Do the Thing! – Are you addicted to yes?

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

Do the thingIf your Thing is a competitive thing, you, like me, may have an addiction to yes.

Now sure, I write to tell stories. But I also write, frequently, from a place of anger. So often when I tried to tell stories as a young person, people met them with, But why would anyone care about a story about that? Sometimes, it was worse: Why would someone care about a story from someone like you? or even Why would someone care about a story from you?

In many ways, Do the Thing! is about helping people find, if not their anger, their unwillingness to be told by others what they are and are not capable of. If this fuel can work for me, it can work for you too. And if this fuel can work for all of us, and we create things and put them out in the world, people will, eventually, stop trying to convince each other and themselves that it’s just too hard or that they’re not good enough.  And then there will be more things for all of us to enjoy.

But if you compete in this world at anything from any type of wound, yes feels a certain way. It’s not just exciting, it’s victory. And it’s not just victory, but vindication.

Which means the days that you hear No or This isn’t the right fit for us or It’s not there yet or Try again next time can really suck. They can, because people remember negatives more than positives, make you feel like all your victories — including that most basic one where you get up every day and face the world — don’t mean anything.

This, of course, isn’t true. But if you’ve had this experience, you know it’s a big obstacle to Doing the Thing! After all, what endeavor can even bring with it a new yes every single day?

An addiction to yes can also lead you to pursue low-hanging fruit when you need to take the risk to advance to the next stage of your ambition.

So how do you break away from that addiction to yes? How do you refrain from over-weighting the negative so that you can listen to critique and continue to improve you work? And what are you doing to give yourself a daily yes when the world isn’t necessarily inclined to cooperate?

While we’re all working on figuring that out, we’ve got a lot of yes to give out in comments today, so if you need some approval and encouragement with a little side dish of supportive ass-kicking, hit the comments! As always, anonymous commenting is on.

Posted in Do the thing! | Tagged | 18 Comments

Sneak Peek Sunday: Ski Lodge

Posted on June 1, 2014 by erincmcrae

It’s Sneak Peek Sunday! Follow the link back to see what other authors are working on this week (please note that participating authors write in all genres and at all heat levels).

Racheline and I have a rule that, if you have an idea, you write it, no matter what story it’s for or what we’re “supposed” to be working on. It’s a way to use energy to its maximum efficiency, and also makes sure we don’t lose our bursts of awesome ideas while we’re trying to be disciplined on something else.

So while we typically write chronologically within a story, and focus on a project until it’s complete, we have a few pages here and there of scenes that belong later in longer projects, or to things that are on the back burner for one reason or another.

The story we’ve working-titled “Ski Lodge” because it takes place, well, at a ski lodge in Vermont, is one of these. But it’s a winter-themed story (I mean, ski lodge) and not only was it starting to roll over into spring here on the East Coast, but we’d just finished two other winter stories: Snare begins with a blizzard, and many of the critical events in Starling happen between December and January. It was time to let the snow rest.

But we had the idea for the first couple of pages, so we wrote those before we tucked it in a drawer.

Once winter comes the lodge and the slopes this place will be packed with too-rich families and their boring, irritating progeny. But for now it’s the peak of autumn and the place is essentially abandoned. His mother worries that it’s too lonely for him or unsafe, but Nate revels in the emptiness and the solitude. And protecting the property is actually his job. Ski lodge caretaker may not have been what his dad had in mind for him when Nate started looking for a job halfway through last semester, but it’s pretty much the perfect gig for someone needing a year off from the pressures and uncertainty — financial and academic — of college.

The sun had been rising over the treetops when Nate set off on the walk, but the day’s gone cloudy and misty with the threat of rain as he and Skip make the rounds on one of their favorite trails. They’re maybe a mile from the lodge when there’s the sound of an engine drifting through the trees. Nate glances in the direction of the sound and then ducks off the trail and heads into the brush. Skip wags his tail at the change of course and keeps trotting along happily at his side.

