Ann Aguirre Guest Post – On Worldbuilding

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

Please welcome my guest Ann Aguirre, author of futuristic romance and urban fantasy.

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Some people make exhaustive lists before they start writing. They chart things and color code them and write them on cards. I’m not one of them.

For me, world-building comes as an extension of character development, and I only know things about my world that my character does. The details come in a sieve-trickle, revealed as they become pertinent to the story. Of course, once a fact has been established, I’m committed to keeping things consistent.

A few people have asked me how I built such a gritty, realistic universe from scratch in the Jax series. The truth is, that’s just the world Jax lives in. I didn’t consciously plan anything; that was just the world she lives in, and she tells me what I need to know as we go on. One day, I would very much like to go through the Jax books and create a compendium, listing the planets I’ve created along with descriptions of the terrain, size, climate, and population. I’d like to write a more detailed history and timeline than what can be reasonably created in the books. I’d also like to include a cast of characters, including a brief bio on each one. If this sounds like source materials for an RPG, then you’re not far from what I’d like to do for the Jax series. This is where the people who do all that extensive planning beforehand may have the advantage, however. I’ll have to go through the books to assemble all that information. The people who make charts, graphs, and color-coded cards have it at their fingertips already.

But that’s not to say either method is right or wrong; there is really only the question of what works best for you. For me, planning everything beforehand takes the joy out of the process. I need the pleasure of discovering as I’m writing the book; otherwise there’s precious little motivation for me to finish. I feel as though I’ve already been there, done that (at least in miniature), and it becomes a chore instead of a joy. So if you need to make a few notes before you begin, chart things in depth, or just write, as I do, it’s all good.

The Corine series is less intensive because it’s based on our reality, just one step to the left, where magic, spirits, zombies, angels and demons are alive (or undead, as the case may be) in the world. However, again, consistency is key. Once you’ve established a rule, you absolutely must have good reasons if you make an exception, and you must explain to the reader why this doesn’t apply to this character or this situation. Otherwise, you’re just abitrarily changing your own canon and expecting the reader to go along happily with your ret-con. Often, this comes across as lazy writing.

If you need a place to get started, Patricia Wrede has come up with a very comprehensive guide to help you do just that. You can have a look at that here. The questions, though designed for fantasy, can be used for SF as well, though obviously you’re going to be designing more than one. I think SF tends to be less detailed because you may create and visit many planets rather than really designing an uber-detailed single world. But whatever you do, however you do it, I hope this has helped.

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Thanks, Ann!

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Striving for Perfection

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Victoria Janssen


Striving for absolute shiny perfection is the worst thing for me.

No, really. My idea of perfection is just a little too perfect. I could go mad, trying to write the Platonic ideal story; I know I could. I could work and work and work on the same story until the stars grow cold, and never feel as if I was finished with it.

So I don’t try to make any single story perfect. I know it’s never going to happen. My brain can always think of something more that’s required.

What I do instead is work my way towards perfection bit by bit, story by story, going around and around the mountain by a spiral path, every once in a while doing a little freeclimbing. In the back of my mind as I sit with pen in hand or fingers on keyboard is “this time, there will be no dialogue without purpose!” or, “this time, I will not go overboard when describing clothes in a static manner!” or, “this time, I will eliminate sixty percent of character navel-gazing!” I go for improvement. Constant improvement.

I also think that I improve in steps; I reach a plateau, struggle against it, and then surmount that level. A story I wrote three years ago might have been as “perfect” as I could manage, but since that time, my skills have improved. I’m aiming for a new level with today’s writing. If this continues, I will never write a perfect story.

Occasionally, I think, “My God, this story is amazing! I am so brilliant!” but I instantly slap myself down. Because it isn’t amazing. Well, it might be, but if I think that while I’m in the midst of it, I’ll blow it, being swept up in my own perceived brilliance and forgetting that other people are going to read this story, too. Afterward is when I can believe it might be amazing, when I can look over it and think, “That’s not bad at all.” And even then, it won’t be amazing to everyone.

There is no perfection. Why would I bother to write, then? We’d all be busy canoodling in a Platonic glow.

It’s a battle, also, between making deadlines and making Art. I want to write something that’s the absolute best it can be and polish until it’s so beautiful I can hardly look at it, and only then send it out into the world. I want to not care about anything but the work and making it shine and sing and all that other metaphorical crap.

