Trope-Tastic Tuesdays: Act of True Love

Trope: Act of True Love

Description: So our characters are madly, hopelessly in love, but the universe is often cruel and refuses to let them be happy together for more than five minutes. (Fucking universe, man.) One of the pair—or sometimes even both!—is so very much in love, they will make a great personal sacrifice for the other person, whether for their relationship in general or even to save their partner's life. This doesn't necessarily have to be a romance trope, as it can be for a platonic or familiar relationship; it's also possible for this one to be a death trope. Hmm. Ominous.

Examples: Anna blocking Elsa from that asshole Hans's sword in Frozen; both Rapunzel and Flynn try to sacrifice their happiness/lives for each other at the end of Tangled (Disney really is a fan of this one); depending on your choices in Dragon Age: Origins, the ending can play out this way if you've romanced Alistair

Pros: The power of love is always compelling. And this isn't just everyday, garden-variety love...this is true love! Done well in a romance, an Act of True Love can make readers all fluttery and swoon-y.

Cons: For me personally, you've got to *really* develop your characters and plot well to stick the landing here and make it convincing. Like, I don't know if I'd risk using this trope in, say, a short story. Not to say it can't be done, of course, but it takes skill. Also, if you're writing a romance, if you're using a death trope version of this, some readers might hate you forever. Then again, some might love you even more. Blah blah art is subjective blah.

Would/Did I Use It?: Hahaha, so, funny story: Timeline-wise, I wrote most of Fire Beyond the Frost first, shelved it for a while, and wrote Out of Orbit before coming back to it. I think it was while I was editing FBtF that I realized—if you whittle both of those books down to their basic elements, they essentially have the same plot. And both of them end with an Act of True Love. Granted, the stakes are higher for Jasmine in OoO than they are for Catalina in FBtF, but the striking similarities are there regardless. So, like Disney, I guess I'm a fan of this trope!

Disintegration Updates, Part the Next

If you haven't seen the full cover for Disintegration yet (which means you may not be a newsletter subscriber or a Twitter buddy, which means you're missing out!), here it is in all its glory:

Everything's still on track for an official release day of August 30th, though I may make the paperback live earlier. I'm happy to report that everything went smoothly with setting up the paperback on Amazon when I uploaded the file. I'd heard horror stories of tiny little things going wrong and authors ripping their hair out when trying to find the needle in the haystack and figure out why it wasn't being accepted, which is why I was considering outsourcing the formatting. I actually got it right on the first try, which I was pretty damn excited about, though I did make a couple tweaks once I saw it in the previewer. Then I ordered a proof, which was also pretty damn exciting:

To get ready for the release, I've been sending out ARCs/review requests, setting up promo spots, and so on. I intentionally planned the release for the end of the summer since we'll be up at the Cape for much of August, so now I'm a little restless as I'm in the "sit around and wait" phase. I know once I actually get to the beach, I'll be glad I scheduled everything the way I did; I just have to slog through that "I want to do this thing NOW" feeling for the next few days.

The blurb hasn't changed since the original release, but I'll include it below, anyway. The next newsletter is going to have a link to the first two chapters in their entirety, so make sure you're signed up!

Blurb:

Dutiful soldier and devoted family man Callum Renwick fights to defend his country from the two opposing nations sharing its border. Following a brutal attack on his unit, he wakes up in the underground laboratory of a well-known mercenary organization. The leader of the Midnight Scorpions, Dr. Dane Zedek, informs him he was the sole survivor of the attack, and his hometown and loved ones were obliterated by enemy forces. As he processes the news of his loss, he learns he has been badly injured, and Zedek and his assistant have supplanted half his body with artificial skin and cybernetic parts.

Zedek intends to train Callum to become a lethal assassin for him, designating the woman who coordinated the attack as his first target. While he prepares to exact his revenge, he is assigned to the care of another agent in the Scorpions’ base. Ro is brash and outspoken, yet aspects of her character remain enigmatic. Despite declaring personal relationships useless in the cold, cruel world in which they live, she invites herself into Callum’s bedroom more nights than not. In her coaching, she pushes him physically, emotionally, and sexually to mold him into the killer the organization desires.

