcoming rant regarding homonyms and prevailing ignorance thereof. As a corollary to which, if you'll pardon my mentioning it, the male protagonist of my books is J-A-M-I-E. Not "Jaime". But I digress…) in order to sell a novel.

Anyway, tudor rose—the first step would be to look for markets that publish the material you're interested in publishing. Do you have a subject that can be adapted to magazine articles or other popular forms? (I'm not addressing online means of publication here, just because I've never done that, and it would take awhile to poke around and consider things. Also, I've never met anyone who's actually made money by publishing things online, and I think that's probably one of your eventual goals. [g]) Is it a subject that has no particular popular aspects, but is hot academically? There are lots of university presses and academic book publishers.

The most important thing—as always, in anything to do with writing (well, anything else, for that matter)—is persistence. Start looking around, and keep working.

Oh—and good luck!

SILKY, curly hair

Like this (only light brown, and shoulder-length):

http://www.geocities.com/madeleinestowe2/pictures.html

http://www.geocities.com/madeleinestowe2/pictures.html

http://www.geocities.com/madeleinestowe2/pictures.html

The Art of Sex (writing about it, that is) - Part I

OK, this could take awhile. But for starters....

One of the first major reviews I saw for my first novel (OUTLANDER) was published by the _San Francisco Chronicle_. "Well, it's not Art," began the review, "and it's not Literature, but..." followed by several inches of raves (which came in handy for inside cover quotes for the paperback).

While I appreciated the favorable attention, I was mildly bemused by that opening. And exactly why _isn't_ it either Art or Literature? I wondered. The reviewer didn't trouble explaining, evidently feeling that her apparent enjoyment of the book made that plain (everyone knows you _appreciate_ Art, you don't _enjoy_ it, for gosh-sakes! I mentioned this particular review to someone at my publishing house--whose pragmatic response was, "Thank God they didn't call it Art or Literature; we'd have been lucky to sell 5,000.").

Now and again, I get further reviews that make it clear that what I'm writing can't possibly be either Art or Literature, because it is "genre fiction,"--this, contrasted with the occasional oddball critic who insists that the books _are_ Literature (nobody seems willing to go out on a limb and call them Art yet; just as well; I have kids to put through college), because I have managed to squeeze every possible known genre (except Westerns (give me time)) into one book--therefore it can't be genre fiction anymore. (Well, critics have to make a living too.)

Interestingly enough, most of the reviews and public comments that make an issue of whether these books (or any others) are Literature or Genre Fiction (an artificial distinction, if I ever heard one) base the distinction largely on grounds of sex.

If I read my NYT Review of Books aright, you cannot have sex in Literature unless it's violent, abusive, obsessive or warped (if such a word is possible in conjunction with such a…er...'plastic' activity). If you have anything approaching a depiction of pleasurable or entertaining sex, or a relationship in which the characters appear to be having a good time or otherwise benfiting themselves, then obviously you have descended to "genre fiction." (Actually "genre fiction" essentially just means you have a recognizable plot, coupled with a theme of universal appeal. Sex, of course, is pretty universally appealing.).

Now, I get mail. I get _lots_ of mail (and not infrequently, I think I should have had my head examined before I put my email address in my latest book).

Not a few of the letters and messages I get deal with the sexual relationships described in my books. A few correspondents (four, by the latest count) feel that I should not depict the details of sexual encounter, because (and I quote) "Great works of Literature don't have graphic sex." Their (otherwise quite gratifying opinion) is that my books otherwise have merits which would qualify them as Great Literature, were it not that I had lowered the tone of the proceedings by observing that people have genitalia (in vain do I protest that it's difficult to get a Ph.D. in biology without noticing this. They think I should in all decency have kept it to myself).

Of course, we must balance this with the (roughly) 3,000 correspondents who wrote to request _more_ sex in subsequent books, but most of them weren't concerned with my literary reputation.

Frankly, neither am I. We'll just wait a hundred years and _see_ if it's Literature, won't we?

Still, whether you want to put this "Real Lit does not have Real Sex" notion down to lingering puritanism, high-school brainwashing (MOBY DICK does not have explicit sex; ergo Real Literature does not include prurient passages. Obviously, these people were not paying attention when Melville explained why sperm whales are called that), or the ignorant conviction (born of inexperience) that all printed depictions of sexuality must be pornography, the notion does exist.

