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Valmont Contingency Giveaway Results
All six commenters get a free copy of The Valmont Contingency. I’ll contact you (probably on Friday; the day job is being complicated this week) to work out the details.
Thanks, everyone!
The Valmont Contingency Released Today
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: novel, release, Valmont Contingency, writing
Comments (10) I’m so excited that I finished editing the API docs for the day job and posted them early so I could lurk on the Carina Press website. VC is the first book listed under New Releases:
I now, officially, have a backlist. In celebration, how about a contest of sorts? Leave a comment and I’ll pick someone randomly for a free copy of The Valmont Contingency.
I’m even taking a break from The Nobinata Gambit (the next book in the series) for the day.
— Val
Geisha means Artist
In The Valmont Contingency, Tasha Ocasek’s mother is a master geisha, who runs a school in the traditional Nipponese arts on the planet Honshu. Tasha spent the first eight years of her life with her mother, and has kept up her studies of the samisen, a traditional instrument played by plucking strings. She can also correctly apply the highly stylized makeup mostly worn by apprentice geisha, who are usually known as maiko.
I want to make one thing very, very clear: a geisha is not a prostitute or a courtesan. Geisha means artist, and so women who work as geisha dance, play musical instruments, wear traditional clothing, hairstyles and makeup (although they usually only bother with full makeup for important events), and perform the Tea Ceremony.
Hiring a full geisha to perform for an evening is very expensive, sort of like hiring an opera singer, or a concert violinist. Visiting a geisha‘s tea house is the equivalent of going to a highly accurate Renn Faire. It isn’t anything like hiring an Escort.
This is not to say that the traditional cultures of Japan and China did not include prostitutes and courtesans, because they did. And those courtesans and prostitutes wore full kimono, elaborate hairstyles and full stylized makeup. Confusing, right?
One quick way to tell the difference is that a geisha will always have her obi (kimono belt) tied in back, requiring someone to dress her and undress her. She’s not going to shed that very expensive traditional kimono until she’s done for the day. A yujo (prostitute) or oiran (courtesan) ties her obi in front so that she can undress and dress herself.
A note of caution: Sometimes respectable middle-class women tied their obi in front as well, particularly if they were working. You don’t want to mistake a hard-working farmwife for a woman of pleasure — it could cause all kinds of trouble.
Victoria’s Secret recently got in trouble for advertising a “naughty geisha” outfit, which appeared to be a mesh body suit with fabric in a few strategic places. As far as I’m concerned, they should have gotten in trouble, because a naughty geisha would wear a translucent kimono with a wide obi providing strategic coverage — you know, like Tasha’s Red Kimono, not something that snaps in the crotch.
Duh.
Valmont Contingency Excerpt–First Kiss
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: excerpt, release, Valmont Contingency, writing
Leave a comment Garrick gave up. She was scared and frustrated, and he didn’t want an implosion. He’d already been through one of those and, honestly, didn’t care to repeat the experience.
Ripping damn, he wanted to help her. “Would you feel better if you slapped me?”
She huffed. “You haven’t done anything to warrant it.” Then she frowned. “Lately.”
“Fine,” he agreed. “I’ll do something tacky and rude, you can slap me for it, and then we’ll move on.” Without waiting for a response he dragged her against him and sank his fingers into her hair, using the silky mass to pull her head back.
“What—ow!”
He covered her mouth with his, swallowing whatever else she was going to say.
Her entire body went stiff and he congratulated himself on a job well done. In another second or two she would shove, he would let go and brace for impact. Any second now. Any…
She melted.
The stiffness turned into soft curves, her palms slid up his chest and her lips parted. Her tongue flicked out to touch the inside of his lower lip and the really weird thing happened. The top of his head blew off, taking most of his brain with it. Rational thought was a dim memory and all those “baser” instincts it overruled were now in control. The drive to breathe, to eat.
She moaned quietly, deep in her throat.
The drive to mate.
He had both hands on her backside, pulling her hips tight against his to ease some of the throbbing while she pushed her fingers into his hair. She wrapped one of her legs around his, her bare toes rubbing the back of his calf.
“Rick?”
Somehow she’d said his name even while he was trying to lick her tonsils. Her voice was deeper than he would have expected, not as breathy, more…male. Male?
“Captain, this is the bridge. We have a Reich distress call originating in Republic space.”
