Writing

The Elusive Bi Character

Kara Jorgensen12 Comments

In preparation for a fantasy novel I am planning to write in the near future, I decided to look up bisexual characters because my main character (actually two of my main characters) are bisexual. This proved to be easier said than done.

What I found was not exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to find books with bisexual characters, or more importantly, characters who happened to be bisexual. In the media, bisexual characters are often treated as merely plot devices. Oh, is the drama ebbing? Let’s toss in a bisexual character who will come into the protagonist’s life and either steal their boy/girlfriend or to form a love-triangle. This has added to the prejudice society has against bisexuals and leads people to falsely believe that bisexuals cannot be monogamous, will cheat on their partner, or wants a threesome. Just because a person likes two genders does not mean they want both at the same time. I came across a lot of books that sadly used these tropes.

I then decided to go onto Goodreads and explore their Listopia section for books with bisexual characters. This lead to numerous lists of LGBT characters, which I was not willing to pick through. My attention span does not last long enough for me to investigate two hundred different books, but I did find a few lists that could be of use to my research. As I scrolled through, of course a number (probably the majority) were straight up romance novels, which I skipped past. It wasn’t surprising since it makes sense that a writer would focus on the character’s sexuality, but the amount of stories that I found with a character who just happened to be bisexual was a bit disappointing. Because my future project will be a fantasy story, I wanted to find some books in the same genre. Luckily, I came across Pantomime by Laura Lam on an LGBT blog’s list and am hoping to read it in the near future.

As I was doing my research, I began to think about my characters and some of the problems a writer may come across while writing a bisexual character. Because society tends to think in terms of gay or straight, sometimes it’s hard to solidify that a character does indeed like both men and women. How many relationships need to be mentioned to get that across? Do I need to show these relationships or can my character just say she is bisexual? Then, I was wondering if she will be judged by her latest relationship. She previously had a girlfriend, but now she is falling for a man. Will she be straight-washed by readers? Will they assume she is suddenly straight? The answer is, probably. If she was dating a woman most recently, would they say she was gay or would they say she was experimenting? On some level, I don’t think there is a correct answer. No matter what order I portray her relationships, she will probably be only identified by her last relationship. My male character will also face the same difficulties. Male bisexuals tend to be immediately deemed gay or assumed to be a gay man who cannot accept himself and therefore still has relationships with women.

When writing characters, I don’t go into it thinking they will be x or y, but as I get to know them, I learn more about their past histories and often their past relationships. As I have gotten further into figuring out these two characters, I realized both had had relationships with their own sex and the opposite sex. They pose an interesting challenge in terms of the way the public may potentially view them and how I can work around these issues or if I should pay them any heed at all and just write what I feel is right for them. More than likely, I will do the latter.

If you know of any books with bisexual characters, please send them my way.

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Writing

A Sloppy Update

Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

Become-a-writerFor hours I wracked my brain to figure out what I was going to write today and still came up with very little, so please excuse this meandering and somewhat aimless progress update.

Well, for the first time in a while, I have actually been writing pretty consistently. I wish I could tell you what has suddenly caused this change in productivity. Part of it I think it is shaking off the transition period from the end of the semester, but I think a lot of it is taking the pressure off myself. For a while, I was telling myself, “You will write 1,000 words or you are a terrible writer!” Well, that doesn’t accomplish anything and only makes you feel bad about yourself when you don’t reach that goal. Then, I tried not editing anything while writing. I ended up getting frustrated because there were scenes I was itching to fix and it made it very hard to go forward.

Now, I have been sticking to what I like to call the croissant dough method. It can also be called two steps forward and one step back. When making dough for croissants, you need to continually fold it and layer it with butter. By building up the dough and breaking it down, you make a richer product. What I do is reread what I wrote during my last writing session and tinker with it. I tend to build-up scenes when I do this sort of editing because I have a tendency to write before bed, which leads to missing words and skimmed scenes that need to be beefed up later. By doing this, I also become reacquainted with my work, which makes it much easier to move forward.