The four-wheeler, with the shield of the local force emblazoned on the side of it, takes about five minutes to catch up to where they left the trail. When the cop on it starts shouting over the noise of the engine in their direction, Nate sighs and turns around. Dealing with the local cops, who never have enough to do especially in the off-season, is one of his least favorite things ever. “Not a trespasser!” he yells back.

“What?” The guy, who obviously drew the short straw for forest patrol today, shouts. “Come on, kid, get back on the trail and get out, this is private land.”

“Yeah, which is why I brought the giant loud dog. Not trespassing!” Skip barks, as if to prove his point, and then trots closer to the cop, tail swishing and already looking to make a friend.

“Who the hell are you?” The cop finally turns the bike off, and the woods go quiet again except for the rustle of wind in the leaves above. Nate starts trudging back to the trail, because if he’s not going to come any closer and is going to have to use more words to explain why he is right and the cop is wrong, Nate really doesn’t feel like shouting and scaring the wildlife any more.

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Did the Thing! – May edition

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

didthethingNew last Friday of the month tradition: Report back on your Do the thing! activities.

Lately, I’ve been getting some awesome messages on Tumblr where this Do the thing! started.  People have gone on job interviews, gotten new gigs, started books, improved their self-care and just pushed themselves a little bit harder to get more of what they want.  You can see some of that in the Do the Thing! tag at my very silly and fannish Tumblr.

But let’s make this a formal request.  Tell us what you’ve achieved, whether that’s better sleep habits, more positive self-talk, finishing that draft, or scoring a new gig  Nothing is too big or too small.  If it’s important to you, it’s important.

Anonymous posting is always on.  When you tell us what you’ve achieved and why you’re awesome that’s a reminder that you have fantastic building blocks for the next stuff you’re gonna do and it helps other people realize they can Do the Thing! too. Also, you deserve some praise.

Meanwhile, our regularly scheduled Do the Thing! post will be up on Monday.

Posted in Do the thing! | Tagged | 42 Comments

The (un)reality of awards shows

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

photo 3Last week, I got to go to the Billboard Music Awards.  I’d actually never been to a broadcast awards ceremony before, and even though our Love in Los Angeles books aren’t about the music scene (although there’s a guy in a band you’ll meet eventually), texting with Erin during the commercial breaks as some poor radio DJ worked hard to keep the audience enthusiasm up was an experience both a little weird and a little spooky.

One of the things Starling and the whole series really talks about is how fame doesn’t look the same from the inside as it does from the outside.  With that in mind, if you’ve ever watched an awards show on TV, here’s some stuff about their not so glamorous reality:

1. If you’re not important, the date of someone important, or someone helping to manage traffic flow and get everyone to their seats on time, you don’t get to walk the red (or otherwise colored, but still special) carpet.

2. Seat fillers run around sitting in empty seats when people get up to go to the bathroom or get a drink.  It’s a cool way to see the show, but those people work hard.

3. You know who else works hard?  The audience in the pit by the stage (a staple of music awards shows, it seems).  There aren’t that many of them, and they have to look enthusiastic and in awe for every performance, while not being weirded out by the cameras right on top of them or their proximity to the crotches of many performers.  You think I’m joking. Never.

4. Meanwhile, the TV broadcast has the highest priority, so cameras, cranes, and other equipment may block your view.

5. During commercial breaks, every thing is dead quiet, unless there’s someone on stage trying to keep the audience’s energy up.

6. But if you’ve ever been a stage manager, you will be in awe at the skills and efficiency of the technical and production crew.  If you haven’t, the evening can get long, quickly.

7. No matter who you are and what you do, there’s something about that countdown to airtime that will leave you breathless with excitement and maybe even a little bit emotional.

8. You know those announcements of the other awards that were handed out prior to air time?  Well they don’t do that at the live show before it goes on TV so it really is just a scroll of names.  For some awards shows (such as many technical awards at the Academy Awards), there’s a separate ceremony and event, but it sure seems like sometimes people must just get a trophy in the mail!

As a culture, when we talk about fame, there seem to be two arguments.  One, is that it’s the best thing ever.  The other, generally, is about how it’s a deeply destructive force.  In some ways, both those things are true, but as far as I can tell neither accounts for the hours of being shouted at during awards ceremonies to clap harder, as if you’re the only thing real in a world made of  Tinker Bells.

