Staindrop Winners!

Thanks to those of you who commented last Monday! You all win a copy of my paranormal erotic romance novella, Staindrop! So toni in florida, William Doonan, and fishgirl182 please send your email addresses to lgcsmith@lgcsmith.com and tell me what format you'd like: Kindle, Nook, or anything else.

To everyone who bought a copy, thank you so much!

Regret Plus

L. G. C. Smith

Regret can be sharp and assailing, the unexpected splinter-stab on the see-saw, or the bite of the not-quite-cleared hurdle. But all too often it’s kind of a wishy-washy emotion. In real life regret more often inspires melancholy than anything dramatic or useful. It has to be pretty ramped up to spur decisive change. As such, it’s not the heaviest hitter in the novelist’s selection of emotional sledgehammers.

Remorse is better. Throw a dose of anguish onto a garden-variety regret, and you’ve got something to write about. Paralyzing guilt is a golden oldie. Festering bitterness over past slights can start with regret over not standing up for oneself, or something equally mundane, and is far more interesting than mere regret.

Regret is just too mild to be a power player all by itself. Everybody has regrets. Everybody knows they’re futile, so most people move past them as quickly as they can. That’s the healthy thing to do. Those unable to move along wallow in vague dissatisfaction as they shuffle from mistake to mistake. Good fiction demands more.

Musings on Hell

L.G.C. Smith

When I was a little kid, I totally bought the Santa thing. Completely. Never questioned it until the boy who sat behind me in second grade sneeringly informed me of the truth. Even then I didn’t believe him. But I asked my mom. And she told me the Truth. That was hell. However, I never for one second bought the Easter Bunny. That was clearly a crock, and while I was happy to go along with it because egg hunts and candy were part of the deal, I was nobody’s fool.

I had something of the same selective cognitive malfunction with respect to heaven and hell. Heaven? Okay. Sounds good. Kind of boring, but I’m on board. Hell? Are you kidding me? That’s obviously a story designed to manipulate the gullible into behaving in the here and now. I couldn’t believe that whole swaths of my own religion had a much more detailed and personal relationship with the torments of hell than the gauzy, vague-but-pleasant heaven. How screwy was that? (First person to reference that pun gets a free copy of one of my estimable and long out of print books.)

So now, with all these demons and angels in popular fiction, does it strike anyone else that these books are usually completely devoid of religious affiliation of any sort? I find that interesting. We get demons and some sort of spruced-up and/or reimagined Hell. Maybe it’s an alternate reality or another dimension. Sometimes Hell and various demons and angels are engaged in a nebulous war with Heaven, but Heaven is rarely well defined.

That seems to be a recurring fate for conceptions of Heaven. It’s like the very notion of a place where everything is good and true and pure is too alien for our minds to grasp. Hell is far more accessible. We all get Hell. And it’s interesting. Full of the stuff we need in fiction. Lies. Sin. Vice. Popular fiction prefers a fallen angel to a righteous one every time.

This may be a failure of imagination to some extent. Hell is, as one or two folks have pointed out over the centuries, probably the easier path. It certainly lends itself more readily to popular fiction. And, contrary to my youthful religious thinking, it’s far more real to most people than heaven.

Art Dodging

L.G.C. Smith

Very few of the fiction writers I know define themselves as artists. Most of us write popular fiction, which lots of people think is anti-art by definition. We’d have to be gluttons for public derision to stand up and say, “Yes, I’m a literary artist, and my preferred form is the cozy.” Yet, to my well-trained eye (all those degrees, research, and years spent teaching in universities occasionally add up to something), many popular fiction writers produce exquisite novels of substance, style, and beauty. Many of them are, gasp, the lowest of the low: Romance writers. Eek. Surely everybody knows you can’t be an artist if you’re writing romance.

Most of my writer friends distance themselves from viewing their work as art. In fact, a reputation as an artist in the world of working writers seems to carry more negative connotations than positive. The writer as artist is frequently perceived as having great faith in his own talent and skill (arrogance). He is dedicated to his own vision (lacking in perspective and awareness of audience, as well as being resistant to revision and editing). He is more sensitive than the average person (defensive and unable to take criticism of any sort), and subject to the whims of his frequently absent muse (doesn’t make deadlines and doesn’t give his editor a heads up). The writer as artist is, in short, a pain in the butt. He is not professional.

Several months ago I had an experience that brought home to me that without realizing it, I’ve drifted into viewing writers who think of themselves as artists as amateurs. I do a little freelance editing on the side, and I happened across a piece of ‘literary fiction,’ repped by a well-regarded agent, and worthy in many of the ways that popular fiction is generally assumed not to be. It was exactly the kind of book I could see being heralded as ‘art.’ I found many flaws in the manuscript. Really big, story level problems that had a lot to do with the lack of narrative skill, motivation, conflict . . . basic stuff.

I found myself thinking that if the piece had been popular fiction, I would never tolerate such sloppy work. But since it was literary, well, maybe it didn’t matter. Standards aren’t as high. Literary writers do all sorts of clumsy things in the name of art. A lot of literary writers are good at capturing a poignant moment or an arresting insight, and wrapping them up with catchy metaphors, analogies and whatnot. But, in my estimation, if that’s all you’ve got, and you can’t put your language skills to good use at the story level, too, you’re an amateur.

I caught myself. Standards aren’t as high. In literary fiction. Really? Did I really just think that? It’s the complete opposite of the party line still believed by a lot of teachers, librarians, professors, and people who think about the relative merits of different types of fiction. It’s the opposite of what I was taught.

How did I come to this?

By reading a lot. Writing a lot. Teaching writing a lot. Teaching readers how to critique texts. Doing research in literacy communities, including non-academic ones like those of romance readers and writers. Talking to readers and writers of many sorts. Writing scores of novel reviews. Talking to other professors, teachers and librarians who find a wide range of popular fiction as meaningful, valuable and artful as good literary fiction. Listening to editors and agents. All that and more.

The issue isn’t that some literary fiction is amateurish. Of course, it is. That’s true of every genre. The issue is that there is such a rich array of art in the places where, as communities of readers, we still find it generally accepted that there isn’t much of value. Have those writers who have been barred from the Art Party created a successful dodge around how literary art is defined? It can be pretty convincing.

It wasn’t cool for me to allow a lower standard for that piece of literary fiction. I would be angry if an editor approached my books with the attitude that ‘it’s only romance, so why try to make it good.’ Everyone will be relieved to know that I revised my approach. All the literary fiction that comes my way receives the best edit I can offer, bringing to bear all I’ve learned about what makes an artful story.

I’m curious how the rest of your see your writing—is it art? Do you have prejudices against applying that word to fiction like I do? Are there other considerations that keep writers from self-identifying as artists? Or do you see yourself as an artist and your fiction as art? What do those words mean in terms of your writing? There’s a lot of contested territory here.