In terms of word count, I’ve told myself that I need to write daily, which I’ve done all week thus far. My goal is to write between 500 and 1,000 words each day, and for the majority of the week with the exception of two days, I have been able to do that. This actually surprised me because in the past I have not kept up with it when I set word count goals for myself. I will admit that it felt like it took forever to get to 10,000 words, but now that I have passed that milestone, the words seem to flow easier.

Right now, my biggest issue is trying to weave in the many threads that will make up the plot for the rest of the book, and because I’m not that far into the book, I feel like I am sitting in the middle of a yarn basket. Well, hopefully as I reach the middle of the book, these threads will weave and knot and eventually form a story. For now, I keep telling myself that I’m not even a quarter of the way into the narrative and can’t rush things.

Monthly Review

May 2015 in Review

Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

Starting in January, I decided it would be a good idea to look back at each month and see what I have accomplished in my writing and marketing as well as reflect upon what needs to be improved in the future.

School’s out for summer! May has been the month of sweet freedom. Unlike April, which was stressful and made me want to tear my hair out, May has been lovely. Currently, I am at home except for one day a week where I work at my office job, and now I finally have time to write and read, which means, I can hopefully get a lot of work done in preparation for the fall semester. Yes, everything revolves around grad school… and writing, which is practically the same thing when you’re working toward an MFA in creative writing. Shockingly, I think I accomplished most of the goals I set last month.

What I did accomplish:

  1. Finished my last bit of schoolwork and received good grades
  2. Continued to blog and create a monthly newsletter
  3. Wrote 2 chapters of The Earl and the Artificer
  4. Edited The Earl and the Artificer
  5. Read 3 novels, a novella, and a short story (and began Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)
  6. Didn’t stress out at the Steampunk World’s Fair

Goals for June:

  1. Write 4 chapters of The Earl and the Artificer
  2. Work on creating a routine to be able to write every day
  3. Read every day
  4. Continue to produce content for my blog and newsletter
  5. Research marketing (possibly buy Susan Kaye Quinn’s marketing book)
  6. Get out of the house more

The last goal may seem a bit odd, but as an only child who lives at home and has the summers off for the most part, I become a hermit– a cranky, bored, semi-delusional hermit by the end of the summer. Cabin fever does not help my productivity, so this summer I am hoping to maybe get out a bit more when possible. I’m hoping that on Thursdays when my boyfriend is home from work that maybe we can go to the beach and sit and write/draw by the water. We are also celebrating our 10th anniversary in June, and while we probably aren’t doing anything that spectacular, I am still amazed that we’ve been together this long.

Anyway, getting back to goals, I only wrote two chapters this month. Part of this was due to my transitional period between school and vacation and the rest was caused by my own confusion regarding my plot. That week between the end of the semester and vacation beginning was a sort of limbo for me. My brain was still in work-mode, but I didn’t have any work to do and my story was not coming to me because I had been pushing it away for so many weeks. At that point, it felt like all I could do was read and recover from a lovely cold I developed at the same time. The other issue was my confusion regarding the plot of my current project. From writing bits and pieces over the course of a few months during the semester and never truly focusing on my book, I had no idea really where the story was going apart from the major plot points. If I don’t know where I’m going, I end up not going anywhere.

A good chunk of May was devoted to rereading The Earl and the Artificer and plotting what points I covered and what points needed to be addressed in the next few chapters (introducing certain characters and facts). As I reread it, I edited what I had, tightening the plot and beefing up some of the descriptions and scenes. I must admit that I tend to panic when the beginning of a story takes me a while to get into. Somehow I forget that I do this with every book, but when the threads of the plot are incredibly loose and not yet knitting together I worry they never will come together. I keep reminding myself that they will. I just need time and words.

Right now, I’m hoping to sit down in the next day or two and loosely plot chapters 6-10 of The Earl and the Artificer, so I can get cracking for the rest of the month. Maybe I’ll even be able to slip in a short story for the Ingenious Mechanical Devices universe or possibly for an anthology I have been looking into. One thing I have noticed with my writing is that it tends to pick up when I’m reading an inspiring book. Currently, I am reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I am loving it. It’s a huge book compared to what I usually read, but it’s moving quickly and I catch myself reading it as often as possible. Because of its size, I haven’t given myself a set number of books to read this month.