And then I think, who do you think you are, Michaelangelo? and what’s wrong with fun, simple stories? and geez, overthinking, much?. Striving for perfection is good. Doing it to the point of madness means I’d never finish anything, never send anything out, never hear other opinions on my work.

It’s best to just get to work on the next project. Because, in the end, forward and upward won’t happen unless the words go on the paper.

Related Posts: How To Write a Novel (in 72 Easy Steps!) and Zero Drafting.

Tune in tomorrow for guest Ann Aguirre, who will be posting on worldbuilding.

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The Faces of World War One

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

This post originated as a guest post for Lust in Time in December, 2008.

I rarely use photographs to give me character ideas, though occasionally after the story is in progress, or finished, I realize the character looks like a particular person. I do use photographs a lot, though, to both see details of clothing and weapons and to just get a feel for the period, and sometimes for inspiration. I like portraits best. I wonder what the people were thinking, and what their lives were like.

Here are some photographs of real participants in World War One, which I referred to while writing Moonlight Mistress for Harlequin Spice.

Albert Ball, a British flying ace who did not survive the war:

An unnamed Gurkha (Nepalese) soldier, who served in the British Army and has a very nice blade:

Reginald Arthur Brett, an American soldier:

Because of the colonial empires of England, France, and Germany, there were many soldiers from Africa serving on the Western Front, i.e., in the trenches, as well as in Africa itself, and Indian troops were deployed by the British very early on; they, too, served on all fronts.

Here are some Sikh soldiers in France; bicycles were used quite commonly by soldiers:

Sar Tinder from Senegal, serving with the French, in one of the color photographs from the period:

Related Post: Synergy in Writing and Research.

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On writing The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

This post originated as a guest post for Lust in Time in December, 2008.

The inspiration for The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover was in a contest; I think it was in 2001. I am often inspired to write something by a call for submissions, even today. There was a five dollar fee, and you had to submit the story on a diskette, so it was rather a pain, but the prize was $1000. I believe the theme was “danger,” though I might be remembering wrong; it doesn’t matter now, because the story didn’t make the final cut, and then the contest folded before final judging ever began, and I was left with a story on my hands, about an Empress and a stableboy named Jirin.

In 2004, I finally sold the story to Jim Brown at LL-Publications for an e-anthology titled Eternally Erotic. Jim worked with me on the story, and it’s thanks to him that the setting became less fantastical and more like eighteenth-century France. The Empress became a duchess and the stableboy’s name changed to Henri. Perhaps most importantly, I added the possibility of a happy ending, when the original story had ended on a cliffhanger.

First, I named the duchess Camille, so she wouldn’t have to spend an entire novel being addressed by her title. And though the original story was from Henri’s point of view, for the novel I would need to get inside the Duchess’ head.

When writing an outline for the novel, I knew immediately that the two characters from the original story wouldn’t be enough. I was working on the assumption that there should be a sex scene, or a partial one, in every chapter, and I knew I’d find that easier if I could vary the partners and the goals of the scenes. For example, the first chapter has a “first time” scenario with the duchess and Henri. If I had more characters, I could also have a “first time” scenario with Henri and someone else, which could serve a different purpose in both Henri’s relationship to the duchess and in the plot.

The original short story referred to other characters who weren’t seen: the duke, the duchess’ maid, and her eunuch guards. The duke was of course the villain of the piece, the reason the story began. As soon as I tried to picture the maid, I realized she would need to be a much sharper, more sarcastic character to contrast with the seriousness of the duchess and her plight, and the innocence of the stableboy. As part of that idea, I decided the maid would dress as a boy while on the road, an homage to all those Georgette Heyer novels I’ve read. Because her personality was in many ways at odds with the other characters, she became a third point of view character as well.

I decided on a pair of eunuchs. It easily followed that they would be extremely loyal to the duchess, and could be involved with her sexually as well, in the classic fantasy of “woman pleasured by two men.” I liked the idea very much, eventually giving them their own subplot: They’re in love! But their love is forbidden! Which doesn’t stop them from consummating it anyway!

Finally, I thought more on the stableboy. The duchess was clearly the leader in this relationship, tired and embittered from years of an unhappy relationship. Therefore, Henri was the ingénue. Almost everything about his character snapped into place with that realization. I particularly enjoyed playing with the tropes of the innocent as applied to a young male character, when in romance that role is usually assigned to a female.

Finally, there needed to be The Other Man. I never seriously considered Maxime as a rival to Henri, but for my own amusement I did feel an erotic novel needed a character who was, shall we say, well-endowed. The rest of Maxime’s character and role developed later in the writing process.