YouTubophobia

L.G.C. Smith

Every time I get an email or read an article or blog post with a YouTube link, anxiety skitters through me. To play, or not to play? Most of the time, I don’t play.

I am afraid of YouTube.

To varying degrees, I’m also afraid of Twitter and Facebook.

I could blame it on being, ahem, shall we say past the first flush of youth. That’s a factor, but it isn’t the whole picture. Technology doesn’t inherently scare me. The people who use it are another matter. But technology is pretty cool.

I could claim to be upset by the potential for unintentionally invading some poor teenager’s privacy when a video of him getting walloped in the groin by a baseball bat wielding two-year-old trashes his dreams of stealing fifth-grade girls’ hearts from Justin Bieber. But that’s only a minor consideration.

I do worry about unsuspecting young people not realizing the depths of garden-variety depravity to which they may expose themselves with photos, clever videos, sexting, and what have you. But this doesn't contribute to my personal fear.

Free-floating anxiety, of which I have more than the average bear, isn’t to blame. No. I’ve acquired skills for talking myself down.

There is one thing about YouTube I can’t get away from. However alluring all those funny videos are, and there’s no denying the bone-deep appeal of Randall’s honey badger narration, they will Suck Up All the Time in the Universe.

YouTube is the blackest hole of a time sink on this side of the galaxy.

Alas, unlike the honey badger, I give a shit. I have books to write, research to do, and more books to read than I can fit into my days as it is. There are children in my life who are still young enough to want actual interaction. These circumstances alone, though wouldn’t make YouTube super scary. I also have a little issue with an OCD approach to clever film clips. I may have been born without a stop button. Therefore . . .

I am afraid of YouTube. Not memes. Memes are fine. But I will never be ahead of any curves that start on YouTube. I know my limitations.

A Charitable Attitude

L.G.C. Smith

When I was growing up, my parents practiced the old custom of tithing. A tenth of the household income was given to a combination of the church and various worthy causes. They taught me to set aside ten percent of my allowance for similar charitable giving. It didn’t matter how much or how little you had, you still made a point to think about and give something to those who had less. It was annoying sometimes—kids tend to want what they want and not think about others when there are Barbie clothes to buy—but in retrospect, it was great life training.

Later, when I was in high school, suffering the miserable caprices of my hormone-addled peers, it occurred to me that there were other aspects to charity besides just giving time and money to good programs and people. There was the attitude thing.

I was not inclined to have a charitable attitude. I was more inclined to be resentful.

I resented my parents for being clueless and forcing me to live under their harsh and punitive regime. I resented the fact that my younger siblings were never held to the same rigorous behavior standards that I was, and that as the oldest, I was always the guinea pig. “Oh,” my mom would say after letting my sisters get their ears pierced when they were eleven when I’d had to wait until I was fourteen, “I realized pierced ears don’t make pre-teens look like prostitutes, after all.” Why didn’t she listen to me when I said exactly that when I was eleven? And twelve? And thirteen? Arg.

I resented my younger sibs because they got privileges and nice things earlier and with less effort that I did. I resented them for using up all the family resources that should have been mine by right of primogeniture: our parents’ time and attention, clothes money, Christmas presents, the budget for European travel. I resented them for wrecking my stuff—I have a Barbie car story of my own, Juliet, but it isn’t as noble as yours. Let’s just say that the words ‘Barbie convertible’ can still cue histrionics in stressful family moments. I resented one sister, in particular, for telling her ninth grade French class, in which I was the TA, that I didn’t know what the word ‘dildo’ meant. Dear God. The humiliation.

I resented the jocks for being cute and making me lust after them because they never looked at me. I resented the rah-rahs for being cuter than I was and flirting with boys. I resented not knowing how to flirt. I resented not being sent to an exclusive boarding school in Switzerland where intellectual curiosity would be valued at least a little more than it was in suburban California. I resented how awful I looked in Gunne Sax dresses. Broad shoulders and a short neck are not well-served by ruffles and poofy sleeves. I resented—well, pretty much everything.

At some point in my overly earnest self-appraisals, it occurred to me that this was something I might consider changing if I didn’t want to enter my twenties as an angry, bitter curmudgeon, old before my time, and permanently sour. I decided to cultivate a charitable attitude.

Fortunately, this isn’t all that hard to do. When people misjudged me, hurt my feelings, or in any way failed to see and acknowledge my general awesomeness, I learned to let it go. I thought about what might have been going on in their day to make them mean and horrible. I decided to reserve judgment about their worth and their estimation of mine. I could always come back later, pronounce their doom and resent the besneezus out of them if I felt like it.

That didn’t happen. Much. And I started to look at people and see what they were good at and what made them anxious, what they liked and how they wanted to be perceived. And I started to say nice things when I noticed them, like “You sang that solo beautifully,” even when I wasn’t thrilled that they sang it better than I did. When people seemed mean and awful to me, I looked for something good in them, and I mentioned it when I found it.

Probably the most important people to whom I applied my new found tolerance and charitable attitude were my parents, sisters and brother. They were also the hardest ones to make it work with, but I tried really, really hard. And now, decades later when my siblings and parents are my best friends, I still try. It isn’t as hard. Most of the time. It can still be a challenge, but it’s worth the effort.

So for me, charity often takes the form of offering an open mind and heart to those closest to me, as well as the occasional open wallet and open hand offered to those less fortunate. It’s an everyday thing. And it beats the heck out of resentment and anger.

Hungry for Stories

L.G.C. Smith

It’s tempting to think that the hunger for stories follows hard on the heels of our need for food and shelter. As far as I know, all cultures have rich story traditions. Those of us who write popular fiction feed a need that must surely be as old as humanity.

Readers look to assuage different tastes with different types of books. From the time I was able to choose my own novels, I always loved stories about times and places beyond my reach. The first novel of my very own that I remember reading was Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s “The Velvet Room.” I got it through the Scholastic Books order program at the elementary school in Cincinnati where I attended third grade. Remember filling out those order forms, and the careful deliberation that went into choosing however many books you could get? And then the exquisite anticipation when they arrived. I couldn’t wait to get them home and start reading.

"The Velvet Room" was about a twelve-year-old girl, Robin, whose family struggled to survive as itinerant workers in California in the 1930s Depression. When her father gets a job at the McCurdy ranch, life is better, but it's still hard. An unexpected friendship with an older woman who lives in a hidden cottage opens a new world to Robin. She sneaks into the derelict mansion on the ranch. There she finds the velvet room, full of magic and the promise of hope. I've forgotten the mystery Robin solved, but the velvet room is still clear in my mind and heart.

“The Velvet Room” whisked me into a world I’d heard about from my father, who had traveled from South Dakota, where his parents, both teachers who didn’t get paid through the summer, to work in the apricot and cherry orchards that belonged to their California relatives. At three years old, my dad was put to work cutting ‘cots grown on land my sister now owns. Like Robin, they lived in a tent community of itinerant workers. When I read “The Velvet Room,” I could see the kind of people who had worked in those orchards. I could smell the fields and feel the hard won stability Robin’s bare-bones four-room house represented. “The Velvet Room” whetted my appetite for more. More stories. More novels.