Ripping hell on a platter. It was Shak, not Tasha. Brain matter reappeared and told him in no uncertain terms exactly how stupid he was, even when everything between his ears was functional. On the other hand, disengaging from that full-body kiss was quite possibly the most physically demanding thing he’d ever done—enough to make him pant from exertion. Exertion. It had to be exertion, because the alternative was a direct violation of half a dozen military rules that he had insisted go into the navy contract.
Tasha mewled in protest, a noise he hoped the comm hadn’t picked up as he tried to control his breathing enough to talk.
“Captain here. What’s the nature of the emergency?”
There was a tangible pause, almost as if Shak was trying to figure out what was going on. Garrick wished him luck. “Engine trouble,” was the eventual response. “Intercept or transmit to Glitzer?”
Well, that would explain what a Reich ship was doing this far over the border. They could have been drifting for a sepcyke. And Direwolf had the ability to help with that kind of emergency. A heavy sigh pushed its way out of his lungs.
“Intercept.” As if he had any choice. And it would keep him far away from Tasha. Direwolf was a tiny ecosystem in the middle of space and he was in control of it. She was dependent on the ship for the oxygen, pressure and heat that kept humans alive in space. She had to be able to trust him not to take advantage of that dependence.
“Bridge out.” Which meant he had five minutes to finish whatever was going on in here before Misha would expect him to show in the ready room.
Garrick glanced down into enormous indigo eyes that were just a little dazed-looking. His ears felt warm. “You were supposed to slap me, remember?”
She blinked at him a couple of times. “Your name is Rick?”
“Yeah.” He started, gently, to pry her off. “That’s me.” Buddha on a stick. He’d been trying to lick her tonsils and she hadn’t known his name. He was a lower life-form than slime mold.
“Oh.” She seemed to realize she still had limbs wrapped around him and let go. She stepped back and looked at the floor, the bulkhead, anywhere but him. “So you’re going to board another ship?”
“It’s my job.” And taking advantage of attractive women who were completely dependent on him was emphatically not part of that particular job. Even if it felt extraordinarily good.
“What if some of them need medical treatment?” She actually tried to dig a toe into the flooring, which looked adorable if almost painfully cliché.
“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.” He pulled her chin up with a knuckle. “Look, you’re still short of sleep. Twelve hours over six cykes isn’t enough. Nap. If I need you, I’ll call you. I promise.”
Oh god, she was biting her lower lip. Then she nodded. “I’ll try to nap.”
He needed to get away from her for a moment or he was going to dive back into her body, and the guilt from doing it once was bad enough. His ears felt like they might be considering spontaneous combustion.
“You want me to tell Shak he’s getting a new roommate?”
She looked confused. “Who is Shak?”
“Second-shift commander. The guy on the comm just now.”
She blinked several times in succession. Either she was batting her eyes at him, or she was trying not to cry. “No.”
He didn’t have time for this right now, no matter how vulnerable and appealing she was at the moment. Especially given how vulnerable she was at the moment. “Then we’ll talk about the rest of it when I get back, all right?”
She nodded again, somber.
He felt like enviro sludge, but he nodded back. “In the meantime, I have an engine to fix.”
Masks
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: new novel, Storytelling, writing
Comments (2) I’m very nearsighted…like, I need my glasses to find my glasses nearsighted. As a result, I’ve never been able to wear a mask without walking into furniture, walls, people, large pets…you name it and I’ve probably smacked a shin on it without corrective eyewear. And I’m not a big enough nerd to wear glasses over a mask.
In The Valmont Contingency, both the hero and heroine use masks. While Garrick doesn’t hide his face, he does hide his name and identity while out on shakedown / privateering patrols. It’s a reasonable precaution, given the kind of people he deals with and his family’s net worth. I’ll discuss Tasha’s mask in my Release Day post on the Carina Press blog.
I’ve noticed that the characters in my stories are never just one thing, just as the people in my life are never just one thing. My supervisor (at the day job) is a software QA manager. He also plays bass guitar in a band. Spooky Man is retired on disability, but he’s also an animal seducer — doesn’t matter what species, they all seem to adore him.
In my stories, the characters often need to disguise or hide part of themselves to protect friends, family or their own future. In Blade’s Edge, Taryn needs to hide that she’s a twin, because it would cloud the line of succession in her small country.