Once I had the characters, the outline took shape. I already knew the plot. The duke is going to kill the duchess. She flees. Eventually, she defeats the duke. The tricky part was creating sex scenes that showed changes in the relationships between the characters, all while moving the plot towards the final goal of the duchess’ victory. However, as I tend to figure things out as I write, my outline didn’t necessarily show that movement. For instance, one chapter’s summary read simply: “Camille ponders how to find out if Henri trusts her, and how to make him her lover.” Or “The Duchess, while riding the next day, remembers an encounter with Maxime in her youth, before she married the Duke.” Some of the chapter summaries were more detailed, but all of them left plenty of room for invention. In the process of writing, I changed not only minor plot details, but also some major ones, including changing an off-camera coup d’etat into the final action scene.

I’ll sum up the various pairings in The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover. I had a lot of fun with choosing these scenes and playing with erotica tropes to see how far I could push the envelope of genre expectations.

There are, of course, several sex scenes between the Duchess Camille and her loyal stableboy, Henri; but Henri also has an unexpected encounter with a bathmaid and several encounters with Sylvie, the duchess’ maid, including once as a performance for the duchess’ benefit. Sylvie enjoys herself with the duchess and, later, with a brothel owner, Master Fouet, who also obtains a valuable service from Kaspar, one of the eunuch guards. Both of the eunuchs, Kaspar and Arno, pleasure the duchess, and later in the story have their own love scene. The duchess remembers her first affair, in her youth, and later consummates it with Maxime. Alas, I didn’t have room for Maxime’s projected scene with Sylvie, and his scene with Henri was cut for pacing reasons.

As one review stated “something for everyone.”

The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom & Their Lover at Amazon.com.

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On writing The Moonlight Mistress

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

This post originated as a guest post for Lust in Time in December, 2008.

When I sold The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover, the contract was for two books. I’d submitted several brief ideas for the second book, but didn’t think about it too much until after I turned in the duchess manuscript. All I’d decided was that the story would be set during World War One (a research interest of mine, so I already had a library), and that it would have werewolves. I actually had the beginnings of a werewolf novel set during WWI, but after pondering for a few weeks, I realized that story would not work as an erotic novel. It was entirely too grim.

World War One is not the first setting one thinks of for an erotic romp; a dark, serious novel, yes, but I didn’t want to write that kind of book; I wanted something fun, or at least mostly fun. So I came up with the idea of melding pulp adventure novels with the early days of World War One. In a pulp adventure novel, werewolves wouldn’t be strange at all, and rather than make the war itself a villain, the force opposing the characters could be a classically cruel and amoral scientist. Overall, I wanted to work in two themes: differences between appearances and reality in relation to self, and technological warfare and a changing world affecting creatures of nature. My original title was Other Skins, to reflect those themes. Though I considered Sweet Savage Werewolves, too. *heh*

I would be writing something along the lines of the Doc Savage pulp stories, only set in an earlier period (interestingly, the characters in that series had backstory that they’d fought in WWI). I began to think about the characters, initially, in terms of their roles. To help my thought process, I polled my friends on which types of characters I should include. All of the characters in what eventually was titled Moonlight Mistress began as types, such as “a world-weary nurse who might shoot someone if they interfered with her patients” or “a cranky French soldier who is an expert in something useful.” Once I’d narrowed down the most popular of the types I’d brainstormed, I then polled again, on possible pairings. The answers I received were different, in some cases, than the choices I’d made myself, but after some thought, I realized in those cases my friends were smarter than I was. Also, the whole process of polling was a lot of fun, for
both me and my friends, and got my tired brain started working on the new story. Once I had the types, I gave the characters names, and began to figure out who they were by writing scenes. I didn’t complete a synopsis of the book, to turn in to my editor, until I had a significant amount of draft completed. Unlike the duchess novel, I never completed an outline, though I did make a list of scenes I wanted to write or felt I needed.

For a historical novel, the research is the best part, because mostly it involves reading. I searched out various bits of data online, but for the most part I read books, or read the parts of books that I needed. However, I didn’t have time to do all the reading before I began writing. And no matter how much I knew before I began writing, I would definitely need to research more things as I went along and saw what the story needed.