During his quest to hunt down his nemesis, more and more of Callum’s biological body parts fail and must be replaced. In addition to dealing with his grief, he struggles to come to terms with his new appearance, functions, and responsibilities. Will he be able to transform himself into what Ro and the Midnight Scorpions need, yet still retain his humanity?

Trope-tastic Tuesdays: Silver Fox

Before we get to this installment of Trope-tastic Tuesdays, a quick announcement: the newsletter subscriber bonus is going to be changing in a few weeks, so if you haven't already signed up and received your free copy of Sweet Escape, don't miss your chance! You can use the form that's over there on the sidebar, or this sign-up link.

Onward!

Trope: Silver Fox

Description: A person—often male, often with gray or white hair—who, despite their age, is still regarded as being attractive and charming. Silver Foxes are distinguished and powerful; after all, being older has its perks. If the Silver Fox is a love interest, the other half of the pair will usually be younger, though it's not required. To qualify for this trope, characters have to play by the rules - they have to *look* older, not just *be* older. No thousand-year-old vampires who look like they're in their 20s allowed, etc.

Allegedly, the female version of the Silver Fox is the Silver Vixen, but I'm going to be honest here, I don't think that idea is nearly as popular, which I'll expand on below.

Examples: Oh, hell, just take your pick of older actors who only seem to get better with age. There definitely isn't a shortage of them.

Pros: None of us are getting any younger, right? It's nice to know that even as we age past what's considered the "standard" ideal of beauty, there's still a chance others will find us attractive. In romance especially, this can be used as a shortcut to help establish a power dynamic, for better or worse. If a Silver Fox is in a relationship with another character, chances are he's not going to be the passive, submissive one.

Cons: Time for the standard disclaimer about how all appearance-based tropes for love interests are highly subjective! Okay, that's out of the way. The aforementioned power dynamics in the "pros" list can also be subjective, and it can veer into problematic territory if the Silver Fox is using his age and assumed privilege to influence his partner to do things she may not really want to do.

I said I'd come back to the gender issue; as much as TV Tropes may try to convince me otherwise, I do feel like this one favors the men, and I'm not sold on the "Silver Vixen" thing. I mean, a good number of the women on their list of examples didn't have gray or white hair. I suppose we could debate whether the "silver" part is supposed to be taken literally or if this is all just about a general persona. Regardless, there's a whole lot to unpack here about how society sees men aging vs. women aging.

(If someone knows the difference between "Silver Vixen" and "Cougar", PLEASE enlighten me.)

Would/Did I Use It?: I do have a few entries for this trope! First up is Colin, one of Celeste's potential love interests in Blazing Justice. He's older than her, he's her boss, and yup, he's got the hair. It's no secret that other women in the office find him attractive, too. Lucky her.

I'm going back and forth on whether Edwin from Closing Montage qualifies. He and Abigail take a trip through the highlights of their lives via virtual reality, so obviously he's an older man by the end, but she's aging, too, so there's no contrast there. Additionally, there's one point where he questions whether she's still attracted to him in his older form (SHE IS!), so his lack of confidence may prevent him from being a true Silver Fox.

Bonus mention of Aras in Out of Orbit - he's over 500 years older than love interest Jasmine. Despite the fact that he may not look so old to her, he's considered to be in the older age range for his species. Plus, since he's the ruler of his planet, he's got the elevated status that contributes to this trope. While he doesn't have any hair, his skin is silvery gray, so I will insist that counts and add him to the end of this list. :D

Trope-tastic Tuesdays: Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl

Trope: Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl

Description: Not necessarily a romance trope, when you have a male character and a female character hanging out and doing whatever in your fictional world, one way to play with expectations and subvert stereotypes is to have the man be the calmer, more pragmatic one while the woman is the zany one who's bouncing off the walls. Despite the trope name, this can also be used with same-sex relationships as long as the contrast is there. Mileage varies as to whether this counts as an "opposites attract" trope; a lot of times, the characters share the same goals and priorities, they just approach them in different ways.

Examples: Anna and Kristoff from Frozen, Simon and Kaylee from Firefly, a classic example in Lucy and Ricky from I Love Lucy

Pros: If all our characters had the same personalities, that would get pretty boring. As mentioned above, this trope plays around with stereotypes - often it's the men who get to have all the wacky hijinks while the women get shoved into the "maternal" role to keep everyone grounded. Girls just want to have fun, or so I've been told, so let's let them!