In Open Mike at Club Bebop, the hero has a military handle he uses when in the net, but he keeps it separate from his physical identity for several reasons, including the facial reconstruction after the “friendly fire” incident that nearly killed him. And the fact that he still does clandestine cyberwork for the government.
Once upon a time, I was active in the Society for Creative Anachronism. As part of developing a persona for recreating history, members are encouraged to research and adopt a Medieval- and/or Renaissance-appropriate name. I still have friends who know me primarily by that name.
Even Val Roberts is not my legal name, but a shortened version of it, in case I need to sign hundreds of autographs at a time one day. Hey, it could happen. Technically, then, I have three identities, although I seem to be able to limit my characters to two identities.
But what about you? Do you have a mask, or an alter-ego that you don’t reveal to everyone? If you’re a superhero, don’t answer that. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for your nemesis discovering your secret.
Be careful out there. Things are not always the way they first appear.
News from Real Life
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: real life, Totally Off Topic
Leave a comment Last Friday I bought a new car.
I did my homework to figure out exactly which model I wanted, I was pre-approved for a loan from my credit union, I had detailed my trade-in and removed all personal possessions from it, I knew what price point I wanted. I was ready.
It still took four hours to go through the negotiation and buying process (paperwork). It might have taken longer because I didn’t use the dealership for financing, even though all the financial gurus say not to.
It took another half-day to get the new car registered and the insurance switched over. I don’t remember all this extra work when I bought the Subaru, but that was fourteen and a half years ago.
The new car is a slightly used 2012 Ford Escape XLT, with more freaking buttons in the dashboard and steering wheel than some airplanes I’ve flown in.
I think I have to know Morse code to reset the trip odometer, but it locks/unlocks by itself and nags you when the oil needs to be changed. The first time it locked the doors while it was moving, it startled me to the point of almost driving off the road.
It also has an automatic transmission, my first ever. I don’t really like the automatic transmission, but I guess 99.5 percent of humanity is too busy texting, shaving, eating and/or putting on makeup to learn how to control their vehicle by properly using a clutch.
Yes, that was a slam at people who can’t drive a car with a manual transmission. You will not survive the coming apocalypse, as zombie hordes can manage automatics. So there. Ha! (Yes, we still have a car with a five-speed, so we’ll be able to get away.)
Spooky Man has accused me of being twitterpated with the new car. If I am, it’s his fault; he chose the car, because it has the most comfortable passenger seat of all the models on my short list. I am happy with the purchase, even if the process can be exhausting.
God willing, I won’t have to do this again for a decade.
Follow-up note 9/17/2012: I figured out why it took so long to write up the purchase agreement. A credit union I used to belong to 15+ years ago sent me a letter explaining why they turned me down for a loan. I called them, because I didn’t apply for a loan with them. Turns out the dealership did — after I had told them I had my own financing. Sigh.
Pluto
A few years ago, the International Astronomical Union formally defined the term planet and reclassified Pluto. Instead of the last-discovered, smallest, coldest, and pretty much least of the planets, they decided Pluto is the first-discovered, innermost and one of the largest of the Kuiper Belt objects, a dwarf planet.
There was a gigantic uproar, because the media presented the change as Pluto being demoted from planet status. The truth is that Pluto wasn’t demoted, simply classified correctly.
The reclassification took Pluto from last, smallest, and least of the planet to first, possibly the largest, and innermost of a whole new class of planetary bodies — Plutoids. Just typing that word makes me happy. Plutoids: smile.
The Hayden Planetarium in New York, headed by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, was the first institution to notice that Pluto doesn’t really fit in with the planets, but until the discovery of actual bodies in the theoretical Oort cloud, we didn’t have anyplace else to classify it. But Pluto looks a lot like Haumea (2004) and Makemake (2005), not to mention Eris (2003), who started the whole mess.
Eris is a dwarf planet about the same size as Pluto, but apparently about 27% more massive, which would imply it’s denser than Pluto. It’s also quite a ways farther out, about 3 times as far away from the sun as Pluto. It even has a moon, called Dysnomia.
Eris (originally dubbed Xena) was considered the 10th planet in the Solar System for a few years, until that 2006 IAU meeting, when the world’s astronomers actually defined what a planet is (about time, people). They also defined dwarf planets, Plutoids, and Plutinos (objects which have a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune). It was a busy meeting.
And then the hate mail started, almost all of it from the US. Dr. Tyson received so much of it he compiled it all into a book called The Pluto Files, published in 2009 — which hit the NYT extended bestseller list.