You know FANNY HILL, I expect? Subtitled "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," it's one of the most enduring bits of Western European "literary" pornography, having been published in 1747. What's literary pornography? Well, interestingly enough, while the difference between most present-day "Literature" and the less-esteemed "genre fiction" is that the latter has a recognizable plot and universal themes, the difference between literary pornography and its less-esteemed relation, "porn," is that the _former_ has a decent plot and universal themes.

FANNY HILL caused a certain amount of comment following its publication--evidently times change, but literary critics don't. Among these, however, was a mention in a London magazine called THE MONTHLY REVIEW, which reads as follows:

"Yet it does not appear to us that this book has anything in it more offensive to decency or delicacy of sentiment and expression, than our novels and books of entertainment in general have. For in truth they are most of them (especially our comedies, and not a few of our tragedies) but too faulty in this respect."

These remarks were published in 1750. FANNY HILL is still in print, having survived the entire Victorian Age and the neo-puritanism of the mid-20th century, as well. This doesn't suggest to me that the inclusion of sex _per se_ negatively affects either the enduring popularity or the literary quality of any book.

Next time...Why People Have Sex, and How to Make That Clear when you Write about It.

31 Happy Years!

Sorry to disappear on y'all—it's been One Busy Week, what with one thing and another. Among other things, today (Feb. 12) was 1) Lincoln's birthday, 2) Darwin's birthday, and 3) our wedding anniversary: 31 Happy Years!, as my husband is given to saying.

Said husband gave me a MacBook Pro for said anniversary (I gave him a great black-and-white photo by Bob Gomel, of Malcolm X and Cassius Clay at a lunch counter, in the early days of the civil-rights movement. Here's a link to the image of it: http://www.monroegallery.com/detail.cfm?id=356 ), which I've been messing with in the interstices of the day.

Younger daughter's washing machine committed suicide, so she came by this morning to do her laundry, pausing to fill me in on the horrifying (but deeply entertaining) details of her friends' messy lives, including the Full Story of what happened on her best friend's 21^st birthday—this involving a hotel room, two young men going shot for shot, and one of them passing out stark naked on the toilet ("What did he think he was? Elvis?" my daughter demanded rhetorically). He wasn't naked for any apparent reason, btw; everybody else was out celebrating the birthday girl's "power hour" (this evidently being the hour between midnight and 1 AM on the person's birthday, during which they go to a bar with their friends and order alcohol for the first time ever (or so we assume ), and returned to find the young gentleman in the aforementioned condition, whereupon they dragged him out and put him to bed on the pullout sofa, only to have him suffer various ghastly aftereffects of alcohol poisoning (you don't want to know, believe me, but it was pretty entertaining to hear about), and keep them up all night, alternately moaning incoherently and shrieking, "I'm gonna die!" Fortunately (or not), said young man was the manager of the hotel, which must have led to a lot of interesting conversations among the staff next day, but at least saved the party people from all being arrested or flung out into the street in the middle of the night.

At the other end of the entertainment scale, I had to read fourteen essays on the subject of "The Limits of Scientific Knowledge," which, while Most Interesting, sort of weren't as riveting as the picture of the young hotel manager, wrapped in a sheet stained with various terrible substances, moaning, with his panicked friends piling pillows on his head so the Room Service waiter wouldn't perceive that the corpse in the bed was in fact The Boss. These (the essays) are part of the entries for this year's Agassiz Prize for science writing, which I and a few other people sponsor at Northern Arizona University. The entries are on a different topic (set by the prize committee) each year, and range from rivetingly articulate to dismayingly incoherent (the point of this prize is to encourage clarity and insight in scientific writing), but require considerable attention, in either case.

And I'm theoretically writing a short story (yeah, that'll be the day. Last time I wrote a short story, my agents informed me that this was the size normal books are (that was LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER)) for an anthology titled PHOENIX NOIR, which needs to be done by the first of March.

And Hoang, the excellent artist who's doing the artwork for the (so far untitled) graphic novel, sent me the next batch of layout pages, which are great. (Layout pages are his preliminary quick pencil sketches of each script page—no particular attention to character beyond a rough suggestion of features, but showing the composition of each panel, so I can say whether he's caught the elements and mood I intended with my description.) These are always fascinating, and I have the editor's permission to post one of them on my website so you can see what it looks like—I'll send it to Rosana tomorrow, so it should be up within the next few days.