I still hunger for good stories. I like variety, but I can live for a good long time on a steady diet of romance and adventure. A little mystery, a little magic, a lot of history or a setting where I’ve never been—all add spice and savor. Because I like to read stories with these elements so much, that’s what I write.

I’m curious: What stories do you hunger for most?

The Delicate Flower/Fusspot Goes to the Beach

L.G.C.Smith

You know I can’t resist recounting the suffering I endured in childhood or any opportunity to complain. The notion that if I don’t have anything good to say, I shouldn’t say anything is just plain no fun at all. I live to rant.


I first saw the ocean at age five somewhere along the Oregon Coast west of Portland. We had just moved to Beaverton from Billings, Montana. My mother and us kids had never seen the ocean, which my father, with a Navy stint under his belt, was determined to address at once. Our first weekend in Oregon, before the moving boxes were unpacked and the bunk beds set up, my dad piled my mom, seven and a half months pregnant with my youngest sister at the time, and the three of us kids, ages five, three, and eighteen months, into the Volkswagen bug and headed for the Pacific Ocean.

It was November. The beach wasn’t much improved by the intermittent snow. It was grey. Grey water, low grey sky. That wasn’t so bad. At least I didn’t get a sunburn. The worst, as I was to discover is usually the case, was the sand. Sand is evil. I don’t care how pretty it looks, it’s not nice.

In this case, it was grey and covered with clear bubbly things that turned out to be jellyfish. My dad picked one up on his car key and dared me to touch it. Huddled in my snowsuit, I refused. My sister, brother and I finally took refuge behind my mother, using her as a windbreak. We pleaded to sit in the car. When frozen spume began pelting us, my dad finally relented. (The picture below is the total antithesis of that Oregon beach. It's on Guam. That's my brother in the water. He was five.)


When we showed little enthusiasm for further beach trips, my dad found a lake for us to camp beside near Fort Clatsop. It was close to the beach, but it had its own special kind of lake beach hell that involved being devoured by mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds while sinking up to our knees in mud.

A few years later my Dad dragged us all out to Guam. This was ostensibly for his job, but it might have been purely for the potential to inflict torture on me. On the way, we stopped in Hawaii to visit our cousins. There were some bad beach experiences: Sun burn at Hickam Beach. Flattened by a sneaky (and big) wave at Waimea Bay. Sand in all the usual uncomfortable places, including rather a lot permanently embedded in my scalp. You don’t know pain until you’ve tried to rinse all the sand out of your hair with a sunburned scalp underneath.

And dear God, is there any more dastardly garment in the world than a wet, clinging swim suit? Especially when you have to go to the bathroom and you need to get it down fast when you’ve waited for your turn in the long, long lines at the totally inadequate beach bathrooms? And you’re a kid whose parents don’t believe in bikinis on little girls? And you’ve fully embraced the rule that you never, never ever pee in the water?

All this was nothing compared to what was coming in the three years on Guam. The sand in Guam is special. The island is surrounded by a coral reef. It’s not like Hawaii at all. The ocean breaks on the reef, and there’s a lagoon inside. There’s coral everywhere. Coral is sharp. The sand is full of coral. Cuts from coral don’t tend to heal well. They easily abscess. Tropical climate. Weird microbes. Bleh.

To protect your feet, you wear shoes. This was before water shoes. We wore Keds.

Can I just say that swimming in wet Keds sucked. They felt like the proverbial cement overshoes. Walking and running in not-very-nice sand in wet Keds wasn’t much fun, either. They attracted clumps, which caused stumbling and made me lose races. They rubbed on my heels. I got blisters. They tracked whole deserts worth of sand into VW vans and bugs, and into the house if one wasn’t careful. This typically caused lots of parental yelling. The one advantage, aside from avoiding coral cuts, was that when I accidently stepped on sea slugs, it wasn’t as disgusting as it would have been in bare feet. Having your ankles spayed with sea slug guts is never fun, but at least they didn’t get stuck between my toes.

I’ll spare you the times my father tried to force me to snorkel. I couldn’t coordinate breathing through the tube. He got mad, and it scarred me for life. I have never wanted to snorkel since. Alas. And the agony of constantly having to buy ugly swimming suits was traumatic. I thought it would never end. All those years of being dragged on almost daily family trips to the beach have left me a lesser, wounded soul.

For the record, I don’t actively hate beaches anymore. I’ll even seek them out as long as there’s no sunbathing or swimming required. No other people present is best, but sometimes that can’t be helped, so up to twenty people on a good long beach is okay. Dogs don’t count.

Ah. Beaches.

Stretching the Topic...Peaches & Tango

L.G.C. Smith

There can be many reasons for including sexy scenes in any novel, but the most important one is simple: Sex reveals emotion and aspects of character that are integral to story, and which are best conveyed through sex. Sex is a real and interesting part of life. The potential for drama and conflict is inherent. Physical intimacy is sexy. Add emotional connection of pretty much any flavor plus decent writing, and you get fire.

It’s worth repeating: We learn things about characters during sex that we would learn no other way.

That’s sexy.

Okay, on to some other fun stuff. I’m going to hark back to one of our past topics, celebrity, because I finally met a celebrity! A real one! My celebrity meet is Chef Richard Blais, winner of Bravo’s Top Chef: All-Stars.


For my birthday, my sister, the organic farmer, gave me a VIP ticket to a special event, Peaches & Tango, at her farm, Frog Hollow Farm, home of what are arguably the best peaches grown in North America. Jeffrey Steingarten once made that claim, at any rate, and he’s a fairly rigorous critic. The event was a benefit for Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard, and Richard Blais was the chef. He and his wife have been Frog Hollow fans for a while. Lucky us! And lucky me to have a birthday the week he came to the farm. Otherwise, I’d have had to have done volunteer staff duty like the rest of the family.

I went early, and started taking pictures in the kitchen while the prep was going on. When I walked in, there were four cheffy volunteers making chutney, peeling cheese rinds, chopping, chopping, chopping, and dropping pearls of horseradish cream into a big plastic bucket of liquid nitrogen. All of a sudden, Richard Blais popped through the swinging doors from the reefer and went to work. Eeeeek! He looked just like he did on TV!

I took pictures and stayed out of the way. I didn’t introduce myself. Too chicken. Whatever. I talked to the helpers, who seemed tickled to be there. They explained what they were doing and smiled a lot. Private chef, Andrea Boje, told me what had gluten in it and what had fish sauce (shellfish allergy--bah), and went about the business of calmly solving every problem that arose. That kind of competence is sexy.

