Might get a bit more today, but I'm at a good stopping point. Next scene should be easy-peasy to do. Here's a teeny tiny snippet from My Fair Succubi to get you through the day. It's very rough draft, so please be kind.

The set-up: Jackie & a friend (Ethan) are cleaning up someone's trashed house. Ethan is...well, he's the male equivalent of a nun. A monk, if you will. Raised behind monastery walls and all that. He's...innocent. I lovingly refer to him as my Napoleon Dynamite.

Snippet!
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"Thank you, Ethan," I said, dumping my backpack of clothing on the corner of the couch and glancing around the room. "I really appreciate it, and I'm sure Remy would too if she were here."

He said nothing, but I caught the gleam of his eyes again as he grabbed the garbage bag and began to stuff it full of shredded paper. "You are welcome, succubus."

Oh brother. Again with the 'succubus' thing. "Can you please just call me Jackie, for once and for all? Jeez."

"Calling you by your first name would imply an improper relationship," he said in a stiff voice. "And I have no wish to imply such a thing."

Well, at least he was honest about it. "Can you call me by something else? A pet name of some sort?"

He straightened and looked at me with a perfectly grave expression. "Like...Fluffy?"

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Consider the evidence. Here's a short clip talking about some of her more wackadoo outfits:

And here's another one of her videos. This one features her in a weird Hello Kitty get-up (toward the end), and some sort of cyborg paraplegic outfit. Seriously.

You might be watching that and thinking "Dang. Bitch is crazy." And she totally, totally is. And I (and nine bajillion other fans) absolutely love that about her. She is not afraid to be strange, and absolutely, completely unafraid to take people out of their comfort zone. She loves making her audience wonder what she is going to do next.

I love that about her.

I mean, sure. There are always people that do not get it. That's the same for any kind of artistic form, whether it be music or books or watercolors. And we're not going to talk about that today, because that's totally another blog post. What we're going to talk about here is pushing the envelope.

Do you push the envelope in your writing?

See, I think that aspiring writers don't push the envelope. When you are seeking publication, I've noticed that there's a big focus to find that "new" thing that has never been done before. Frog-changelings! Never been done! Let's run with that! Were-turtles!

I've been there, done that. You see, I wrote a book about a valkyrie heroine back in 2004. Back when the urban fantasy craze was really just beginning. Vampires were 'over' (yes, even back then) and everyone was scrambling to find the 'next' vampire. So I wrote about valkyries (since I'm a Norse mythology geek) and sent it out, proud that I'd come up with something 'so original'. And I sent it out, and sent it out. Half the agents I sent it to didn't know what a valkyrie was and weren't interested.

When that book didn't sell, I was stumped as to what to do next. I mean, here I had this great idea and nobody knew what to do with it or how to market it, right? One agent flat out told me that "We need something easily marketable, and a valkyrie isn't it." (at least, at that time)

And then I got an idea for a new novel. And discarded it. It was a little too 'out there'. It was about a female vampire, but instead of blood, she fed on...sex. I thought it was completely and totally ridiculous. It was crazypants. No one was going to want this! But I started writing it anyhow...and I just threw in whatever. Sex in a confessional? Sure! Historical figure turned evil nemesis? Why the heck not? Speedboat chases and fallen angels? Who cares at this point? There was no mental filter to tell me 'No' when I wrote that book. Anything I wanted to put in there, I put in there.

I wrote it. And as I wrote it, I realized...this one was marketable. It wasn't the concept itself (immortals that feed on blood, yawn). It was that I'd pushed the concept of vampire into a different territory. I'd made it into a succubus, but kept the same basic concept as a vampire - feed or die. Except it wasn't like all the other vampire stories out there. Not quite.

And it sold, along with a sequel.

I recently sold another book, about a dating agency that deals exclusively with paranormal clients. Again, a basic concept, neatly twisted into something different. Pushed outside of the regular envelope. It's the same old thing...except, not.

