Vixenwriter

So I’m working on a revision right now. I’ve been wanting to for some time but I’ve been wavering between just starting it over and using the ideas or trying to revise in document. The chief problem is that I wrote it in first person. When I wrote it, the romance element was a sub plot but as I now have a romance fan base and I want to aim this at the nocturne line, I’m going to play up the romantic element more. Which to me means third person so readers can know what he’s thinking too. Plus, I’m heightening the sensuality level.

Now the thing is, I write erotica in first person. Some folks get a bit squicky about it but I like first person as an erotic device. But this isn’t erotica, it’s a two steps lower on the sensuality scale from that so my tendency with first person when I write sex is to be much more hard and edgy.

Anyway, I think the story will benefit from third person for more than that reason. I had a few test reads last year and they all brought up that the first person was distracting from the romance. Which at the time I didn’t necessarily care about because it wasn’t going to be so much romance oriented.

And lately I’ve noticed with older books, I do much better to just use the first draft as an outline and just write clean in a new document. It goes WAY faster than writing from scratch and it has the benefit of the first draft work but I don’t get hung up on scenes I get attached to and with first to third POV I have to deal with tense issues and that’s hard to do in document. SO, starting anew and I kicked ass on it last night. So hee!

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell. George Bernard Shaw

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King Jr.

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. ~Henry Steele Commager

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them. ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture. ~Theodore Schroeder

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. ~John F. Kennedy

“Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”
– U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

“Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”
– William O. Douglas

“Even to the present day, we so often condemn books that were written to fight the very things we claim to be fighting. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is so often cited as being racist, when it was written against slavery and racism.”
– Jamey Fletcher

“Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.”
– Clare Booth Luce, American playwright and diplomat

So the Maverick Authors are going to be chatting tonight at Romance Designs! Come and hang out with us. We’ll be announcing the winners of our Romance Designs contest!

Particulars:

Where - Romance Designs - www.romancedesigns.com/chatroom.cfm
When September 28 at 5:30 pm pacific/8:30 eastern

This is from the ALA site (a handy site to have bookmarked!)

What You Can Do to Fight Censorship and Keep Books Available in Your Libraries

Stay informed. If you read or hear about a challenge at your school or public library, support your librarian and free and open access to library materials. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom estimates they learn of only 20 to 25 percent of book challenges. Let us know if there is a challenge in your community. Find out what the policy is for reviewing challenged materials at your school or public library. Join the Intellectual Freedom Action News (IFACTION) e-list.

Get involved. Go to school board meetings. Volunteer to help your local school or public library create an event that discusses the freedom to read and helps educate about censorship—maybe a film festival, a readout, a panel discussion, an author reading or a poster contest for children illustrating the concept of free speech.

Speak out. Write letters to the editor, your public library director and your local school principal supporting the freedom to read. Talk to your neighbors and friends about why everyone should be allowed to choose for themselves and their families what they read. Encourage your governor, city council and/or mayor to proclaim “Banned Books Week - Celebrating the Freedom to Read” in your state or community.

Exercise your rights! Check out or re-read a favorite banned book. Encourage your book group to read and discuss one of the books. Give one of your favorite books as a gift. The 100 most challenged books of the 1990s is a good resource!

Join the Freedom to Read Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to the legal and financial defense of intellectual freedom, especially in libraries. You can also support the cause by buying Banned Books Week posters, buttons and T-shirts online.

And another thing - authors have to stand up for each other and speak up when we see something wrong happening. I know it’s uncomfortable to be the one who speaks out and it makes other people uncomfortable too. But it SHOULD be uncomfortable for people who want to shove what other authors do into dark corners. People SHOULD be uncomfortable for whining about having to simply see a book cover they don’t like or a book they don’t like on the shelf. We’re adults and we should act like it and we should not be raising our children to be so soft they fall apart at the mere idea that Harry Potter might be in the library. If that’s not part of your value system, don’t buy them, read them or check them out. But there’s no reason for you to stop anyone else from doing so if they choose.