Blais’s sous chef, Spencer, worked with focused calm. Also sexy. Blais circulated from station to station, tasting, checking, directing. Then he’d hop on the turf truck and trundle down to the outdoor kitchen being set up south of the packing shed. One time he took a load of oysters on ice. The turf truck isn’t so sexy, but Blais seemed to really like it. Then back to the kitchen he’d come to keep everyone on task.

After the staff meal, everything from the kitchen was loaded into vans and carted over to the outdoor kitchen. Once there, trays of oysters were dressed with a mango salsa and readied to receive their horseradish pearls. The toasted pimento cheese sandwiches with gentleman’s relish were precisely cut into golden brown bite-sized squares. Chef Andrea balanced the beet tartare on spoons topped with candied wasabi.

When the guests arrived, they’d take one look at Blais and start grinning. One couple, among the first to arrive, were so excited to be there they repeated the story of finding out about the event sixteen times in four minutes. They glowed. They fizzed. The man videotaped Blais. They were darling. Blais was utterly sweet to them. Then a group of four beautiful young women, dressed to kill, and in five-inch heels (in an orchard?!), stopped as one the instant they clapped eyes on Blais. Their jaws dropped. They gasped in unison. One of them whispered reverently, “There he is!”

Blais was unstintingly gracious, charming, and kind to the guests. He kept everything moving as he shepherded his delicious, elegant courses onto plates and into the servers’ hands. He demonstrated with the liquid nitrogen in two 600-gallon steel tanks. All the while he signed autographs, posed for pictures, and cooked.

Oh, he cooks sexy food. This is the chilled hiramasa with fried chicken, smoked aioli and pickled radishes. Raw fish isn’t one of my favorites. Radishes—meh. But in Blais’s hands? Crisp, clean, smoky, sweet, tart, salty, creamy yumminess. Sean Seufert of Terra Bella Farms said it put him in mind of the best BBQ potato chip imaginable. I thought it was considerably more refined than a chip, but that sprinkle of fried chicken skin and the smoky aioli definitely evoked some of those flavors. The textures of the dish were perfectly balanced—firm but tender fish with a slightly crisp, moreish bite. Balance is sexy.

Up next was the cutlet of petrale with cherry tomatoes and anchovy raisin butter. I think there’s also a dab of browned butter foam under the fresh herbs. I couldn’t eat this one because the fish sauce was in the dressing on the tomatoes, but I tasted the anchovy raisin paste and nibbled the fish and the butter foam. Delicious. For all the pretty presentation, Blais’s dishes suited the ambience of the orchard setting. They were particular without being fussy. Totally sexy.

At the end of the evening, I gathered up some menus that guests had left behind and asked Blais to sign them for my sisters and their friends who had helped all day and served all evening (and me). His eyes drooped and his shoulders weren’t quite as straight as they had been, but he turned on his smile and I didn’t feel like a dork for keeping him from getting back to his family for five more minutes.


The sexiest thing all day, however, came in one of those behind the scenes moments when Blais’s wife and little girls arrived. Not once did either of my sisters or I see Blais look at anyone with anything other than professional courtesy, meticulous attention to detail, and polite interest. When he saw his family, though, he lit up. “My girls!” he exclaimed, and in the time he spent with them this bright, kind, talented chef was the sexiest guy in the world.

Reading Thrills

L.G.C. Smith

A delicious thrill I’ve indulged over the past several days has been the reader’s thrill of dipping into an author’s world and getting lost. Thank you, Lori Armstrong! Lori is from Rapid City, South Dakota, and her books are set in and around Rapid City and the fringes of the Black Hills. Everyone knows by now I was born in Deadwood and my mom grew up on a ranch in the Bear Butte Valley east of Sturgis. My dad’s folks lived in Rapid from 1966 until they died, and my parents lived there for eight years, during part of which I lived on the Rosebud Sioux reservation at Mission. Reading Lori’s books is like a visit home.


Okay, maybe scarier than that. Still and all, I can’t put them down. Lori captures the West River ethos dead on. Yeah, they’re mysteries and her protagonists pack more violence and dead bodies into a week than most South Dakotans, even those living in Shannon County, see in ten years, so that’s a little unrealistic, but hey—she made my spine creep the same way it did when I read student essays with titles like “11 Barred Doors to Freedom: Inside Leavenworth,” or a journal entry from a meat packer about how her father raped her when she was a kid. Western South Dakota can be pretty rough.

I love a good fictional world, be it Middle Earth or Westeros, the far reaches of the universe, C.E. Murphy’s Seattle, Stacia Kane’s Downside, Mayfair in 1814 or any of a thousand imagined places, but none of those are quite as thrilling as looking into another writer’s vision of a world I know intimately. Add a great story, which Armstrong does, every damn time, and I’m lost. I have to read. Everything else is on standby.

There’s a lot of pleasure to be had in any well-drawn setting, but knowing something about the world it’s based on reveals the depth of a writer’s skills. Armstrong is very, very skilled. Her prickly tough girl characters eloquently capture the conflicts and contradictions of women’s lives in such a hard, violence-prone culture. There’s a balancing act here between authenticity and the demands of narrative for identifiable, likable characters. I don’t tend to like tough girls (or boys), especially when they view fighting as just a little something they do for fun on a drunken Saturday night. I don’t hold with using alcohol to numb out real feelings. I deplore the use of violence to cow others, and the use of terror as a style of family discipline. Yet Armstrong carries me through my judgments and engages my compassion for the people doing these things.

She also reminds me why I don’t live in South Dakota now, and why I probably never will again despite the fact that there’s no place I love more on this earth. She also shows me into the hearts and spirits of the people who raised me and the people who raised them. I get a clear view of exactly where a big piece of my own fictional preoccupation with violence comes from, and why I see it in male garb more often than not. I see the awkward mix of pit bull tough, shoot-from-the-hip-and-pick-up-the-pieces-later snarkiness and deep, heartfelt concern for the welfare of others that is so ingrained in my mother and her family. I see why my Dad has always been inclined to let us women fight our own battles. I see why I don’t want to fight at all.

A little of the tension I carry at the core of me eases.

Now there’s a thrill.

And if anyone ever tries to tell me again that genre fiction isn’t as powerful or as rich as literary fiction, I’ll handcuff ‘em to a ball hitch on a crashed pickup in a March blizzard on South Dakota Highway 34 out past the Belle Fourche river and let ‘em think about that for a while. Oh, wait. That’s what one of Lori’s villains did combined with where some of my relatives lived. Never mind…


Thanks, Lori. Keep up the fine work.

4th of July

L.G.C. Smith

Best wishes to all for an oops-free 4th of July. No burnt hamburgers. No dogs grabbing the buns and making a run for it. No bottle rockets landing on shake roofs. No letting your kid who's allergic to walnuts eat Aunt Debbie's Waldorf salad--with finely chopped walnuts. No forgetting the charcoal, paper cups, vodka (or your tipple of choice), ice, baseball tickets, sippy cups, benadryl, matches, little flags, sunscreen, etc. No getting ticks or mosquito bites, no crying, whining, or getting caught spitting Grandma's weird green jello salad with cottage cheese, celery, and pineapple into your napkin. Say NO to undercooked chicken. Wear a belt if you have a skinny ass. Hang on to bikini tops in water slides. Don't drop the cake.