This is why vampire books continue to sell. And Twilight clones. And Regency romances starring dukes and bluestockings continue to sell. This is why Navy Seals continue to sell. People love to read what's familiar and comfortable. Why re-invent the wheel? There's nothing more basic or versatile other than the wheel (except for maybe a stick!) and the reason why we keep using the wheel is because IT WORKS.

You can come up with wacky, mythical creatures known only in the most obscure of mythologies (lamias! catoblepas!) but you're also going to run into a lot of head-scratching and puzzlement. Whereas if you take the established and put a twist on it and push it outside of the ordinary, it's...clever.

After all, if you take away the wacky videos and the strange outfits (and the odd name), Lady Gaga is just a young, blonde pop singer. Nothing special about that. But she packaged herself in a unique way to stand out, and continues to push the envelope and surprise her audience. And they keep coming back for more.

So what are you going to put in your book to push the envelope?

So I’m waiting in line at the cafeteria during my lunch hour (well, more like lunch-10-minutes). There are several ‘bars’ of food choices set up – I was virtuous and went for turkey and steamed broccoli. The line was empty except for the man in front of me, and he was what I refer to as a close talker.

You know the type. If they come up to you to speak, they’re within two feet of your face. They brush up against you when on the walking path (even though there’s plenty of room otherwise).  They lean in uncomfortably close, and they proceed to shout in your face. Or stare at your boobs (though guys might not have this problem). They're in your face so much that you can feel their breath touching your face, or (in really bad situations), the spit from when they are talking.

I’ll be honest – close talkers baffle me. Perhaps because I am intensely conscious of other people’s space, or just intensely conscious of others, period. So I don’t understand the mentality. WHY would you invade someone's space like that? I have to assume they don't know better, because the thought of someone doing it on purpose is a little, well, creepy.

This particular guy was leaning over the buffet windows to talk to the employee there. “I want the turkey,” he told her, and leaned his arm OVER the buffet windows so he could point at it (because, you know, no one can point at something on the other side of glass. Sigh).  The woman takes a step back (and so do I) and he continues to wave his hand on the other side of the glass, pointing out his vegetables. “I really like carrots,” he tells her, and he’s so close to the glass that I can see his breath fogging on it.

(Dude, that’s when you know you’re too close. Really.)

Anyway. He takes his lunch and disappears off into the cafeteria wilds, but I’m left wondering…how exactly does one become a close-talker? Is it in your genetics? Originally I thought he might be hard of hearing, but I’m half deaf (no lie) and while I talk loudly, I don’t close-talk. So that can't be it every time. Are these people just born without a sense of space? Missing their conjoined twins? Or do they grow up in confined areas and thus don’t know how to use the full sidewalk? 

(I momentarily have a vision of children being raised in rows of cages, much like puppy mills. Close-talker mills?)

At any rate, I just thought this was a bit of weirdness I could share. That, and I’m probably going to put a close-talker in my next book. Just because it’s uncomfortable for my heroine.

Anyone have any bizarre quirks they've added to a book after seeing someone exhibit it in person?

I started this journal because I wanted to keep myself honest about the writing. And for a while there, when I was writing every day, I was journaling every day with metrics and snippets and details and life was great. I haven't done metrics a lot lately, mostly because they'd read like this:

Monday: 0
Tuesday: 0
Wednesday: 0
Thursday: Does paying my bills online count?
Friday: 0

You see the drill. No darlings, no snippets, only the occasional emo angsting on Twitter. I haven't been going out and doing exciting stuff, I've just been sleeping and working, sleeping and working. Occasionally winding down with some X-box 360. Very little reading. Little to no writing.

I'm in the nebulous 'between' stage again, and we hates it, preciousss. For a variety of reasons, I'm holding off on new projects and am working on completing an old one that's about 75% done. You know how it is with old projects. They're like leftovers. They loiter in the back of your fridge like the virtuous, stockpiled-for-later things that they are, and you tell yourself "I'm going to eat that tomorrow!" Except when tomorrow gets here and all you have staring back at you is leftovers, you opt for pizza delivery (or the new manuscript) instead.

I *KNOW*. I do this with manuscripts all the time. "I'll come back to this one later! No problem!"