As a final note on May, I decided to run a sale where I set both books to 99 cents for a few days. I accidentally set it for Memorial Day weekend, and I’m not sure whether it was a good or bad thing because tons of authors planned sales for that weekend but it was the first official week of summer when people look for beach reading. At the same time, I ran an ad with Ereader News Today and sold quite a few copies of both books. Part of the reason I like to run sales is not necessarily to make money off of it (especially since the mark down obviously cuts my royalty) but to get my books into the hands of new readers. At 99 cents, readers are much more likely to take a chance on an unknown author, and after running the sale, I received a few more reviews and hopefully gained a few more readers along the way.

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Writing

Genre Fixation: Upmarket Fiction

Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

In several posts, I have raged against the literary fiction v. genre fiction situation in the publishing world. One is held in high regard yet is often boring, the other is derided as trite or too commercial. As a writer who finds herself stuck in the middle of these two extremes and utterly frustrated by the hundreds of descriptors for genre and style, I never felt my work fit in any one category.

This week I discovered a new genre, upmarket fiction. This is the definition from editor Robb Grindstaff, “From an audience perspective, upmarket means fiction that will appeal to readers who are educated, highly read, and prefer books with substantive quality writing and stronger stories/themes. Upmarket describes commercial fiction that bumps up against literary fiction, or literary fiction that holds a wider appeal, or a work straddles the two genres.” The Book Genre Dictionary defines it as “Books in the upmarket fiction genre are made up of stories that merge the commercial and literary genres. The books appeal to well-read, sophisticated readers who want a high quality and complexity of writing, but that also have strong characters and plot. Upmarket genre books are often book club titles and inspire not only enjoyment of the story in a reader, but thought and discussion as well. The books consist of many layers of meaning and emotion, making them more complex.”

I must admit that I saw the definition and went, YES! This is what I have been looking for when describing my work. I’m not all genre and I’m not all literary, I’m somewhere in between. It’s always disappointing when readers see steampunk or historical fantasy and assume it will be action-packed. Sorry, readers, mine is not. There is action, but I find myself more focused on my characters. What are they going through? How are their lives affected by the events of the story? How are they changing through each story/trauma? I like to think of my characters are humans rather than archetypes or unchanging figures, which you sometimes see in suspense or action series where the main character goes on adventures through dozens of books. They stay in character for the entire series, but they do so at the expense of growth.

At its heart, I think this is what upmarket fiction is. It’s a book with genre fiction aesthetics (such as being set in a fantasy world, alternate history, or dystopia), but rather than focusing on the action only, the author pays more attention to the characters and plot than how much action drives it. The downside to upmarket is it sounds a bit… snobby. The main issue is where the definitions suggest only highly educated people will like upmarket, but I think what they really mean is people who want more than just 300 pages of action. Upmarket readers want a deeper connection to the plot and characters. They value complexity in not only the characters’ psyches but the plot. They want a book that makes them think.

I also tend to be a reader of upmarket fiction. I get frustrated with literary fiction when it’s a hundred pages longer than it ought to be and tends to ramble. With genre fiction, I get frustrated when the characters don’t change or don’t react appropriately to the horrors they are dealing with. A monster just tore his best friend to shreds, yet he decides to make out with his girl friend and only mourn his loss for two sentences. I need more substance but not the point of literary fiction where it once again becomes insubstantial.

Some upmarket books would be: The Golem and the Jinni, Water for Elephants, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Left Hand of Darkness.

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Writing

Success and the Awkward Authoress

Kara Jorgensen9 Comments

For a type-A personality, success is a tricky thing to navigate and define. I thrive off getting good grades and being told that I’m at the top of the class. In writing, I’m definitely not at the top of the class. I’m not even in the middle. I’m at the bottom of the totem pole, trying to pull my way up. It’s been quite a while since I haven’t been at the top or a competitor, and it’s disconcerting to know that you’re a nobody.