Cons: There's a fine line between "energetic/perky" and "ditzy," and I'm not a fan of the latter. The Energetic Girl can also veer into Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory, which is a trope that doesn't have a spotless history, alas.

Would/Did I Use It?: In reviewing my books, this came up more than I would have expected. In Closing Montage, Abigail is the one who has to convince Edwin to loosen up and have some fun, beginning with the very premise of their virtual date. I'd also apply this to Fire Beyond the Frost despite it being a lesbian romance - here, nurse Sari is the cute, bubbly one, while doctor Catalina just wants to do her job well and barely cracks a smile for at least the first few chapters.

Trope-tastic Tuesdays: (Green-Skinned) Space Babe

(Parts of this were originally posted on February 21, 2013)

Trope: (Green-Skinned) Space Babe

Description: The attractive alien with mostly human features so having sex with him or her isn't too squicky. While the fictional aliens of yore were mostly green, blue has been more common in recent years, though they can come in every color of the rainbow. Female space babes are more prevalent than the males, and they will frequently be large-chested and/or scantily clad.

Examples: The Asari from the Mass Effect series (plus, to a lesser extent, the Drell, or even the Quarians, based on that one picture of Tali), the Na'vi from Avatar, the trio of male aliens in Earth Girls Are Easy

Pros: Sometimes we've banged all there is to bang on this planet and need to expand our horizons. On a more serious note, an alien romance can add another layer of intrigue and complexity to any sci-fi story. As far as the intimate part of the relationship goes, you can keep it identical to what humans do, or...well, the sky's the limit here, I suppose. (Pun partially intended.) For maximum bonus points, throw in at least a conversation about how reproduction works.

Cons: Everyone's got their preferences when it comes to romance, and for many people, interspecies sex is a no-no. Care also has to be taken here when it comes to portraying one of the species (human or alien) as superior to the other as that can mirror real-life issues here on Earth, and you don't want to inadvertently stumble into something problematic.

Would/Did I Use It?: Once again, years after the original post, I have an entry for this trope! Originally, I was on the "not a fan" train, but I've come around. (Blame Mass Effect.) In Out of Orbit, Jasmine crash lands on a planet inhabited by a humanoid species and falls in love with their leader, Aras. I didn't go too crazy with the aliens here, as they look and behave very similar to humans. I didn't even pick one of the typical colors of green or blue; they have pearl gray/silvery skin. In the interests of full disclosure, if we're talking about video game inspiration, I think I'd been playing some Dragon Age: Inquisition before writing this one, and some of the features of my fictional species resemble those of the qunari in DAI (and DA2).

Disintegration Updates

In addition to writing my blog posts on tropes, I have been plugging away at other things, namely the Disintegration series re-release. For the most part, everything's been going smoothly, and I think I'm on track to release at the end of the summer as planned. As always, some things come with a learning curve, so I figured I might as well organize all my progress updates in one place and talk about my experiences, as I try to document in this "writing about writing" blog. Let's organize this into categories!

Covers: First and foremost, I cannot possibly say enough good things about Emily of Emily's_World_Of_Design. She has been absolutely fantastic to work with and I 100% recommend her to anyone who's looking for a cover designer. As of right this second, the covers for Disintegration and Disintegration: The Prequels are complete, and The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions is in progress. I'm planning on doing an official reveal for Disintegration in about another month, but in the meantime, here's a tiny sneak peek to hold us over. (I say "us" because this cover is amazing and I'm so impatient, but I want to wait for a few more things to be finalized before the reveal.)

Keep an eye out for that little scorpion to be showing up on all sorts of things in the weeks to come, and don't forget—newsletter subscribers will see the full cover first!

Editing: Everything's fine here. Since the kids are finally back in school full-time, I started getting back to my usual work schedule a couple of weeks ago, so that's slowed me down a bit on the editing front, but it'll get done. Again, Disintegration and Disintegration: The Prequels are completely done, and The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions is in progress. The "that" and "just" count for TFotMS did, as predicted, nearly make me sob, but I went through and slashed a lot of them. ("Still" wasn't awful. "Really" snuck in more than I'd remembered.) Like I said in a previous post, there wasn't a ton of work to do here (as compared to the Skies series, for example), but I still need to devote time to actually doing it.