One of my favorite websites on this subject of the importance of intellectual freedom is Delete Censorship dot Org

Many people have said, “oh the books are just being challenged, most of the time they’re not banned. It’s no big deal.”

But it is a big deal. Challenges are attempts to ban and censor and challenges can be successful. Challenges also create a chilling atmosphere with writers who worry so much about this sort of thing they never write the books meant to be written. Judy Blume, an author who’s had many of her books challenged said it best -

“It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.”

And speaking of Judy Blume - I highly suggest reading this piece about censorship from her website.

Understanding the issue better is a better way to deal and combat censorship. To that end, Why Johnny Can’t Read is a wonderful piece and I highly suggest checking it out.

But by far the most common type of censorship involves books quietly disappearing from libraries. Sometimes a parent who objects to a book but doesn’t want to go through a formal challenge just slips it off the shelf. Frequently a librarian who may fear for her job removes a book that has become controversial. Because of the nature of “stealth censorship,” it is difficult to document and impossible to quantify.

These quiet book bannings affect every aspect of the book world. Librarians, who buy at least half of hardcover literary trade books published for children and young adults, have ever-tightening budgets and face a constricted job market. Under pressure from administrators not to land their schools in the midst of controversy, many librarians have become increasingly cautious about the kind of books they order.

Publishers, who have been cutting their lists because of economic pressures, respond by rejecting many manuscripts that contain problematic language and stories on tough subjects like sexual abuse. And authors censor themselves, weeding out curse words and steering away from difficult areas, regardless of feelings that such omissions affect the credibility of their work.

This issue is layered and more dangerous than we think at first glance. Information is power, which is why it’s being challenged. All parents and free thinking people can do is to push back with information and our voices.

So at long last, Reluctant is available from Ellora’s Cave! Yay! You can check out an excerpt at my website or at EC and even more at my messageboard today during the release day party!

Blurb: Layla Warden had a ten-year plan and it sure as heck didn’t include a mate. She had her flashy car and her corner office and all was right with the world until Sid Rosario sat down at her table and turned her life upside down.

Sparks fly as the two werewolves flirt over dinner and it’s no surprise to either of them when they end up back at his hotel room, naked and sweaty. But Sid is her mate, and they don’t figure it out until the bond is sealed. Layla, driven by confusion and fear, heads out of contact while a frantic Sid looks for her. What comes next helps a reluctant wolf find her way to acceptance.

Having a big old party at my messageboard, come on over and say hello!

I’m having a board warming and release day party at my messageboard tomorrow (www.laurendane.com/messageboard) September 27 - with excerpts and chances to win prizes.

I’ve been running a contest for everyone who joins my board until tonight at midnight pacific - I’ll draw a name at random and the winner will receive a signed copy of Giving Chase. So if you haven’t joined up yet, get on over!

The fun should start at about 7:30 am pacific and go all day long. I’ve invited other authors to come on over and post excerpts from their books as well.

Radcliffe put out a Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list. According to the American Library Association, at least 42 of those books have been targets of ban attempts. There’s a heavy concentration of titles in the top 30 - those targeted for banning are in bold.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Ulysses, James Joyce
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
1984, George Orwell
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Charlotte’s Web, EB White
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm, George Orwell
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Native Son, Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

I’ve read 28 of the books in the top 30. Most of them are books that changed my life and shaped me as a person and an author. A few, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, were ones I had to read in high school and still loathe today, LOL. But still - literature is the cornerstone of culture!

Going back to The Grapes of Wrath for a moment because it’s a perfect example of a “truly important book.” You can read a history book to find out the facts about the dustbowl and the depression. You can interview those people who lived it (who are still alive). But Steinbeck brought their struggle alive, gave it a face, a voice in Grapes of Wrath. How can that be something we should ban?

Great literature should enlighten. Should elevate and make you think. (Not every book is great literature and that’s okay too, I don’t write great literature but I hope I entertain and occasionally give you something to think about.) But great literature is important to culture. To understanding.