We Americans love our Pluto, king of the underworld (and Mickey’s dog!), first among the Kuiper Belt objects, with two classes of solar system objects named after it. Now isn’t that more interesting than being a lowly planet?
The Query Letter
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: business, query letter, writing
Comments (2) This is another post primarily for writers, but about the business end of things.
Yesterday, @saramegibow mentioned in her #10queriesIn10tweets Twitter feed that she passed on a query, in part, because the writer said agents are crazy. This boggled my mind: Why would anyone put that in a query letter? It’s a business communication, not a manifesto.
Your first introduction to your editor or agent is most often a query letter. When you’re introduced to a person for the first time in real life, you don’t say, “Hey, I’ve heard you’re not as big of a [bleeeep!] as other people in your field.”
At least I hope you don’t. It’s insulting. And a little on the crazypants end of the spectrum.
Okay, quite a bit on the crazypants end of the spectrum.
There are four parts to a query letter:
- Salutation (why I’m sending this to you in particular)
- Manuscript statistics (word count, genre, the fact that it’s done)
- Blurb (enough of the story to make sense and get the reader interested in the rest — not a synopsis)
- Bio (something about the writer’s writing background)
For the salutation, you might mention you follow the person on his or her blog, or you met at a conference, or you know he/she has bought/sold books in your genre.
You don’t say anything about traditional publishing gatekeeper trolls; it’s not relevant, it’s not polite, and it isn’t going to make this person disposed toward working with you. Period.
For the statistics, all you need to say is “Best Book Evah (your title) is a [genre genre], complete at [computer wordcount] words.” That’s it.
And please don’t say “fiction novel” — you can get away with “science-fiction novel” or possibly “womens-fiction novel” if you hyphenate it. Otherwise, they will giggle at your redundancy; these are word people, and we word people find that sort of faux pas amusing.
The blurb is where you put your version of back-cover copy. Beware, you want to sweat over this, because a) it can make the difference between a request and a pass, and b) when you sell, the production team might just use it as the basis for the real back cover copy. I have had that happen to me. I suck at back-cover copy for my own books, so this is a little worrisome.
Please note that a blurb is not the same as a pitch or a synopsis. A pitch is generally one sentence, something you can blurt out between floors in an elevator, particularly if you’re terrified at the time.
A synopsis is a high-level summary of the entire manuscript (including the entire plot, character arc(s), and voice of the manuscript, if you’re good), usually 3-5 pages long.
It won’t fit in a one-page query, but many editors and agents would like to see it with the query, so write it to go with the query. Sweat over this one, too. It’s how you prove you can write a character and structure a story. Again, when you sell, the publisher is going to use the synopsis in production, giving it to the cover artist, the blurbist, the sales force.
The last part of a query letter is the writer’s bio. This is the place to mention that you have an MFA, or you’re a member of a professional organization such as RWA, or if you’ve had books published. You can also mention self-published titles, particularly if they’ve sold well.
Agents and editors will do an internet search on you if they’re interested in your work, so if you put a link to a professional-grade website or blog, or a social media handle, that’s okay, too. You might want to skip the Facebook profile with naughty photos or the twitter handle @gross-stuff.
Once upon a time (the 1980s), I was the college student who copy-edited and typed a children’s book manuscript for a lovely senior citizen. She also asked me to look at her query letter; I was appalled, because she was sending her checking account number to Vantage Press (a venerable “vanity publisher”). In a query letter.
Please don’t do that; it scares me. Yes, I talked her out of it, but it wasn’t easy. And it was in the vicinity of 30 years ago, so probably slightly less dangerous than it would be today. Still.
Be careful with those query letters.
Valmont Contingency Excerpt — Meet Captain Rick
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: excerpt, Valmont Contingency, writing
Leave a comment Garrick checked the ping on his long-range sensor array, flagged it for identify and smiled at the results. Corinth 6.0, flagged Port Hazard, ident: Trouble’s Here. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one member of his bridge crew flinch, and two others grinned in response. That meant he’d shown a few too many teeth.
“Charlie, get me an intercept with our bogey. Joss, send a standard hail, hold for inspection.” He pulled out his control panel from the armrest lock. “Shak, get the boarding party ready. We’ve got tail.”