Posted in fame, Love in Los Angeles, Starling, tv | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Romance @ Random: Penny Dreadful Episode 3 Recap

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

This week’s recap is up!

While the episode was low on action, it was high on information and bad CGI wolves. Everything about the Frankenstein plot continues to be fascinating, miraculous, and troubling, and I keep hoping to find time to write about it in-depth through a disability lens (or, even better, to find someone else who has). Meanwhile, Ethan has hooked up with Brona and pledged himself to Vanessa, who seems super chill with the whole thing and is about a millimeter away from giving an awesome speech about responsible non-monogamy.

Spider level: 0.

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When Doing the Thing! means not doing the thing

Posted on May 26, 2014 by erincmcrae

Do the thingSometimes, doing the thing means not doing the thing. Sometimes, that’s one of the hardest things.

I don’t mean give up on the thing (No, no, never give up on the thing! As long as you want the thing, keep doing the thing!) I mean the just as hard and vital tasks of taking breaks and doing self-care.

This weekend (thanks to the miracle of advance post-scheduling) I am actually on vacation, away from keys and major writing, for three whole days. Which is probably going to be a little bit crazymaking because OH GOD THINGS TO DO.)

Without interference, I would probably work 20+ hours a day, between my day job and my writing. Certainly it’s what I did when I was in college and lived alone. Now, my partner, Ben, does his best to keep me on track. In between doing his own things he makes sure I sleep and that I eat dinner not in front of the computer screen and (usually) involving more than three-day-old pasta.

It can be really hard to take those breaks. There are so many Things to Do, and so little time, that I feel guilty spending minutes where I could be doing the thing, not doing the thing. (One of our characters in Starling, Paul, has definite workaholic tendencies. There’s a little bit of both Racheline and I in him.) But working, or trying to work, 20+ hours a day every day isn’t sustainable, and nobody can do the thing! when they haven’t eaten or slept or seen the sun in a week.

One of the worst things my brain does is guilt, and one of my ongoing challenges is giving myself permission to take those break and not beat myself up for it.

A decent way I’ve found to cope, at least on some days, is to make sure I give myself rewards for finishing things, whether that’s making myself a cup of tea and taking a walk after we hit submit on something, or like the BDSM piece we wrote this past week for fun in between massive edits slogs on the novels. Sometimes it’s reminding myself that if I take 20 minutes now to eat I’ll actually be way less cranky and will be able to finish this chapter. Sometimes none of it works.

But what I most have to remind myself is that — as obsessed as I am with using all time to its maximum efficiency — spending time and emotional energy to beat myself up is not actually an efficient use of resources. It’s the “work hard, play hard” thing, where play sometimes just means taking a goddamned nap. Which doesn’t always make it easy, but it’s a start.

So, what things do you need help taking a break from? How do you do self-care? How can we help with stopping the self-flagellation, even if it’s only an “No really, today’s thing is just gonna be taking a nap and eating food?”

Posted in Do the thing!, Doves, Love in Los Angeles, Starling | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Sneak Peek Sunday: Snare

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

IMG_20140523_221921Another Sunday, another week of Sneak Peek Sunday, a romance writer blog hop. Follow the link back to see what other authors are working on this week (please note that participating authors write in all genres and at all heat levels).

We hope you’re enjoying your holiday weekend.  Currently we’re deep in editing two shorts that are about to go out the door before we dive into what’s going to be a long month of editorial work on longer projects.

One of those projects is Snare, which Erin and I originally wrote over the winter holidays in the gap between Starling and Doves because we needed a break.  This is what we do — develop shorts and other projects between drafts of the Love in Los Angeles books (which may help you guess why I’m spending this weekend editing shorts).

As what is currently a 30K m/m/m vampire romance fairytale about New York City’s municipal bureaucracy, Snare is sort of weird and sort of our problem child.  Granted, it’s a problem child that has received some editorial interest, which is great, but we have a lot of revision work to do on it in order to help everyone figure out what’s ultimately going to be the best home and strategy for it.