Meanwhile, the phone lines in the neighborhood are completely wack (as Younger Daughter eloquently puts it); we haven't had any phone service since last Friday, though we had a visitation from a young service technician who—between talking diesel engines with my husband and describing the four train horns he has on his truck ("A hundred and thirty-seven decibels each!")—cheerfully diagnosed the problem as "a wet splice," which doesn't sound like anything one wants to have. This is evidently a Bad Thing, but it's on the phone company's side of the property line, so we possess our souls in patience and keep our cell phones handy while they mull the problem (mulling seems to involve a number of phone company trucks driving slowly through the neighborhood with young men—I don't know why young women don't seem to want to do this; maybe it's a Y-chromosome thing having to do with the desire to honk train horns at unsuspecting people)—at the wheel, all talking animatedly on their cell phones, while gesturing excitedly out of the window (I saw three of them, while out for my daily brisk walk around the neighborhood today).

And I'm reading—in hasty pieces—Dana Stabenow's new thriller, PREPARED FOR RAGE, so I can interview her about it at The Poisoned Pen this Friday night (7 PM, for those of you living in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area. We'll both be signing books).

And I have macerated my right arm while pruning the pomegranate tree (this being the most prolific thing in the garden. I foisted at least eight dozen pomegranates on unsuspecting friends and made two bottles of pomegranate liqueur, and still raked up roughly two hundred of the things this afternoon). No doubt inspired by this spectacle of fecundity, a bottle-gourd vine went mad and produced 51 bottle gourds. Which, I am told, make excellent bird-houses. I'm sure we have at least 51 pairs of birds in the hedge, because I can hear them every morning—them and the Very Aggressive woodpecker who keeps pecking holes in the oranges and tangerines (which is OK; there are a lot of them) and trying to drill a nesting hold in our big saguaro (which is Not OK), but whether I have the time to clean, drill and paint 51 bird-houses is somewhat problematical. I did clean one, just to see how much work it might be to make a drinking gourd/canteen—pretty easy, in fact.

And of course, the Hunt for Jamie's Butt continues. I was putting together a pile of photocopies (not all of buttocks, I hasten to add; castles, clothing, and other assorted bits of reference) for Hoang, when my husband spotted one of the Butt Candidates on top of the pile. Beyond being scandalized ("You shouldn't be able to get bottoms on the Internet!"), he was also rather critical ("I sure hope Jamie is more muscular than this poor little boy"), which led me to a fresh search. Luckily I thought of Robert Mapplethorpe.

http://www.offoffoff.com/art/2005/robertmapplethorpe.php

Now I think perhaps we are getting somewhere.

Anyway, the day concluded with a delightful dinner (and bottle of wine) at our favorite restaurant, and while the wine was very good (a nice Rombauer chardonnay), we managed to conclude the evening's festivities without either one of us passing out in flagrante.

But it was kind of busy. With luck, I may be able to post something more coherent tomorrow. What was it I was going to talk about? Sex? Well, I think sex is generally a Good Thing. Details to follow.

Romance, ChickLit and Women's Fiction

Somebody down in the "Cross-Genre" thread asked me what I thought the difference was between romance novels, ChickLit and Women's Fiction—was the designation "ChickLit" just trying to be "more literary" than the usual image of romances? Well…

Frankly, I'd be surprised as heck if anybody regarded ChickLit as "more literary" than anything. Mind, I've read a couple of terrific novelists whose books fall into (or at least are sold as) "ChickLit"--Marion Keyes, in particular; I'd recommend her books to anyone, but they're certainly packaged as CL. Too bad if that kept anyone from reading them; they're beautifully written, with wonderful characters—great humor, but great sensitivity to underlying tragedy as well, and an understanding of what's necessary for redemption.

ChickLit does usually have a strong central romance. I think the major differences (aside from marketing--sometimes that's the _only_ difference) between ChickLit and straight romance are:

1) time period. If your romantic story is historical, it can't be chicklit. Ergo, it's either historical romance (no demand for accuracy—which is not to say that some authors are not scrupulously accurate; they are (Jo Beverly and Mary Balogh come to mind), but readers don't demand it—and a fair amount of explicit sex) or historical fiction (considerable accuracy, relatively little sex, or sex done by reference rather than exposition. (Cf. Margaret George) and a lot of the story not having to do with the central relationship).

2) ChickLit is _ipso facto_ contemporary because of the other big difference: morality. In a standard romance, the heroine doesn't have a sexual relationship (other than rape) with anybody but the hero. In ChickLit, she sluts around pretty freely, with no evidence of reservation or conscience, until Mr. Right makes himself known. (I recall seeing a re-run of "Sex and the City" recently, in which Carrie Bradshaw is typing and musing about the discovery that she and all of her friends have slept with more than 30 men--or have lost count. "Does this mean we are sexually empowered," she types, "or are we just sluts?"