I know I’m a newbie to the world of self-publishing. It’s been less than a year since I published my first book, and I’ve not only had sales every month but I’ve gotten a few loyal readers who love my books and characters. There is no reason for me to complain, but part of me wonders if I’m succeeding or failing. In this industry, I can’t rely on grades to tell me whether or not I’m doing well. You can’t rely on sales rankings because while you made a sale, you may not have added a reader. You can’t even rely on reviews because you aren’t tailoring the story to the reader as you would an assignment for a professor. Some readers will love it, others will be ambivalent, and a few will hate it. People won’t get it, and you’ll be frustrated that they didn’t see your vision. You can’t go and say anything to explain your point of view, all you can do it hope someone else gets it. It’s frustrating. It makes you question if you’re doing as well as you hoped or thought you were.

The key is to define what success is to you. It’s so much easier said than done, but when you figure out what success is to you, you can determine whether or not you’re actually failing or simply lacking confidence. Do you want to sell a lot of books each year or do you want to gain a larger readership? Do you want consistently high ratings on your books or do you want to grow with each book?

As I’ve written more and gotten deeper into the publishing process, I have found that what I care about are: gaining new readers and improving the quality of my writing with each book. Unfortunately, you need sales to get readers, but I’d rather have ten very loyal readers than a hundred ambivalent ones. In terms of quality, I know my first book is not my best work, and I’m okay with that. I’ve grown since I published it a little over a year ago, and I should have. With each successive book, I should get better. I should improve and grow and experiment. That’s what art and writing are about. The good thing is I know book two is even better than book one, so I guess in that area, I’m successful.

In this area, I find myself battling logic and emotion. Logically, I know that most writers aren’t successful in multiple areas (readership, sales, improvement, notoriety, etc.) until they have at least five books out and do a lot of marketing and connecting. Emotionally, I’m upset that I don’t feel that I’m doing as well as I should. I also realize that no matter how many sales, readers, or 5 star reviews I had, I would still probably feel insecure. This state of mind always worsens when I’m feeling stuck in my current writing project, and guess where I am currently– floundering in planning my next chapter. In order to not fall into this trap (or at least not as often), writers need to define what success is to them and work towards those goals.

What do you define as success?

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Writing

Both Books on Sale This Weekend

Kara Jorgensen4 Comments

For the holiday weekend and the vote for gay marriage in Ireland, both books of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series are on sale for 99 cents on Amazon.

2 books 99 centsThe Earl of Brass: http://amzn.com/B00L4CWBVE
The Winter Garden: http://amzn.com/B00RU0R0YW

Both are set in the Victorian era and explore characters navigating a world that they feel excluded from. There’s cross-dressing, archaeology digs, underground civilizations, mad noblemen, soul-stealing machines, and a bit of romance.

If you’re willing, please spread the word and tell your friends. Sale ends Tuesday morning.

Writing

Sales, Interviews, and Updates

Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

As the title says, we have some updates, an author interview, and a sale. All fun things, I think, for a Friday.

eob 99c promo

SALE

So, first off, The Earl of Brass, book one of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices is on sale for 99 cents from May 22nd (today) until May 26th (Tuesday) on Amazon. If you’re looking for a summer read to transport you to the deserts of Palestine or back to Victorian England, look no further. If you’re willing, please spread the word as well, especially if you know anyone who isn’t historical fantasy or steampunk/gaslight fantasy.

**Update** Spur of the moment, I decided to make The Winter Garden 99 cents as well from May 23rd (Saturday) until May 26th (Tuesday). If you want to pick up BOTH Ingenious Mechanical Devices books for less than $2, head over to Amazon.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Next item of business: I did an author interview with the lovely Steve Turnbull. Mr. Turnbull is a fellow steampunk author who writes the Maliha Anderson series. To find out more about Steve Turnbull, check out his website. The author interview was featured in his newsletter here. You can get to know a bit about my process, what projects are coming up, and what I’ve learned along the way. I must admit, I love doing author interviews. By being asked questions, I often find I learn more about myself and my writing process.