I’m a Steinbeck fan, I see Of Mice and Men is on the list too. Another amazing book!

Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut is on the list a lot. The man is brilliant with subtlety. Slaughterhouse Five is one of the best books about war I’ve ever read. It’s tongue and cheek, witty, sharp. The kind of book I wish like hell I could write.

And Conrad’s Heart of Darkness! Man. I read this book in college. It’s rife with metaphor, layered metphor. So on the page there are the words, and then three layers of metaphor about people, war, human nature - it’s truly brilliant.

Anyway, I suppose this whole week is more about my love of great books than anything else but damn it, I look at these books and I can’t imagine my life, or heck, the library, without them.

Knowledge isn’t the enemy. You can’t make decisions about anything if you know nothing. Poverty of knowlege leads to poverty of the spirit.

I forgot to say I’d be chatting tonight at the monthly EC author chat at Writerspace at 5 pm pacific/8 eastern! Don’t forget to come by and say hello!

L

The top 10 Most Challenged Authors in the last decade:

1. Alvin Schwartz (Scary Stories)

2. Judy Blume (Blubber, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, Deenie, Forever)

3. Robert Cormier (Whale Talk, The Sledding Hill)

4. J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter)

5. Michael Willhoite (Daddy’s Roomate)

6. Katherine Paterson (Bridge to Terabithia)

7. Stephen King (Cujo, It, The Stand, Salem’s Lot, The Dark Tower Series, The Green Mile)

8. Maya Angelou (I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, And Still I Rise)

9. R.L. Stine (Goosebumps)

10. John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men)

The Grapes of Wrath is one of the finest American novels ever written. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing not only a sublime book but a piece of our history told in a way that makes it real. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite books of all time and it should be required reading in not just literature courses but also in American history classes.

When I was growing up, Judy Blume books were a mainstay. She writes books for children with complicated themes and she doesn’t write down to kids. Her books are smart, her characters are smart. She addresses the seriousness of issues that children face and often alone. I also remember being 15 and reading Forever and feeling that “first love” in the book, the yearning for adulthood and to be loved. It’s still a great book that stands the test of time. Speaking of test of time, I’ve read the Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing and Fudge books to my sons and they loved them too.

Bridge to Terabithia - There’s a theme here with fantasy books for children being challenged. It makes me sad. Imagination is not the enemy. This book as well as Paterson’s other titles, again, tackle important themes in ways children can understand them.

Harry Potter - I’ve heard some of the criticism of the books and for the most part, I have to say that I discount things people say when they haven’t bothered to actually read something they’re trying to censor. The HP books are filled with important lessons about friendship, loyalty, courage and honor. These are themes not touched upon enough in a deep way in children’s books. And they’re fun.

Stephen King - well what can I say about Stephen King? I love his imagination. I wish he didn’t fall apart at the end of some of his best books (The Stand is my favorite but the very end makes me cringe). I suppose the magic and scary stuff is probably the reason for the challenges. Shrug. Imagination isn’t the enemy people.

Maya Angelou - I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is one of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. Her poetry inspires me. Her journey inspires me. Her strength in the face of the things she suffered as a child is something I admire greatly.

I’m too old to have read Goosebumps and I’ve flipped through Daddy’s Roomate but I haven’t read the others.

What I will say is that we don’t need to censor ideas we don’t like. Censorship is ugly and wrong and it makes you the self appointed morality police for my head and my kids and that’s not your job.

When brilliant books like Grapes of Wrath are targeted, we miss out on truly amazing journeys. A book is a journey. If you don’t want to take that particular journey (like I’d avoid stepping into Ann Coulter’s head at all costs), you just don’t read the book. If you believe a book or an author espouses values you don’t want your child to learn, be a parent! Don’t parent MY child, parent your own. Watch what your kids are reading. If the very presence of an idea threatens you so much, you’re not doing a very good job.

Even if I hated every author on that list, I still wouldn’t espouse book banning. Books have been my friend since I was very young. They saved my life, they brightened my day, they’ve taught me things. Books are not the enemy.