Except it IS a problem when it turns into leftovers. Still, I am being virtuous and slowly working my way through it, even if it is by small spoonfuls. I'm hoping April provides a little more excitement and guidance, but I think it's going to be a slow burn until the beginning of summer. We'll see. In the meantime, I am debating what to do with said story when I am done with it, since it looks like it will only be about 55k or so, max. And kind of nerdy. Romantic, but nerdy.

But who cares about all that, right? Did you see that Meljean Brook's awesome novella, "Thicker Than Blood" in the FIRST BLOOD anthology has been nominated for a RITA Award? The only paranormal novella - I'm so excited for her and I hope she wins! I absolutely loved this story.

Also nominated? Roxanne St. Claire’s excellent NOW YOU DIE and Nalini Singh’s MINE TO POSSESS.

Congrats to all the RITA nominations.

It's just another ho-hum week here at Casa Myles, and I'm ashamed (well, not really) to say that I spent the weekend immersed in video gaming. When I wasn't trying to get the characters in Mass Effect to orgy with each other (don't ask), I was unlocking little weirdo cousins in Beautiful Katamari or playing Left 4 Dead.

Which brings me to something interesting.

A few of the games we've recently gotten for the X-box have teeeeeeeeeerrrible reviews. Awful. Just awful. We initially held off on getting Left 4 Dead (a first person zombie shooter) because the reviews on Gamefaqs were less than flattering. "The AI sucks!" or "Your NPCs steal all the equipment!" and things like that were enough that we marked it off of the buying list.

When I went to the store to reserve the new Street Fighter game, we mentioned a few of the games we liked on the Xbox 360, and the saleswoman gushed over Left 4 Dead. I told her my concerns, and she assured me that the reviews were nuts and it was a great game to play. And she was totally right - this is easily one of our favorite games for the Xbox, period. It's amazing and scary and so much fun.

Another game - my husband got a game called "Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad". It's basically what it sounds like - Japanese hot girls with realistically bouncing boobs run around and slay zombies. My husband loves it - there's some laughably bad stuff in it, but it's a fun, mindless game with a lot of clothes to unlock (which is my favorite part of any game - Barbie dress up).

This game has an absolutely horrendous rating on Gamefaqs. Husband and I were discussing this, and we came to the same conclusion - bad reviews are just as useless as gushing ones. There is always going to be some moron that is all "OMG I LOVE THIS AND EVERYTHING ABOUT IT" and there is always going to be some douchebag that is all "I HATE THIS GAME AND EVERYTHING IT STANDS FOR".

This is so true for books, too. Just look at Amazon. Every book that has some amazing ratings also has some really foul ones. Let's look at Kresley Cole's newest, Kiss Of The Demon King. Lots and lots of 5 star, gushing reviews. And lots of "This author jumped the shark!" etc.

I personally really enjoyed the book and have recommended it to lots of people. But if I would have checked Amazon before buying the book (and having never read Cole), I might be afraid of what I was buying.

So what's a person to do?

In my opinion, go for the handsell. A friend of mine suggested I get Beautiful Katamari for my Xbox. She said basically, "It is the weirdest sh&t you will ever see, but it is totally addictive." And when I first played the game, I thought she'd been smoking a little something-something, because the game was NUTS. But then you play a little more, and play a little more, and the next thing you know, you're obsessed. Her review was bang on. She knew I'd like it because we'd discussed other games and had similar opinions.

The same thing with books, really. Find a friend that shares similar reading interests and ask if they've read a series that you're thinking about. Or ask someone that is recommending a book another series that they enjoy. If I say that I love Kresley Cole AND I love Nalini Singh and Erin McCarthy, and you happen to hate both of those, maybe you don't buy what I suggest. You know?

Where am I going with this? Basically that there are always going to be good reviews of stuff, and bad reviews of stuff. It's the law of the internet. For every slobbering fanboy that loves it, someone's going to set up a hate group for it.

And maybe give the Bikini Samurai girls a try anyhow, because their breasts jiggle when they swing the sword. No kidding.