At which point I replied aloud, "You mean you have DOUBTS?" [but I digress])

And

3) In a standard romance novel, the central relationship between hero and heroine (frankly, I find that terminology vaguely distasteful—it seems to imply that these characters are so stereotypical that they could easily be interchanged between books. Let's say, "main protagonists," shall we? Besides, that includes gay romances, and we are all for being inclusive, now, aren't we?) occupies 85-90% of the text, with all other plotlines being subordinated to the evolution of the relationship.

In ChickLit, the evolution of the romance is only 30-40% of the text, the rest being divided between the vicissitudes of the central character's work-life, and her sense of discovery of herself as a human being.

That said, both standard romance and ChickLit novels are courtship stories. They end (happily, always) when the central couple become mated—whether this indicates actual marriage, or merely the realization that we're going to be sexually monogamous for the next little while. And they never have sequels, because the story's over once mating is accomplished.

Now, "Women's Fiction"...this is usually code for "story about strong female relationships/quest for empowerment/mother-daughter issues/men would not be interested," and doesn't necessarily have a strong romantic plotline at all (in the most 'literary' kinds of Women's Fiction, men are generally viewed as alien creatures (at the very least), if not complete beasts. They're often rapists, abusers, manipulators, and generally a threat to whatever the central character is trying to achieve--and they _never_ understand the Sacred Bond of Sisterhood).

Mind, this is just my Very Humble Opinion [cough]—but you did ask. And it _is_ just an opinion, because I don't write in any of these genres myself. Though I guess I could be considered to be historical fiction, if it weren't for the time-travel, even though I do write about sex very well [she says modestly].

AUDIOBOOKS and ALEX KINGSTON

I get quite a bit of mail asking about the permutations of the audiobook versions of the OUTLANDER and Lord John novels, so thought maybe I'd clarify—as much as is possible.

Hokay. Back in the day….around 1994, this would be…audiobooks were a new and Highly Suspect (in the minds of publishers, who tend to be a wary breed) development. Publishers didn't want to risk money on producing an audio version of a book that they didn't think would sell well, so they seldom did audio versions of anything that wasn't already a bestseller—and costs being what they were, they were even warier of recording an extravagantly long book.

Well, in 1994, VOYAGER (my third book) was published, and hit the New York Times list, thus becoming an official Bestseller (as my beloved first editor also used to say, becoming a bestseller is really the only good solution to the "where do we shelve this?" conundrum—because a book that's a bestseller automatically gets display space at the front of the store, no matter where else it may be shelved. Seemed like a good strategy to me, so I've pursued it ever since. [g]

So. This meant that the publisher's audiobooks department was now cautiously interested in my books. They looked at said books, uttered loud screams of consternation at the length (this being the universal reaction of all publishers, anywhere), and then offered my agent a small amount of money for total world rights, abridged and unabridged, forever.

As I had a very good agent (I still have a very good agent, but not the same one; my first agent, Perry Knowlton, retired, and then died, alas), he said nothing doing, and proceeded to negotiate them into a somewhat better deal: English-language rights only, and on a ten-year license (renewable if agreeable to both parties), rather than the usual, "We'll publish it as long as we feel like it (i.e., as long as it makes money)" contract. They still insisted on having both abridged and unabridged rights, though—in spite of the fact that they made it clear that they only intended to do an abridged version, given the books' length.

(Right. A word about "abridgement." This means that the publisher wants to publish a shorter version of the original book—ergo, they're going to take stuff out. In my innocence, I assumed this meant removing short passages of description, excise a few adjectives…maybe cut a nonessential scene here or there…perhaps boil the book down by 15-20%...not ideal, but maybe acceptable, in that it would introduce a new market, and perhaps someone who "heard" one of the books and was attracted by the characters or storyline would then go and buy some of the others.

Well. "Abridgement" does indeed mean the publisher's going to take things out. They rather cunningly do not tell you how much they propose to take out. And they did offer me "approval" of the abridgement. More about this, below.)

I didn't care for this, "approval" notwithstanding. "I think eventually the books are going to be sufficiently popular that there might be a market for the unabridged version," I told my agent. "And if I thought stuff could desirably be left out of these books, I would have written them that way. I want to keep the unabridged rights. We may never sell them, but if we give them to these guys, they'll never use them, and there'll never be an unabridged version."