UPDATES

I am part of a Steampunk media bundle from the Steampunk World’s Fair on We Bundle. It’s filled with music and a couple books including a short story by yours truly. It’s a name your own price thing, so you can spend as much or as little as you’d like on the bundle. It’s quite a bit of music and reading for the price, so if you’re interested, check it out here.

For the past few weeks, I have felt so stuck in my writing. When I’m feeling stressed out or torn between school and my personal projects (aka my writing), the words don’t flow. Oddly, I also get the urge to write when I have a ton of work to do, but I think that’s just an avoidance tactic. It’s been really hard to get anything done and have been stuck on the same chapter for two weeks. FINALLY, I finished it.

At first, I was just happy and relieved that it’s finished, but then I realized that I had finished my schoolwork completely, didn’t have to worry about my reading at the Steampunk World’s Fair, AND I got my grades for the semester, both of which were very good. As soon as the stress is off, it’s like someone unclogged the dam. The words come flowing out, and suddenly, I’m writing again. I don’t quite have the writing bug like I do sometimes, but I feel a lot better. I don’t think I’ll make my goal of 3-4 chapters for the entirety of the month. At this point, I’ll be happy with 2 finished chapters.

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Writing

Relatable or Realistic MCs

Kara Jorgensen3 Comments

alys party picShould main characters be a body the reader slips into or should they be their own autonomous being, free to be as eccentric and wayward as they please? I came across on article called “Five Books That Broke Sacred Writing Rules (And Yet We Love Them),” and it mentions Gail Carriger’s Soulless and how the main character is not universally relatable. While I find most of these “rules” rather dumb (please pardon my screw-the-rules mentality for literature), it made me wonder whether writers should strive to make characters universal or whether they should let them stand as complex beings–human beings.

I understand that an alien who has five limbs, breathes underwater, and can only communicate through clicks may not be the most relatable character for a modern reader, but where does universality begin and end? As a writer, my biggest fear of universal characters is the boring factor. For someone to be “universally relatable,” they would have to appeal to everyone. Are we striving for everyone or just the majority? If we are striving for the majority, why? Why must my character be relatable for everyone? Fiction is meant to allow the reader to walk in someone else’s shoes, to live their lives for a few hundred pages. If I’m living my life on the page, why should I read it?

Even in some of the oddest places, we find there is a kernel of universality in every character. In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, the graphic novel is about a little girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. To a modern audience, Marji seems like the furthest character from their own lives, yet the book is a best seller, but why? Because while Marji lives in a very different place and under very different circumstances than her Western audience, she is still a child with hopes and dreams who loves rock music and Michael Jackson. It’s this strand of universality that brings the audience to her. The same is true of Alexia in Soulless. She may appear emotionless due to her lack of a soul, but she prefers libraries to parties and struggles with her self-image and self-worth. Many girls (and guys) reading the novel immediately relate to her being an outsider.

How should we define universality with our characters? Should they be pants that the reader can slip into–blank slates that are nothing more than masks of archetypes–or should they have strains of the universal within their beings? In the same way that we make friends through discovering relatable aspects in other beings, should we do this for characters in works of fiction? In my mind, the answer is simple, characters are as human as we are, and as humans, they are complex beings with multiple facets that need to be explored. By pairing them down to make them “universal,” we destroy what makes them human and ultimately what makes them relatable.

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Personal Life · Writing

The Steampunk World’s Fair

Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

On Friday, I attended the Steampunk World’s Fair for the first time and gave my first reading outside of the university.  The SPWF was a blast. It was like stepping into an alternate reality. There were fantastic costumes everywhere, leather, brocade, rainbows, tulle. Women in corsets, men in waistcoats and gauntlets. The gamete ran from highly realistic to fantastical, and I don’t think there was a bad one in the bunch. Along with the fair-goers, there were also bands, panels (I attended a fantastic one about Edgar Allan Poe, which makes me really want to go to the Poe Museum), and shops.  My boyfriend and I stopped at the haberdashery, and I finally got a pith helmet.  What I find funny is that I always wanted a white pith helmet, and it turns out that the white ones are from the Anglo-Zulu War, which is mentioned in The Earl of Brass.

pithI ended up not getting too decked out this year. I went as a hybrid between modern and Victorian instead of all steampunk because, as the Awkward Authoress, I was afraid being in a full, rather uncomfortable costume would set my anxiety off. It’s amazing how clothing choice can aggravate anxiety. Instead I wore my corset, black pants, and a biker jacket. Probably a bit more cyberpunk than steampunk, but I was comfortable in my own skin and actually enjoyed myself.