As we ease into that ordeal (and let’s be real, writing is sometimes hard) we thought we’d share the story’s current first six paragraphs with you.  We have no idea what they’ll look like, or even if they’ll remain, in the final disposition of this odd little passion project.

When Elijah Endicott Iverson — his parents are very cruel — is in the third grade, he learns about life, death, and the various legal statuses in between.  It’s in civics class, sandwiched between the checks and balances inherent in the three main branches of the U.S. federal government and the history of the country’s citizenship laws.

He doesn’t really pay as much attention as he should.  After all, he lives in California, and all the vampires live in New York, ostensibly confined to Manhattan Island by the rivers that surround it.  Mrs. Sanchez tells the class that vampires are very tricky, however, and that’s why hundreds of years ago they gave the city their money to help fund the building of bridges and tunnels that would let them escape. That didn’t really work out of course, because the city just got checkpoints and dogs and is now moving into retinal scanners to make sure only the living can come and go as they please.  But the vampires’ failed plan has still made New York the greatest city in the world.

There are even plenty of humans who, though alive, apply to be declared legally dead so they can live the way the vampires do, Mrs. Sanchez says. They are limited in movement, and may have no legal identity, bank account, or anything that requires a government ID, but they are under absolutely no legal jurisdiction, federal, state, or otherwise. Though the official term for those people is Dead — as distinguished from the dead, who are actually biologically deceased — they’re also called rabbits, and the communities in which they live alongside vampires are called warrens. Eli is not sure why, and Mrs. Sanchez doesn’t say.

She does note, however, that while some say this system fuels New York’s crime and lawlessness, it has also made the city a mecca for artists and non-conformists, the seeking and the strange, contributing to a vibrant culture most only experience on television or at the movies.  Trapped in the vast and boring inland wastes between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Eli decides that one day he is totally going to move there.

At twenty-three, he does. As if foreshadowed by the civics class that set his heart on the city, that residency, for Eli, comes with the world’s most boring job. He is a clerk, in one of the City’s seemingly infinite offices of municipal record keeping. Most days, he works deep underground, where the least useful paperwork imaginable — the records of the Dead — is kept. But it is the days he must rise to the surface he finds most annoying; it means someone has made an error that he must track down and resolve in person. It’s not, after all, like the Dead have cell phones. Those require contracts which require credit cards, and both of those things are at least difficult to obtain without being part of the breathing and banking world.

His colleagues tease him as he hustles out of the Greek-revival building that’s so much prettier on the outside than the inside. They all claim that they stopped caring about their jobs after the first week, but Eli is up to nearly four months and is still armed with an enthusiasm his peers don’t just deem absurd, but unnecessary. Eli flips them off as he goes.

Posted in Snare, Sneak Peek Sunday, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Roosevelts and the Underwoods (and the Cooks and the Keanes)

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

photo (2)Last night I had the super cool opportunity to attend The Roosevelts Meet the Underwoods: A Conversation Between Ken Burns & Beau Willimon at the Paley Center.

Here at Avian30 we are huge, huge fans of House of Cards.  I think it’s one of the best romances on television, and it fills me with constant delight in a way I’m supposed to think is naughty, but actually totally don’t.  So I was beyond tickled when Willimon said that one of his goals with the show has been to create a drama about a successful marriage.

Because that’s both exactly one of the things that turns my crank about House of Cards and one of the things Erin and I try to bring to our stories — that ongoing HEA narratives are the result drama, often external to the relationship, successfully navigated.

Willimon also kept noting that he doesn’t view House of Cards as a political drama.  It is, he said, about power, not politics.

Which means this is where I confess that Starling and the rest of the Love in Los Angeles books aren’t about romance.  They are romances — this isn’t us eschewing or feeling ashamed of their genre.

But at core their stories are not about romance or fame but about translucence/opacity and about permeability.  How much can another person really know you? Do you have a self when your job is to sell someone else’s fantasy? And how much in an overtly constructed life are you able to let someone else in — not just romantically and sexually, but intellectually, spiritually, familially, and physically?