Excellent agent that he was, he went back and fought for my unabridged rights, emerging triumphant a few weeks later. Unwilling to absolutely surrender these rights, though, the publisher had insisted on a "non-compete retail" clause. In other words, I could sell the unabridged rights—but whoever made an unabridged audio version could not sell it in the same physical retail outlets (i.e., bookstores) where the abridged audo was sold. (The publisher accurately fearing that if anyone saw the abridged and unabridged versions side by side, they'd see just how much was missing, and not buy the abridged form. (Just as an example, the abridged form of A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES contains 9 CDs. The Unabridged form contains 48. Yeah, you'd see, all right.))

This was the best we could do, and I agreed.

Some time later, the Bantam Audio department called up, burbling with good news: "The usual audiobook is only six hours—but we got permission to do OUTLANDER as nine!" they said.

"Yeah?" I said. "I'd be a lot more impressed if I hadn't just read that book myself for Recording for the Blind (see footnote*), and know that it takes at least 32 hours."

"Oh," they said, still chirpy. " That won't matter; we have wonderful Scottish music to bridge the transitions!"

Still, I didn't realize the full extent of the carnage, until they sent me the abridged manuscript for [cough] "approval."

"Approval" of an abridged manuscript is like a newspaper photographer coming to your house and taking a picture of your sweet child, all dressed up and combed to perfection. Then the editor calls you to tell you the picture is running on the front page! But…owing to space constraints, "You can have the left ear, the chin, the middle button on the dress, and your choice of nostril—or would you rather have one eye, the bottom lip, and both shoes?"

In other words, they hand you a pile of bloody shreds, and you have four days to make any changes you like. Right. Well, I did the best I could to smooth the unspeakably ham-handed transitions that someone had written to (haha) "bridge" the gaping holes between these chunks, but that was all that could be managed.

OK. Well, they produced the abridged audios—the reader, actress Geraldine James, is a lovely reader, I'll say that for them—and they do include snippets of Scottish music (which, btw, I do not consider an adequate substitute for my deathless prose.) Sold a modest amount of them—mind, this was early days for audiobooks, so pretty much all audiobooks sold modestly.

Well…the more books I wrote, the longer they got—and the bloodier the carnage of the abridgements. (They discarded Fergus altogether from the second book, for instance, thus causing considerable confusion when he inexplicably appears in the third. He's in VOYAGER, but they didn't bother to explain to Ms. James that he's French. He therefore appears with a most incongrous heavy Scots accent, she having evidently (and reasonably) assumed from his name that he was Scottish, and there being nothing left in the abridged text to indicate otherwise.)

So I really wanted an unabridged version. I looked into it, and at that time, there were only two companies who did unabridged titles: Books on Tape, and Recorded Books. Well, I happened to be doing an appearance at a Public Librarians Association conference, at which there was a trade show, featuring all kinds of publishers—including a booth rented by Recorded Books. I strolled casually past this a time or two, screwing up my courage, and when I found the booth momentarily without visitors, walked up and introduced myself to the gentleman manning it, proceeding swiftly from general schmoozing to pointing out the popularity of my books—which were fortunately being sold in inspiring quantities from the Random House booth on the other side of the room; every third librarian walking by was carrying one of my books, as I'd been their principal program speaker.

I got a card from this cordial gentleman, and once home, emailed my agent with the contact information, suggesting that he go at once to reinforce any good initial impression I might have made. Subsequently, Recorded Books made an offer for the unabridged audio rights to OUTLANDER, and thus began a most satisfying relationship.

Now, nothing against the production or the reading/acting of the Bantam abridged versions—both are excellent—but the simple fact is that the abridged version of THE FIERY CROSS, for example, includes precisely 23% of the original story. No, they didn't leave out 23%; that's how much they left in.

Recorded Books has (so far) recorded unabridged versions of all of my novels, both the main OUTLANDER series (read by the exquisite Davina Porter) and the Lord John books (read by the marvelous Jeff Woodman, who just is Lord John, in vocal terms). Both these readers are nothing short of spectacular in their acting ability and facility with accents.