That's a cake I dropped. Originally four layers. Coconut. Made with a fresh freakin' coconut. I failed to secure the bottom layer with a dollop of frosting. Oops.

Have a great Fourth!

One Way or Another

L.G.C. Smith

That’s an old Blondie song. Kind of stalkery. Full of attitude. Back when Blondie was new, stalking wasn’t much of an issue yet. Lots of people I knew spent large portions of their adolescence driving by the houses of people they had crushes on. I never did that myself. Of course not. Because I am perfect. I know the one true and right way to do…well, everything.

Yep. One best way. I really thought there was such a thing. Sometimes I still kind of wish there was. It would make a writing career easier. Follow steps 1-17, and presto! Instant bestsellerdom. But I’m coming around to the notion that it’s okay not to be able to master, or even identify the One True or Best Way for everything.

In honor of summer finally arriving in Northern California, and with it the first pick of Gold Dust Peaches at my sister’s Frog Hollow Farm, and in memory of my youthful devotion to finding the One Best Way to do…well, everything… here are two ways to make Peach Salsa: The one best way, and another one that works and is a lot less persnickety.


The One Best Way to Make Gold Dust Peach Salsa

This salsa tastes best with the Gold Dust variety of peach. They ripen around the middle of June, and the last ones come in around the 4th of July. Use tree-ripened fruit. Those hard green or mealy things found in so many supermarkets aren’t worth the trouble.
Makes about 8 cups

3 cups peeled Gold Dust peaches cut into ¼-inch dice
2 limes, juiced
1 cup diced white or red onion, 1/8-inch cubes
1 cup raw, peeled and diced jicama, 1/8-inch cubes
1 large poblano pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded and diced into 1/8-inch cubes
1 large red pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded and diced into 1/8-inch cubes
2 mild peppers, such as Anaheims, roasted, peeled, seeded and diced into 1/8-inch cubes
1/3 cup of Serrano pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded and diced into 1/8-inch cubes
2 large cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 Tablespoon finely minced fresh Italian parsley
1 Tablespoon finely minced fresh cilantro leaves
1 Tablespoon finely minced fresh green onion tops
1 Tablespoon green onion bottoms, very finely sliced
1-2 teaspoons kosher salt (to taste)
½ teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper
optional: 1 finely diced fresh Serrano chili pepper, or even a habanero, if you want more heat

Before you start, roast all the peppers on a grill, preferably over apple or cherrywood coals, until the skins char and blister all over. Put them in a bowl and cover them with a kitchen towel so that they’ll steam a bit. You can do this a day ahead. When they’re cool, peel, seed, and cut the flesh into 1/8-inch dice.

Juice the limes and put the juice in a large bowl. If the limes are on the dry side, use more. If you like lots of lime, add more.

Peel the ripe peaches, which should be soft, with a paring knife. Don’t do that thing with dropping them into boiling water for a few seconds. If they’re truly ripe, you can peel them easily without that, and you don’t want them heated at all. It diminishes the fragrance and flavor. Remove the pit, slice, and then dice into ¼-inch cubes. Put the peaches (and as much of the juice as you can capture) in the lime juice as soon as they’re cut. This will keep them from turning brown.

Peel the onion and cut into 1/8-inch dice. Place the dice in a fine mesh strainer and pour boiling water over the onions for 30 seconds to a minute. Drain well. Spread out on paper towel and let cool. Blot out any extra water. Add to the peaches and lime juice.

Add all the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly without mashing the peaches. Adjust seasoning to taste. Serve at room temperature with chips or on burgers. Leftovers will keep in a tightly covered jar in the refrigerator for three or four days.


Another Way: Everyday Peach Salsa

Scrounge whatever ripe peaches can be found. Any variety. Over-ripe. Bruised. Farmers’ market rejects. Whatever. They just have to be ripe. Use four. Maybe five. Or six. Depends on the size and how many you have. Grab a couple of meyer lemons off the tree, or limes, if there are any kicking around. Wash and juice lemons or limes. Wash, peel and cut off bruises from the peaches, and dice them up small. Toss them in the citrus juice. If you don’t have enough citrus, use rice vinegar. Or sherry vinegar. Or champagne vinegar. Not balsamic as the color will stain the peaches, but otherwise, whatever you have in the acid department will work. Wash and dice a raw, unpeeled red pepper, or a poblano, or both. Add a hot pepper if you like that. A little chopped parsley, chopped cilantro, minced garlic, fresh cracked black pepper and kosher salt. Onion if you feel like it. Raw, blanched, any color, doesn’t matter. Jicama if you have it. No worries if you don’t. It’s still good.

Celebrity Nullification Factor

L.G.C. Smith

I don’t know any celebrities. I told my sister Sarah what our topic is this week, and that everyone else in the world either knows or has met interesting celebrities, or has meaningful thoughts related to the topic of celebrity, while I have nothing. She laughed.

Now my sister does know, meet and deal with celebrities of all sorts, including Hollywood A-listers, rock stars, billionaires, politicians, and even royalty in the running of her famous organic farm. But I don’t know them. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin never walked into my shop. Bill Clinton didn’t eat one of my peaches out of hand at Chez Panisse. Well, I know Al, my sister said. Sure, but Al, her business partner and ex-husband, doesn’t count, no matter how many times he’s been referred to as a celebrity farmer. I mean, come on. Seriously?

What about Alice Waters, Sarah asked. Okay. I have met Alice Waters. So that’s one. But she’s a foodie celebrity. That doesn’t count.

Sarah arches an eyebrow at me. And what about all those NYT bestselling authors I know?

Well, there aren’t that many of those. They're professional relationships. Except for the ones who are friends, and they don’t count.

She snorts. Just because I know someone that doesn’t disqualify them as a celebrity.

Actually, yes, it does. Because I possess the Celebrity Nullification Factor.

My sister forgot about that. She shouldn’t have. I got it from our mother.

Here’s how it works: I am five years old. I am wildly jealous that Darilyn from across the street has pretend high heels. This catapults her to the pinnacle of neighborhood super-stardom. I beg my mother for high heels like Darilyn’s.

What do you want those for, my mother asks with disgust. They’re cheap. They’ll break in two minutes. You’ll just fall in them.

The shoes are beautiful. They sparkle. They are crystalline plastic flecked with pink and purple. I will take good care of them. They will never break. I will never fall. I want to be a star like Darilyn.

Why? My mother demands. If I get them for you, your sisters will want them. They’re too little, but they’ll cry and scream and probably take yours and ruin them. Do I want to suffer that horrible fate? Wouldn’t I rather go to the zoo?