The best research tool I had was a sheet of tiny stickies, which I used to mark pages in books that held useful information. This saved me from having to spend time making notes, and I could read whenever I was unable to write (for example, while riding the bus). The second best tool I discovered was keeping a list of research questions, as they came up. I wouldn’t stop my writing session for research on these tiny items; I would make a note and go on, and later look up several answers at once. Examples of these questions are “list of period Anglican choral composers” and “car available with self-starter in 1914?” and “area of chemical study appropriate for time period.”

The details go by in an instant when reading, but they contribute a lot to the historical feel. If a detail is needed, I always try to make sure that detail is one that points up the differences between now and then, just enough to snag the reader’s attention and show them the book’s world is different from her world, but not enough to make her feel I’ve been dumping information for the sake of showing off my research. I hope I was successful! I guess I’ll find out in December 2009.

You can have a look at my personal research library at LibraryThing.

You can find Amazon links for some of these sources compiled on this page of my website.

Related post:
Some examples of line edits in The Moonlight Mistress.

Posted in moonlight mistress, werewolves, writing craft, writing process | 2 Comments

Siegfried Sassoon, "The Dream"

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

The Dream

I
Moonlight and dew-drenched blossom, and the scent
Of summer gardens; these can bring you all
Those dreams that in the starlit silence fall:
Sweet songs are full of odours.
While I went
Last night in drizzling dusk along a lane,
I passed a squalid farm; from byre and midden
Came the rank smell that brought me once again
A dream of war that in the past was hidden.

II
Up a disconsolate straggling village street
I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet.
The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet
And guide our Company in…
I watched them stumble
Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble;
Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs
Rifles, equipment, packs.
On filthy straw they sit in the gloom, each face
Bowed to patched, sodden boots they must unlace,
While the wind chills their sweat through chinks and cracks.

III
I’m looking at their blistered feet; young Jones
Stares up at me, mud-splashed and white and jaded;
Out of his eyes the morning light has faded.
Old soldiers with three winters in their bones
Puff their damp Woodbines, whistle, stretch their toes:
They can still grin at me, for each of ’em knows
That I’m as tired as they are…
Can they guess
The secret burden that is always mine?—
Pride in their courage; pity for their distress;
And burning bitterness
That I must take them to the accursèd Line.

IV
I cannot hear their voices, but I see
Dim candles in the barn: they gulp their tea,
And soon they’ll sleep like logs. Ten miles away
The battle winks and thuds in blundering strife.
And I must lead them nearer, day by day,
To the foul beast of war that bludgeons life.

–Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918

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Moonlight Mistress Excerpt – First Kiss

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

It’s 1914, and World War One is just beginning. Trapped in Germany, English chemist Lucilla and French scientist Fournier are forced into sharing a hotel room, and a bed. Moonlight Mistress by Victoria Janssen is due out December 2009 from Harlequin Spice.

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Lucilla closed her eyes and inhaled scent and warmth, hers and Fournier’s mingled. A decorous woman would protest even this chaste embrace, given their dishabille. She had passed decorous simply by being in this hotel, in this room, in this bed. She closed her eyes and felt their hearts beating, concentrating on the sense of well-being that cocooned her, trying to sear it into her memory against future need. She didn’t dare move, for fear it would end.

Fournier’s voice caressed the inner tunnel of her ear. “This is permissible?”

“Yes,” she said. Her throat tightened. Foolish to want more. Foolish. She did not even know this man. This young man. Far too young for her.

“Is it polite among the English, to ask if you have experience?”

Lucilla’s breath stopped as the world flipped. She should not have been surprised. The world had flipped more than once today, already. She drew a deep breath. “I don’t think so,” she said. “That seems silly just now, doesn’t it?”

“Well?”

He sounded as impatient as if he demanded coffee from a recalcitrant waiter. Lucilla laughed a little. He was clumsier than she in these matters. “I was engaged to be married, once. It ended badly, very badly. Yes, I am experienced.” She paused, as a thought occurred to her. “And you?”

Fournier snorted, a ticklish sensation against her neck. “Somewhat.”

A delicious sense of freedom flooded her to her bones. Lucilla rubbed her hand along his arm where it lay against her. She liked its heat and the contrast of soft skin over firm muscle, and the friction of hair beneath her palm. He must have liked it, too, for he shifted a little closer to her. She wondered how his skin tasted. “Have you asked me this for a reason?”

“You are toying with me.”

“Teasing,” she corrected, giddily. She lifted his arm to her mouth and kissed the back of his hand. It didn’t taste of anything in particular. She would need to taste some other spot, such as–her breath caught at the thought–the crease where his leg met his thigh. “I’ve never done this with a stranger. Or anyone, except the one.”

