MDWiselka

Udas Jillintor Uavoo

Public Safety Oversight Committee

Greetings Udas Uavoo

First of all, I would like to apologize on behalf of my company for this unfortunate accident, though, strictly speaking, our company was in no way responsible for it. The collapse of the overpass has since been ruled an Act of Nature by the Corporation.

Nonetheless, I want to assure you that none of the seed pods lost from our transport vehicle will germinate. To protect our products from loss or theft, a chemical–its formula protected by copyright–must be introduced to our cultivars before the seed pods will open. My engineers assure me that the recipe for this chemical, which I don’t hesitate to tell you contains certain restricted ingredients that can only be obtained from the Corp lab with the sanction of your office, cannot be reproduced outside our factory.

To put your mind still further at ease, all of our cultivar seed pods are designed to self-destruct, if they do not germinate within ten days of release. This insures product freshness, but also prevents our product from remaining long in the hands of unintended parties.

Please advise if you have any further questions.

Dzo Zohvar Rapsid

Happy Garden Cultivars

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Udas Abrala Krayal

Krayal Housing Development

Mavic Set

Greetings Udas Krayal

As you know, our company prides itself on its 100% satisfaction guarantee. We were grieved to learn that you are not satisfied with the cultivar you purchased from us.

From your communication, it appears that your cultivar won’t adopt the form of a Tasan fauntail. That is, it won’t RETAIN that form, but continues to reshape itself into a Tasan whitewood. While rarely, cultivars do sometimes display idiosyncrasies. I won’t call it stubbornness, because a cultivar is incapable of developing what you might call a personality. Call it a predilection to certain forms. Obviously, your cultivar doesn’t wish to be a fauntail. And continuing to program it to take that shape will only frustrate you and annoy it.

Because we value your business, I am sending a company engineer to your office today to remove the cultivar. We will give you a new one, free of charge, which we hope you will find satisfactory. It assumes a quite lovely fauntail along with 50,000 other ornamentals that you might also enjoy. With your permission, we will sell your discard at discount to another business concern who is looking for a whitewood for their ornamental park.

Please confirm that this meets your approval.

Dzo Zohvar Rapsid

Happy Garden Cultivars

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One of my biggest peeves with modern romance novels is the handsome cad who inevitably stumbles his way into them. He can act like a total backside, with or without regret, and still find someone head over heels in love (or lust) with you him.

I offer in example a recent time-travel romance, in which a college hard ass with a drug problem winds up in 1835. 1835 called to complain, by the way. He meets a girl who is at least part Native American. He proceeds, fairly rapidly, to make his shallow jerkiness evident. He manhandles the girl, makes crass jokes about her appearance (Pocahontas, really?), and attempts to kick her dog. Though she pulls a knife on him more than once, Sarah still can’t resist those smoldering eyes and that smoking hot ass.

Is the reading public really this shallow? I hope not!

Every romance writer needs to know one thing about romance–and one thing only. You don’t have to convince your characters they are in love. You have to convince your readers that your characters are CAPABLE of loving each other. No self-respecting woman would ever love a man who mistreats her, makes derogatory cracks at her expense, or attempts to hurt an animal she loves.

Johnny College needs to prove he’s worthy, before we, the readers, learn that Sarah is growing fond of him. And you, the writer, can’t do that by simply tacking in the obligatory “rescue” scene. Johnny College has to do more than simply reach out a hand to the heroine (or hero) in a time of need. He needs to be there for her (or him) time and time again. Johnny College needs to exhibit desirable traits that will last long after his looks fade.

Let’s face it. people. Hot asses and handsome faces inevitably sag. Only loving hearts are for forever!

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I was reading a gay romance this past week that went to pieces in the final act because of poor plotting.

The main characters–would-be lovers–let’s call them Tom and Harry–were hosting the grand opening of a vintage toy shop, where not one but two villains conveniently showed up, the first, exposing Harry’s manwhore past, which ought to have been pretty obvious to everyone at that point, since Harry never ceased talking about it, and the second, exposing Harry’s criminal past, which made him appear untrustworthy to Tom. All ends well, of course, somehow without Harry in the least understanding why Tom might not want a man who throws himself at anyone who’ll have him and sees no problem with petty theft, provided its petty and unsuccessful. But never mind that.