Tail was freighter parlance for the trail of ionized particles a starship engine left behind between jumpgates, probably an allusion to a comet’s tail of similar particles. Bogey was a word so old nobody knew what language it came from, but it meant an unknown sensor contact. And in this case, it was inaccurate. Garrick knew exactly who was out there, and Trouble’s Here was on his List of Marque, flagged out of Port Hazard, a station on the boundary of the Republic and the Reich that changed allegiance with every watch shift. Its last port of call had been Dorrigan, which was a much higher dock zone than Trouble could afford unless her captain was running something off manifest. Something that would shortly belong to Garrick Yusuf ben Khalid and the crew of Direwolf.
Damn, he loved this part of his job.
Next came schematics, complete with his personal notations of every likely hidey-hole on Corinth Model 6.0. He forwarded that to Shakiro Nobinata, who would be leading the boarding party. The departure manifest was light, showing only high-value pharmaceuticals with very specific handling instructions. Garrick frowned. Not bloody likely that the Blaine cartel would be shipping on a tramp. It had to be a cover, and whatever it was covering was now up for grabs. And he had big hands.
“Intercept in two hours, thirty-six minutes and four-point-two seconds.” Charlie wanted to be Vulcan when he grew up, and as a result he was overly precise about, well, everything. If he hadn’t been the sector’s best navigator, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it.
“No response to hail.”
Did they have comm turned off to save power, were they ignoring him, or was Trouble about to be somewhere else?
“Bogey jink, forty-five degrees absolute vertical with fifteen percent velocity increase. New intercept two hours, forty-six minutes, thirty seconds.”
Charlie must be busy if he’d left off a decimal. “Boarding, I’m on the way. Intercept in two and forty-five.” He glanced up and Charlie was glaring. “Give or take.” He swung the computer back into the armrest of his chair. “Gentlemen.”
“Yeah, we know the drill,” Misha said from the copilot’s station. “Go play, Rick. Bring back something pretty.”
His new space armor rubbed his right shoulder when he put it on and he made a mental note to have Shak or Misha adjust the pauldron’s curvature. The new umbilical homed perfectly on the freighter’s personnel hatch and connected atmosphere-to-atmosphere without manual override. Inside, Trouble’s Here had that special kind of corner-grime that he only saw in all-male ships.
The captain and watch crew were white-lipped on the bridge, everyone else herded into the wardroom and locked down. And then it was time to search.
Everything was going according to plan until, “Rick, we have a passenger.” Shak’s comm unit squelched. “In a closet in enviro. She…you’d better come take a look.”
“Did you say she?” The plan had turned left without him.
There were no passengers on the manifest. No females in the crew. And Trouble was the kind of ship that gave steerage a bad name. He turned right at the next corridor intersection and took the lift to the mechanical deck. Enviro was normally as far away from crew quarters as possible, because it always had a certain smell to it, no matter what kind of seals and scrubbers tried to contain it. In his experience, this also tended to make it a desirable place to hide contraband in his experience. Nobody in his or her right mind would go rummaging around in there unless sealed into an environmental suit.
For a woman to hide in enviro, she had to be serious about not wanting to be found. He frowned at the deck indicator. What in the known worlds was she hiding from?
“Rick-san, you’re not going to believe this,” Shak told him on the command channel when he stepped into the room containing the environmental control systems. It was barely bigger than a closet. “If I weren’t looking at her, I wouldn’t effing believe it.”
He edged past Shak’s armor and looked for himself. She was pretty enough, in a grime-encrusted sort of way. Wearing practical clothes for stowing away, nothing-colored ship knits, her hair pulled back in a medium-brown braid. There was something familiar about her eyes, but he couldn’t place it. The rest of her face might have been anyone’s, features the symmetrical dead average associated with good genes and good nutrition. “What won’t I effing believe?” he asked on the same private frequency as he watched her stare back at him.
“She’s got a chip passport. Give it a standard scan.”
Garrick sighed and brought up his scanner display, checking the readout for the woman’s implanted identification. Text scrolled up his visor as he skimmed for a name. When he found it a couple of updates back, he blinked, in case it had been a mistake. And blinked again.
Publishing News – Audible picked up my book
The Carina Press Executive Editor (the magnificent Angela James) sent out an e-mail this morning on the latest audiobook deal, for October and November titles.
The Valmont Contingency was the first title on the list! Probably only because its release date is October 1st, but still…Squee!
Okay, that’s enough celebrating. i have a book to finish.