My reading itself went a little less smoothly. I ended up being scheduled at midnight as one of the last events of the night, and by then, most of the fair-goers had cleared out apart from the night-owls and revelers. It made me wonder if I screwed up AM/PM on my sign-up papers. Either way, I wasn’t expecting a crowd since I’m a brand new author with a small following. I knew three people were coming for sure, but I was quite pleased to see a few more come.  The weirdest part was that my anxiety really wasn’t too bad. I made myself a little outline of what I wanted to cover before I gave my reading, and while I didn’t have a podium, my audience was very attentive and forgiving of the late hour. Then, it got weird.

What I can only describe as a New Orleans style band marched past my door followed by a parade of revelers from the courtyard. I could feel myself beginning to sputter. The band was so loud that I had to stop and wait for them to pass and ended up losing my place. Of course my stress level jumped, and I was embarrassed that I had to stop my entire program for a few minutes. Then, I said to myself, “Would it be better to pretend the band wasn’t there and shout over them?” No, it wouldn’t have worked anyway. As my aunt said when I told her, this would only happen to me. If something weird is going to happen, it’s probably to me, and a brass band marching through during my reading was not something I anticipated. Oh well.

The best part of the night was that a reader vacationing from Canada came to the fair and attended my reading. I knew she was coming since we message back and forth on Facebook, and she brought me a bag of goodies from Canada. All of the nights woes and anxieties melted away. It didn’t matter that the band played over me because someone actually: A) cared enough to come B) wanted to hear me read C) brought me a present when she obviously did not have to. I’m eternally grateful to her because she was able to squelch all of my fears and regrets and ended my night on a high note. Thank you so much, Lois!

spwf goodiesEither way, if you ever want to do a reading or present somewhere, take a chance. Even if the night went a bit awry, it was worth it to get the experience under my belt.

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Writing

Blurb Reveal: The Earl and the Artificer (IMD #3)

Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

the earl and the artificer titleHi everyone,

I have been working on and off on The Earl of the Artificer. Since the end of the semester a week ago, it’s been hard to get back into the swing of my summer schedule. I’m still in the transitional period, so hopefully by next week, I’ll be completely into full-time writing mode. In the meantime, I have [finally] composed the back of the book blurb for The Earl and the Artificer. Typically, I like to write these fairly early on, especially if I know where the story is going. It may change between now and when the book is released, but without further ado, here is the blurb for book three:

After an uneventful wedding, Hadley and Eilian Sorrell should have foreseen the trouble waiting for them at Brasshurst Hall. Eilian wants nothing more than to leave England, but at the insistence of his mother, he and Hadley travel to his abandoned ancestral home to meet his tenants. They soon find the house and the quaint neighboring village are not what they seem.

Behind a mask of good manners and gentle breeding lurks a darker side of Folkesbury. As Eilian and Hadley struggle to fit in with the village’s genteel society, they find everyone is at the mercy of Randall Nash, a mysterious man who knows every secret and seemingly appears out of thin air.

When the village blackmailer turns up dead, the Sorrells find themselves entangled in murder, theft, and intrigue with the manor at the heart of it all. Something long thought lost and buried within Brasshurst’s history has been found—something worth killing for.

I hope the blurb has piqued your interest. In a few weeks, I’ll put up a Goodreads page for book three even though the book won’t be coming out for quite a while (the current estimate is winter ’15 to spring ’16).

As a side note, I’ll be doing a reading at the Steampunk World’s Fair this Friday night, so prepare to see plenty of pics and a post about my experiences after. Please check out the schedule here, and if you are attending the SPWF on Friday, I hope to see you there!

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