Formatting: Aaaaaand here it is, why the statement "everything's been going smoothly" has the "for the most part" qualifier in front of it. By this point, I'm pretty confident in my abilities to format an e-book. I went back and forth for the longest time over whether to outsource the paperback formatting or do it myself. I finally decided to give it a go on my own, and then if it turned out I was in over my head, I'd pay someone else to deal with it.

I used a combination of Amazon's official guide plus a couple of other articles/blog posts that explained some steps a little more in-depth. While I know there are various programs out there for book formatting, I stuck with MS Word because that's what I already own and that's what I'm familiar with. As I followed (or thought I followed) the step-by-step instructions, it turned into one of those things where everything was going fine...until it wasn't. For the curious, where I got tripped up was the page numbers and the headers/footers. There's a difference between "acceptable" and "professional" and I was aiming for the latter, so I turned to Google for help. It took a little time, but I eventually wrapped my head around how to accomplish exactly what I wanted, and I think/hope it worked out. I'm crossing my fingers that I got all the margins and stuff right the first time out and it won't be rejected, and I'm definitely planning on ordering a proof to double check everything. If, after all that, something's still not right with the paperback, I'll turn it over to someone who actually knows what they're doing.

The e-book and paperback for Disintegration are mostly formatted; I have a placeholder in for the TFotMS cover and blurb, and I figure I should probably write a dedication for this one. Disintegration: The Prequels is only getting an e-book, but I haven't formatted it yet. I'm hoping once I get to formatting the paperback for The Fall of the Midnight Scorpions, I'll feel pretty comfortable. Maybe.

So that's where everything stands. I was originally planning for a September 1st release date for Disintegration (and make the prequel set the newsletter freebie starting then; I'll also make it accessible for free to current subscribers). However! I was recently reminded that the Alanis Morissette concert tickets I got last year were rescheduled for that day, and it looks like the show is going ahead, so even though I think everything will be all set up for the book release, it still feels like a LOT for one day, y'know? Since everything's going well, I'm now aiming for August 30th. I haven't decided when I'll make the preorder available, as I've heard conflicting advice about that, but there's going to be a lot of fun stuff going on leading up to the release, so stay tuned!

Trope-tastic Tuesdays: Raven Hair, Ivory Skin

Trope: Raven Hair, Ivory Skin

Description: Though beauty ideals tend to go in cycles when it comes to what's popular at any given moment, Raven Hair, Ivory Skin is one of those tropes that's often used as a shortcut for "this character is physically attractive". Due to said cycles, these characters can take on all forms, from gothic heroines to 1950s pin-up girls to vampires from all different time periods. However, to qualify for this trope, they have to be good-looking. There can be some overlap with the Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette trope, but that one has more to do with how a character is perceived beyond physical beauty. Both have a tendency to skew female, but attractive raven-haired men with ivory skin are out there in all sorts of media.

Examples: Snow White in every form she's ever taken, Scarlett O'Hara, Miranda from Mass Effect, Yennefer from The Witcher

Pros: The visual contrast makes this appealing, even when you're writing and you want the reader to get a certain image in their minds. As stated above, it can also be a quick way to get to "this character is pretty!" without spending a huge amount of time on descriptions and perceptions right away. When it comes to the overlap with other tropes and genres, you can either lean in to the established tropes, or have some fun playing around with them and subverting expectations.

Cons: There's a fine line between "relying on tropes" and "laziness." (Let's not talk about how many times I've walked that line.) Also, as with all physical appearance tropes, beauty is highly subjective.

Would/Did I Use It?: Indeed I have! Tabitha from Hunting Astrid qualifies, as her appearance captures Astrid's attention right away. Alizeira from Flight of the Dragon Queen also fits this trope, and she might also count as an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette, at least at the beginning of the book before we learn more about her. I gave some serious consideration to whether Jasmine from Out of Orbit and Sari from Fire Beyond the Frost qualify, and ultimately decided that they don't—aside from debating whether or not their brown hair is dark enough, while their love interests are attracted to them, it's never mentioned if they're considered objectively beautiful to most of the people around them.