“I do not make a habit of seducing women,” Fournier said. “If that is what you wished to know. I have always wondered why numbers are considered to be a factor in these matters, if once is enough to be damning.” He paused, rubbing his nose against the back of her neck. Lucilla shivered at the odd but pleasurable sensation. “It was not my plan to seduce you, when I brought you here.”

“Oh, surely not,” she said. “You were so gallant. Why, when you offered to share your towel, I declare, my heart was all a-flutter.”

She couldn’t help herself; she began to laugh, at the absurdity of it all, at all the circumstances that had led her, a spinster chemist, to find herself nearly naked in a bed in Germany with a French scientist. She didn’t even know his field of specialization.

That thought sent her off again, and she laughed until her gut hurt. At some point, she gasped out a few words of explanation and Fournier laughed with her. Seemingly without transition, she was on her back and his face loomed above her. She lifted her hand and traced his mustache with her finger, then he was kissing her, first gentle brushing and nibbling, then deep kisses full of bristles and heat and wet swirling sensation, whirlpools sucking her down.

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c. Victoria Janssen 2009

More excerpts.

More “first kiss” excerpts are available at these authors’ blogs today:

Lauren Dane.
Cynthia Eden.
Vivi Anna.
Sylvia Day.
Moira Rogers.
Jaci Burton.
Shelli Stevens.
Elisabeth Naughton.
Viv Arend.
Anya Bast.
Mandy Roth.
Beth Williamson.
Michelle Pillow.
Taige Crenshaw.
McKenna Jeffries.
Maggie Robinson.
Juliana Stone.
Sasha White.
Maura Anderson.
Shelley Munro.
Jody Wallace.
Eliza Gayle.
Kelly Maher.

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How Times Change!

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

How times change!

On this day in 2003, I noted in my journal that I wrote 183 words on the novel I was writing at the time.

That is, 183 words all day.

Now, I very, very rarely allow myself to stop after less than 500 words, and my more usual goal is at least 1000 words in an evening. Of course, now I have these things called “deadlines.” And after years of tracking how many words I write, I have a much better idea of my capabilities.

Tomorrow, stop by for an excerpt from my next novel, Moonlight Mistress and links to excerpts by a list of other writers as part of Snippets Saturday. The theme for tomorrow is “First Kiss.” I’ll be participating in Snippets Saturday several times over the coming months; each one will feature a different theme, which I think is a really cool idea.

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Books on Writing

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

I have a few favorite books on writing which I’d like to share. Links are to Amazon.com.

This is my favorite, which I enjoy reading for itself as well as for what it teaches me: Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew by Ursula K. LeGuin.

This one is best read slowly and digested slowly: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews by Samuel R. Delany.

This one is good when your enthusiasm for writing is low; I think it’s also really good for writers who haven’t been writing for a long time: Take Joy: A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Craft by Jane Yolen.

This one is slightly unusual because it combines a history of a writing workshop with more practical discussion of writing: Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop by Kate Wilhelm.

Related posts:
How To Learn To Write.

Pithy Writing Advice.

Posted in writing, writing craft | 7 Comments

Writing Goals

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Victoria Janssen


What are your goals for writing?

I was thinking about this recently, and realized I needed to make some new goals. My first goal was sell a short story. I did quite a bit of that, all the while with the goal sell a novel. After I sold a novel, it was get a second novel contract, which I accomplished in April.

So what now?

I have a lot of ideas I’d love to turn into novels, but using those ideas doesn’t really feel like a goal; they’re just part of writing for me.

There’s the money aspect, but I’m not sure that counts as a goal, either. Though I love being paid for my work, other factors are more important to me, and it doesn’t seem useful to me to set a goal like earn X amount of money.

I don’t actually have the goal of becoming a full-time writer. If some fortuitous event made me unspeakably wealthy, perhaps, but I don’t see that happening. I don’t want to worry about my contracts in the way I would need to, if they were my sole source of income. I prefer the stability of having a day job.

My only real goal at present, besides the immediate, finish the pirate novel, is to work on becoming a better writer, but that’s more of a constant undercurrent than a goal. There’s write what I want to write, which I am pretty much doing already, to my astonishment. It’s not every publisher that will accept things like eunuchs and vengeful werewolf spies. And, of course, have fun. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t enjoy it.

Posted in writing, writing process | 6 Comments