These questions are constant in Starling and its sequels.  And they drive the plot forward not just along the axis of Alex and Paul, but for all the characters in their myriad and complex relationships.  Liam, Carly, and Victor, among others, are deeply involved with these issues (suddenly, I’m realizing one day we’ll have to make a chart).

These ideas also extend not just to the interpersonal relationships in the books, but the locational ones.  How much can Alex let Paragon, Indiana live inside him? To what degree is it reasonable for Paul to feel haunted by the land he grew up on? And can New York always keep Liam safe, simply because he knows its systems?

So while we still have several months still until Starling comes out, in my (not remotely) copious free time, I clearly need to catch up on my non-fiction reading regarding the Roosevelts. You all, meanwhile, need to catch up on House of Cards.  (And, by the way, just because I’m recommending the romance of a power-hungry opposite sex couple, doesn’t mean they’re straight).

Posted in Doves, genre talk, Love in Los Angeles, Starling, tv | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Your mom read your teen lesbian romance and thinks it could be steamier… awkward or awesome?

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

yourmomPerhaps fortunately, Erin and I are starting to run out of Your mom! stories (although her mom totally just emailed her to ask about the BDSM project and implied it was like when Erin was really interested in elves, so maybe not).

Other authors, however, have tons of Your mom! stories, and from time to time, we’re going to feature them here for our amusement and yours, and to help promote other folks in the field.  If you’re the author of LGBTQ fiction and would like to share a Your mom! story about one of your projects, you can email us at erin.and.racheline@gmail.com.

Meanwhile, we’d like to introduce you to J.L. Douglas, author of the upcoming YA novel Lunaside, due out from Prizm (that’s Torquere’s YA imprint) on January 7, 2015.

Moira, the main character, has been out to her family and co-workers at Lunaside summer camp for about a year when the story starts. Her family seems supportive at first, but then she meets Andrea, her first girlfriend, and invites her home for a dinner date. After that, her mother starts blaming her “gay crisis” on the fact that she’s shown no interest in courting universities during her senior year of high-school.

So Moira starts her summer as Lunaside’s lone art counselor trying to prove her mother wrong by doing the best job she can. That quickly gets complicated when Andrea gets hired for Lunaside’s new film camp.

When Millie, Lunaside’s new drama camp counselor, expresses an bluntly immediate interest in Moira–a feeling she admits might be mutual–her plans to keep it all together just fall apart entirely.

And that’s before the camp owner conscripts her into starring in Lunaside’s new web series!

J.L. tells us:

Lunaside is a lesbian romance, but there’s nothing graphic in it so you could probably assume that there would be no Mom-shocking moments in it.

You would be right. However, that is not how I felt when my mom read it. In the unedited draft, there are love scenes. Not graphic ones, but it’s also not entirely G-rated. And it’s written in first-person POV.

And yet, my mom offered to read the manuscript anyway. She’s a great barometer for how interesting a story is. She has a short attention span for books, and will not read anything that lags for even a second.

That led to:

Me: “So?”
Mom: “I liked it a lot! It kept me turning pages.”
Me: “And..?”
Mom: “And what?”
Me: “The love scenes? They weren’t…you know, too much?”
Mom: “Wait, what love scenes?”
Me: “You know, where Moira and …”
Mom: “Oh. That was not a love scene. That was more of a…very lightly romantic scene.”

 And then she laughed and said she’s used to much more heat (and would read that story, if ever I wanted to go in that direction).

Proof that sometimes we’re not the ones being shocking and we should trust the awesome women that raised us!

You can visit J.L. on the web at Eye of the Goat.

Posted in BDSM, books, Other people's books, Writing, YA | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Romance @ Random: Penny Dreadful Episode 2 Recap

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Racheline Maltese

This week’s recap is up!

Ethan drinks a lot, thus winning himself a new love interest; Vanessa is super creepy, but not nearly as creepy as Sir Malcolm; the ancient Egyptian apocalypse is coming; Frankenstein’s creature is still breaking my heart; and in the surprise of the century to no one, it turns out Dorian Grey is very pretty.

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