The point I’m trying to make here is an author risks making a joke of his characters when he arranges matters too cleverly like this. The manwhore expose could–and should–have come up earlier in the story, providing a much-needed injection of drama in the rather dull middle (all stories can be rather dull in the middle, if you let them be). The evil security guard could have easily carried the scene at the party, revealing to everyone (but especially to Tom) that he was letting a crook run his business. It would have been devastating, instead of just Scene Two in a ridiculous farce.

I offer one final example of the Two Villains Two Many plot danger. Johnny Hero is about to marry Susie Darling. At their engagement party, Johnny’s supposed ex-girlfriend shows up, sporting an engagement ring on her finger. She claims she is engaged to Johnny and pregnant with his child. All is over for Johnny and Susie. Or at least at a point where it might be.

Let’s recast the scene. Johnny Hero is about to marry Susie Darling. At their engagement party, THREE of Johnny’s supposed ex-lovers show up, two lovely ladies and his former roommate from college, a friend with considerable benefits. All three have engagement rings they claim Johnny has given to them. The chaos can be well imagined, but this is no longer a tragedy. It’s too absurd for readers to do anything but laugh.by

Today, I’m going to talk about the most tiresome of tiresome tropes, the showmance.

Johnny Hot Ass, CEO of Money-to-Burn Industries, or Duke Grab-a-Lot-of-It, Heir to an ungodly fortune, are looking for a girl to play the role of fake wife/significant other. They may or may not want to have sex with her, but a “relationship” is utterly, completely out of the question. So they say. But by the end of the book, TRUE LOVE trumps what began as purely selfish interest. They all live happily ever after.

A great reader of Victorian romance, I find it strange that today’s audiences can enjoy books like these. What these arrangements amount to is a kind of high-class prostitution–think Pretty Woman with a period piece budget. The girl getting, if not cold hard cash, at least some benefit from it other than the BENEFIT that sometimes comes with it.That the characters realize their shallowness in time to save something out of this wreck of virtue is hardly reward enough for having to spend any time with them. It’s like enduring sloppy kisses and cheek pinches from a stinky old aunt merely for the sake of the dollar she gives you for candy on her way out the door.

These stories are in bad taste, surely. But what’s worse, utterly impossible to believe. How many times, in real life, has a mercenary showmance turned into a genuine romance?

I can think of one such showmance than ended on a far sadder note. At the age of 37, England’s Queen Mary I married the far younger Prince Phillip of Spain. A politically advantageous marriage, contracted in the best interest of the parties and the countries they represented. It didn’t take long, however, for poor Mary to fall in love with her handsome husband. Sadly, he didn’t return her affections and soon found means to absent himself from her court. Probably to avoid the unpleasant necessity of performing his husbandly duty. Mary believed herself pregnant and showed symptoms of being so. But no child was born of this loveless marriage. And death mercifully dissolved it sometime later.

Though it grieves me to admit it, I don’t think showmances are going away any time soon, even if they lack credibility, because today’s readers have made their peace with marrying those you don’t love for the sake of plenty of hot sex, the sooner, the better. The older style of courtship–getting to know the man before you FUCK him–just ain’t going to cut it. Sorry!

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In my last blog post, I talked about supporting characters and their ability to add much needed color to your stories.

Think of the lovable or not-so-loveable sidekicks from your favorites novels or films? Why do they stand out for you? What makes them memorable?

One of the best small-part actors is the ill-used dog in the Grinch who Stole Christmas. Like any loyal canine, he loves his master and sticks steadfastly at his side, even when the wicked Grinch is at his worst. Imagine the movie without the mutt. Not nearly so good, is it? by

Recently, I began watching Shadows in the Storm, a 1988 thriller starring Ned Beatty and Mia Sara. In a scene fairly early in the film, the main character, Thelonius Pitt, checks into a lodge to get away from it all—“it all”, being his dead-end life. The innkeeper, a very minor character, provides some very much needed comic relief in this relatively dark film about a good man who makes one irredeemably bad life choice.