Anyway, if you should be curious, the Recorded Books website is (reasonably enough) www.recordedbooks.com , and I am pleased (having just gone to check it) to see that HAND OF DEVILS is their monthly special at the moment:

http://www.recordedbooks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=rb.home&%7Bts%20%272008%2D01%2D27%2015%3A12%3A50%27%7D

All right. Moving right along with this gripping saga…

Because of the "non-compete retail" clause in the original contract with Bantam, the Unabridged versions done by Recorded Books couldn't be sold in bookstores, until the license for the abridged versions was terminated. We (current agent and I) did terminate these licenses, as each one expired—so far, the first four books have been terminated, which means that while Bantam has had a six-month grace period after each expiration in which to sell off their stock, after that, the unabridged audio can be sold in bookstores. I haven't checked, but I think you can in fact now get the unabridged versions of the first three or four books from Barnes and Noble, as well as from Amazon.com, in addition to the Recorded Books site. (I should note, btw, that Recorded Books also has a rental plan—which, considering the size and expense of the unabridged books, is a nice alternative.)

Oh—and for those who like to download their books as mp3 files— www.audible.com now carries the first three (or possibly four) unabridged audios in this form, by arrangement with Recorded Books. (They may have the abridged ones, too—be careful what you're ordering!)

We will be terminating the licenses for FIERY CROSS and A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, as these reach their expiration dates—but it'll be a few more years. In the meantime, I'm afraid you'll have to get those two audiobooks in unabridged form direct from Recorded Books.

And I should mention eBay. I'm sure there are sellers there who are selling legitimate copies of the unabridged audios, but there are also a lot of fly-by-nights selling bootleg copies. If the item advertised consists of mp3 files on CD—they're almost certainly bootlegged, and my agent would like to know about it. (If you post a link here in the blog, I'll forward it to him; he's got a regular procedure for dealing with bootlegged stuff on eBay.)

Oh, Alex Kingston. Ms. Kingston has absolutely nothing to do with my audiobooks—though I'm certain she'd be a marvelous reader. It's just that our valiant assistant, Susan (who saves us from financial disaster by coming and doing the family book-keeping, hauls things to the post office (no one would ever get anything if it was left up to me to take it to the PO), pulls bookplates for me to sign, and is the only person who knows where the family membership card to the Zoo is) was here yesterday, and while we were chatting about the various interesting (and occasionally baffling) responses here to Claire's graphic-novel portrait, told me that from the discussions on one site she frequents, she thought the odd notion that Claire has corkscrew curls comes from the fact that a number of people, in the course of that mental casting game that's so popular, had firmly fixed upon the actress Alex Kingston as "their" mental picture of Claire. Ms. Kingston, of course, having that sort of hairstyle.

Right. Well, look. Ms. Kingston is a fabulous actress—I don't watch TV, so don't follow ER, but loved her in the "Moll Flanders" miniseries—but she doesn't actually look anything like Claire, aside from the minor similarities of being female and having curly hair (but not that kind of curly hair; Claire has the silky sort of curly hair, not the coarse kind. If you have to have an actress to visualize, think Madeleine Stowe in LAST OF THE MOHICANS, in terms of hair. Claire's is shorter, wilder, and naturally a different color, but that sort of texture.). Sorry, but she doesn't.

• Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. This is a non-profit group that—as the name suggests—provides free recorded textbooks (or books for professional use or development—i.e., we don't read purely recreational books, like novels, unless required for an English class or the like; the Library of Congress Talking Books Program does this, though) for "print-handicapped" readers.

• (This means anyone, who for whatever reason, has trouble physically reading a book. It includes not only people who are blind or have very low vision (I think RFB&D told me that only about 10% of their clients are actually blind), but those who have substantial cognitive reading difficulties, or those who (because of MS, paralysis, or some other condition) simply can't hold a book. I've been a volunteer reader for them for….geez, more than 27 years now. They tend to give me scientific texts to read, because I don't have any trouble with the vocabulary; nice to kind of stay in touch with more recent developments in science, if only in this sporadic kind of way. (It's also usually the only time in the week that I sit down—not at a computer—for any extended period, so I can knit. The knitting also keeps me awake while reading the less-gripping sorts of books).)

• They always need volunteers—not only for reading, but for "directing" (a director handles the actual recording of files and follows the reading, to insure that the reader doesn't blink and miss something, or make mistakes, and to fix places where the reader sneezes, coughs, or accidentally impales self with a knitting needle), marking books (so we know where to read the tables and figures, and where to give page numbers), duplicating files, and general office work. Should you have the urge, there are RFB&D studios in most large cities—check your Yellow Pages and give them a call—or go to their website at www.rfbd.org . They'd be thrilled to see you. [g]