Well, now that Mom mentions it, yes, I would. Watching the giraffes eat peanuts with their long purple tongues is tempting. And my siblings can’t ruin that. Mom knows when to press. It’s up to you, she says.

It also works like this: I am nine years old and have been exiled to a stinking tropical island in the Western Pacific. We don’t get any good TV. We get The Rosary Hour. All of us Protestant kids learn the Hail Mary by heart. But we do get Tiger Beat magazine at the PX. We brought our Monkees records from the States with us. We LOVE the Monkees! But the Monkees will never play a concert on Guam. The only famous person who visits Guam that year is President Nixon. I did see him drive by in the motorcade. He was more wrinkled than in pictures. WE WANT THE MONKEES!

My mother argues that the Monkees are just regular people. They aren’t that special. Yes, they’re cute. Lots of people are cute. Look at all the cute people we know! If we want live entertainment, we’ll go see my friend Blanche’s mother’s Polynesian Dance Troupe. Music! Dancing! Fire! Yes, the Monkees are famous. That doesn’t mean anything. They could just as easily be famous the way Charles Manson is famous. Fame doesn’t make anyone a good person. If we focus on being good people and being good friends, we’ll be happier than we would be if we went to a Monkees concert. Just you wait, she said. You’ll see.

Or it works like this: My grandparents—my DAD’S parents--went to Hawaii to visit my aunt while my uncle was stationed there, and they went to all these special places and they got to meet DON HO and JACK LORD. This is all they talk about for the two years after we got back from Guam (where the only famous person we saw was our creepy president). I love the story about how Don Ho kissed my grandma on the cheek. My grandma loves this story. Her eyes crinkle up every time she tells it. She glows when she tells how her daughter set it up, how she was bold enough to approach a celebrity because she knew it would make her mother happy.

Later, my mother and her sisters express deep horror at the prospect of having been singled out at a club or concert or whatever it was. It would be so embarrassing. Plus, those poor celebrities, never able to have a moment’s peace. How would we like it if strangers were constantly barraging us with requests for photos and autographs? Or kisses! Yuck. Leave them alone, for heaven’s sake. It’s only decent.

After the steady application of these lessons over a period of many years, I gradually made the Celebrity Nullification Factor my own. There is no celebrity too lofty to make me stare. Not that I would recognize one anyway, being so busy minding my own virtuous business. Any of you celebrities out there who feel the need to feel like regular folks (there’s such a glut of that), just swing by my place. If I know you, you can’t possibly be a celebrity.

Pattern Recognition

L.G.C. Smith

I’ve been thinking about unpredictability all week, reading the other Pens posts and nodding along in agreement. I’m pretty much in Adrienne’s camp in that I don’t wholly support unpredictability. Serendipity is fine. Unexpected events are often interesting, if not always fun. Unpredictability can be way too challenging.

Except in fiction. It occurs to me that one of the more salient distinctions between popular and literary fiction lies along the unpredictability fault line. In general, and there are scads of exceptions, I know, in literary fiction it’s entirely acceptable to explore the predictable and how characters shape, respond to, and cope with it. There’s some magical realism here and there, but it’s mostly lots of secrets and emotional pathology, heaping helpings of death, disappointment, loss, love, failure and regret. Small victories loom large. Quiet moments resound with import.

Popular fiction can be a lot more unpredictable and maintain credibility. This is the realm of time travel, zombie apocalypse, vampires, werewolves, elves, ghosts, ghost cats, regular folks who solve murders, journeys across the galaxy, and epic romances. Treasure maps and worldwide conspiracies abound. Urban shamans wrangle with the gods of a hundred cultures in five hundred nameless cities while aliens walk amongst us. Angels, demons, nanobots and electric sheep prance across the page.

I enjoy popular fiction because I rarely run into these potentially interesting things in everyday life. In good popular fiction, the emotions are as real as they are in more literary fiction, but they come in response to much more unpredictable events.

This is fun. This is one big reason more people like popular fiction better than literary fiction. Again – not everyone. Obviously. But if literary fiction were called Unpopular Fiction, it wouldn’t be as far off the mark as we might wish.

So. Time travel. A popular fiction staple. Love it! Not only would it be unexpected in my regular life, it would be totally unpredictable. Nothing in my experience or my limited understanding of physics and our current state of technological development leads me to predict that any of the kinds of time travel by which fictional characters zip through time and space are going to occur in my natural lifetime.

This, predictably, brings me to a pet peeve. Why do so many characters in time travel romance novels, and I focus on romance because that’s what I know best, act like going back and forth in time is normal and predictable once it’s happened to them? Let’s say Missy Schoolmarm-1885 gets zapped into the present by a lightning strike. Odds are she’ll assume she can go back. Why? Why doesn’t she assume it was a one-time deal, a total fluke, and will never happen again? Has she ever seen lightning induce time travel before? How many thunderstorms has she seen? Balancing previous experience against the one time occurrence, only a moron comes up with, “Yep, I can now travel in time.”

Wait. What was my point? I’m not sure I had one. Because that would be so predictable. But you all know me by now…I’m down with predictable.

Except in fiction.

Cherrypicking

L.G.C. Smith

For those of us living in 21st century developed countries, the aphorism carpe diem resonates with all the echoes of more uncertain times and places. Affluence and technology buy us insulation from the ravages of the unpredictable. War. Famine. Disease. Tyranny. We enjoy advantages on a scale unimaginable to most of the people who have ever lived.

Yet our margin of grace remains fragile. Death awaits us all. Chaos and unlooked for change are ever with us. Loss, real and imagined, defines so much of what we want and what we do. Thus do we take heart in the charge of those two Latin words: Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

Pluck the finest bits, as the other Pens so articulately wrote last week. Wear your best perfume just because you love it. Spin orange merino/silk yarn and kiss your wife. Rent a villa in Italy for your 50th birthday. Greet with joy the husband and children you never expected. Spellcheck your tattoos.

It can be a challenge not to use an ethos of carpe diem to justify anything we want to do, especially things that are self-indulgent, unwise, or which carry potentially sobering consequences. We all do this. I surely do. Rather than enumerating that tedious (and lengthy) list, I want to share some thoughts about a dear friend and family member who died Friday, a woman whose spirit captures some of the ways in which I would most like to seize the rest of my days.

I don’t know all the details of Betty Carlson’s life, and what I once knew I’ve likely forgotten in the thirty years since I first met her. Betty was 61 years old then and had lived three times as long as I had and packed quite a lot of day seizing into those years. She was a writer, a woman of faith, and a gentle soul possessed of deep feeling and insight. She didn’t needed to show off how smart she was or how witty she could be, though she was both wickedly observant and quietly funny. She and my husband’s beloved Aunt Jane, a great Godsend to us, with whom Betty lived for a long time – again, I don’t know how long, but at least forty years – are among the most gracious, generous people I’ve ever met.

I met Betty when I went to study at L’Abri Fellowship in Huémoz, Switzerland in 1981 where she and Jane worked. I met my husband there, and more wonderful people than I can count. I was particularly impressed with Betty. She was a working writer.


(Here's a detail from one of Betty's drawings. That's her in the lounge chair with a glass of lemonade while Jane gardens.)

I knew I wanted to write, so I watched her and talked to her when I could. I read her books, which charmed me completely. She was encouraging, steadfast, and immensely kind. She spoke softly and smiled often. She traveled, studied constantly, and lived a simple (though far from small) life in a tiny village in glorious mountains. She met new people with an open mind and heart. She wrote diligently. When it wasn’t always easy, she didn’t stop.

I could see myself being a writer the way Betty was a writer. She gave me images of a writing life that countered the storied excesses, instability and despair of so many famous writers. I didn’t want to be like Sylvia Plath or Hunter S. Thompson. Betty opened possibilities to me, ways to be a writer that would allow me to cherrypick the worthy aspects of carpe diem and not begrudge the ripe fruit left beyond my reach for those with longer arms or wings. It remains a rich and treasured gift, just one of many given throughout Betty’s long and loving life.

Big Lies and Public Education Wars

L.G.C. Smith

It can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between lying and storytelling, but the most fundamental difference is obvious to five-year-olds. Stories come with embedded messages that signal “This is a story. It’s made up.” Lies don’t.

There are, of course, more and less subtle means of alerting audiences to story contexts. Lies can be subtle, as well, exploiting small distinctions. Then there are sledgehammer lies, those that are so outrageous, so blatant, and so clearly malicious that it’s hard to believe anyone gives them credence. Yet someone always does, frequently uttering the adage “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” as they give authority to something they shouldn’t. Self-interest is usually a big factor in this sort of lie, too, both in the telling and in the unwillingness to challenge liars outright.

Everyone reading this knows all about all this since we all read and write about the failures and triumphs of the human condition. Most of us are also very, very good at letting people know when we’re telling stories because we understand their power, and the difference between the power of a well-told story and a lie.

I’m trying really hard to avoid preaching because I’m mad as hell over a vicious lie my husband’s supervisor told about him.

My husband is a middle school PE teacher. He’s been teaching 22 years. His school district is working very hard to fire him because it costs less to pay a new, inexperienced teacher. Not only are their salaries lower, they don’t get the same benefits, and they can be fired more easily when the state cuts district budgets yet again. There are many administrative advantages to getting the experienced teachers out of cash-strapped public schools. But to get rid of them, the districts have to prove they’re incompetent or unfit to teach.

Now that there’s no limit on the size of PE classes in my husband’s district, almost every one of his periods has 55 or more students. With that many students, the administrators at his school have been reprimanding him when students don’t dress for PE, when they wander off to the bathroom during class, when there are fights, and when there are pantsing incidents. None of those things should be happening. That goes without saying. But what do administrators think is going to happen when the teacher/student ratio is 1/55? Seriously. There are going to be problems. The other teachers are having problems, too. There will likely be more problems with inexperienced teachers.

My husband has been placed on Notice for being unprofessional because of too many nonsuits, a kid getting dropped into a dumpster last year (thanks, Glee), two pantsings, and an argument between students that he kept from escalating to actual physical contact. He will be dismissed, the union tells us, no later than May 15th no matter how well he does in addressing the alleged deficits in his performance.

This places us in dire financial circumstances, but honestly, it’s happening to a lot of people. We don’t take this too personally. Neither do we take it lying down, but this is a trend that isn’t completely about my husband’s job performance. Up to a point, the district has used story-telling techniques to paint a picture of a teacher who isn’t in control. Strictly speaking, they’re lying, but if they keep to the legal parameters, there’s not a great deal we can do about it.

After several instances of not-quite legal behavior on the part of the administration, two weeks ago, the vice-principal came into the PE office at the beginning of one period and told my husband that there had been an accusation from another staff member (probably the inexperienced ‘aide’ they want to hire after they get rid of my husband) that my husband had used the “N” word six times in the PE office.

That’s right. The N word. Only slightly less loaded than an accusation of sexual abuse, which would involve the police.

My husband, terribly upset at this shameless lie, had to go immediately into class. There was no time to address the matter without leaving students unattended. At the beginning of the next period, both the principal and the vice-principal showed up for an unannounced observation.

This whole mess just became deeply, irrevocably personal. My husband is sick about it. Literally. He’s got a cold he can’t shake and the stress isn’t helping. He can’t even speak about this lie without his voice failing.

The N word.

My sister’s husband, our brother-in-law, is African American. Our niece, our beloved, cherished niece, the joy of our lives, is half Black. We live next door to them. They are family. We walk in and out of each others' houses every day. They take care of us. We take care of them. We love them.

For Bob to use this word…No. No.

I cannot measure the anger and the sorrow we feel knowing that someday our niece will learn that word. Worse, she’ll learn that having brown skin has made so many Americans less in the eyes of those with lighter skin. The world will be a darker place when that happens. It is a darker place every time it happens. It happens all the time. It happens to the children my husband teaches, children like our intelligent, compassionate, wonderful niece. This is personal and grievous every time it happens.

That word in the mouth of a white man teaching students of many colors reeks of racism, injustice and the senseless waste of dreams and potential.

This is the lie a middle school vice-principal chooses to tell about my husband.

California school districts are in financial straits. Across the country, public school teachers are being targeted as the new pigs at the public trough, a bunch of greedy thugs unwilling to shoulder yet more of the burden for public education by taking even lower wages, fewer health benefits, and worse working conditions. More lies. General, stupid, impersonal lies fostered by people who don’t understand or value public education.

But this lie was malicious in the extreme. It was personal. It was aimed at upsetting an experienced teacher as little else would immediately before an unannounced observation.

Is there anyone in this country who wants their child to attend a school where this sort of behavior is happening? My mother was a public school teacher. Three of my grandparents were public school teachers and administrators. I’ve heard plenty of backroom stories about what goes on in schools, and never anything like this.

This is wrong. This kind of lying is an exercise in vice. It wounds far beyond the person about whom the lie is told. It makes me long for a divine retribution I don’t really believe in, or instant karma and a cut-throat lawyer in my husband’s corner.

But if I had children in California public schools, I’d be worried that the people most concerned with students are under attack from their own administrators. If I were a parent, I’d spend time teaching ethics and what it does to a person’s heart and mind to tell big lies. Those lessons have disappeared from at least one middle school in the Bay Area.

The Wallflower Way

L.G.C. Smith

A lot of writers are wallflowers by nature. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but, on the whole, if a body spends too much time at the ball dancing, flirting and drinking the spiked punch, that person is going to be too tired, busy or buzzed to write about it later. However, if a body lurks along the periphery observing the dancing and revelry, that person is going to hear and see a lot of interesting things. Some might resort to thinking interesting thoughts, or even, God save us, fantasizing.

And voila. Stories.

Wallflowers are ever alert to the scent of a story. Wallflowers watch. Wallflowers listen. Wallflowers wonder.

That last bit alone separates wallflowers from the gyrating masses.

When the wallflower gets home from the dance, he or she has built up a head of creative steam that must be vented. Clouds of words and sentences issue forth from teeming brains and hearts. Since wallflowers don’t expend all their energy dancing, they have enough to fuel sitting on their (frequently wider than average) butts for the hours it takes to hone their tales.

Many people assume wallflowers are forlorn souls yearning for the chance to waltz with the most desirable lad or lassie in the ballroom. They are frequently objects of pity and scorn. Ha. Being so misunderstood only preps them to write authentic Young Adult fiction well into old age.

Besides, it’s not always true. Some wallflowers could teach the whole room to polka if so inclined. Some are accomplished dancers who could make The Terminator weep for their grace and beauty. (It could happen.) Instead, the wallflower prefers to remain incognito in order to gather material and conserve energy for writing.

Wallflowers sacrifice. Wallflowers eschew pride. Wallflowers take the road less travelled.

Writing’s a dance that rewards wallflowers. I think it highly probable that wallflowers invented writing—possibly so they would have something interesting to think about during dances at the ziggurat.

Introducing: Lisa Alder and "The Demon's Bargain"

The Pens Fatales are proud to announce the publishing debut of one of our nearest and dearest friends, LISA ALDER. Lisa is the author of The Demon’s Bargain, an erotic romance novella on sale now at Amazon and Barnes&Noble.

The Demon’s Bargain by Lisa Alder


When the Demon bargains for one night of her pleasure...no one loses.

Vetis, the Demon of Corruption, is bored. It’s too easy to tempt humans into committing horrible acts and the appeal has worn thin. He’s restless and seeking distraction...until a gambler offers to settle a debt by submitting his wife for Vetis’s use.

One tiny glimpse of the rage in Amara and the absolutely sexless way she endures his sensual touch, and Vetis has his challenge. He’ll make this woman enjoy the carnal pleasures of sex.

The bargain is struck. One night. Of HER pleasure. And the debt will be paid.

Ill-used by her husband, Amara believes she is doomed, for she has no pleasure within her, her innocence forfeit long ago. But as Amara’s body awakens with sinful desires and carnal longings, hope begins to blossom that pleasure is within her reach.

Demons never fail and the challenge is on. Vetis knows with the right sensual persuasion the debt will be paid in pleasure, however he doesn’t bargain on falling in love.

Warning: this erotic romance novella contains m/f/m sex, light bondage, and smokin' hot demon sex

After more than a decade of writing professionally, she decided to self-publish one of her erotic romance novellas as an e-book. In light of recent high profile authors shifting to self-publishing their work as e-books, we thought it might be interesting to see why Alder has chosen this option.

LGCS: Congratulations. I read The Demon’s Bargain, and it’s great! Not only is it erotic, but I really cared about what happened to Amara, the heroine. She’s been abused by a cad of a husband, and Vetis, the Demon of Corruption, makes it his goal to heal her spirit. That’s something of a twist for a Demon, isn’t it?

LA: First off, while Demons can be a brutal race, they are not necessarily evil. In my research, I learned that Demons were actually helpful to humans. One of the things that I absolutely loved about writing this story was exploring the concept of evil and turning the idea of who or what is bad upside down.

LGCS: What was the inspiration for the novella?

LA: Hah. That’s a funny story. I had wanted to write an erotic novella for some time but I hadn’t been able to come up with a world that excited me. Then two things happened simultaneously. One day I was doing research on Angels and as an off-shoot, I read about Demons. The second thing was I read Juliet’s Victorian Erotica post (last September I believe). That afternoon, the story idea literally just came to me almost fully formed.

LGCS: Oh, that Juliet! We have to watch her every now and again. When did you decide to put The Demon’s Bargain out on your own? Are you jumping on a bandwagon here?

LA: I’d submitted The Demon’s Bargain to two very reputable e-publishers whose books I really respect. I would have LOVED to work with either house, but unfortunately they passed. At the same time, I had some friends who ventured into self-publishing with a degree of success, so I decided to try it. Jumping on the bandwagon. Sure. If you’d asked me a year ago if I would self-publish, I would have said absolutely not. But the world of publishing is changing. For better or worse? Only time will tell.

LGCS: Does your motivation to self-publish differ from authors such as Amanda Hocking?

LA: Actually, I think it’s basically the same reason. Amanda Hocking tried and tried to publish with a traditional house and kept getting turned down. She finally self-published and it turned out that fans really love her work. For me, I’m hoping that my “not quite right for our house” will be “just right” for readers.

LGCS: Tell us something about the process you went through to get The Demon’s Bargain ready for publication.

LA: Once I made the decision, I knew I needed help. Although I have GREAT critique partners, the reality is that sometimes only an editor is going to ask the right questions in order to make your manuscript the best that it can be. I am lucky enough to know a few freelance editors, so I contacted a woman who had edited erotic romance and got on her schedule. Then I hired a designer to design the cover (which is totally HOT). After several revision passes, and several rounds of copy edits, I decided The Demon’s Bargain was ready to be published. Then I had to learn the ins and outs of formatting for Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It turned out to be both harder and easier than I thought it would be. But seeing the cover on Amazon for the first time was quite a rush!

LGCS: The Demon’s Bargain has a tag “Demons Unleashed.” Does that mean we can expect more hot Demon sex in the future?

LA: Yes! I’m very happy to tell you that Prince Gaap’s story, To Summon A Demon, will be available in late May.

I would love to give away 2 copies of The Demon’s Bargain to your readers.
So if you’d like to win either a copy for Kindle or Nook, just comment and I’ll randomly draw two names. If you don’t have a Kindle or Nook, I’m hoping to have The Demon’s Bargain available in other formats by April 1st.

Thank you so much to the Pens for having me!!

LGCS: It's been our pleasure. Best of luck with The Demon’s Bargain.

Counting Blessings

L.G.C. Smith

I'm short on words today, though long on thoughts about all the families who have lost children in the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the children who have lost loved ones. In recognition that all we can ever be sure of is the present, here are some of the lovely moments the children in my life have given me in the last year or so.

#1 Niece: Christmas at Grandma's & Grandpa's

#2 Niece at the playground

#3 Niece in the wading pool last summer

My only nephew was born last summer.
I got to take his sisters for their first look at him.

Sixteen? How did that happen?

My cousin's smart, beautiful oldest daughter at fifteen.

My favorite non-blood-relation boys with the Leezlet.

Some of the other FHF kids and G bellying up to the bar for cake.

Only Nephew at 8 1/2 months.

My three favorite girls in the world last month at Grandma's.