Sometimes a Girl Needs an Action Heroine

When I was growing up, I was reading mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy novels because I liked action scenes.  Maybe it was because I was so non-athletic!  Yet, there wasn’t anything that represented me.  Most of the stories didn’t have any girls in them at all, and those that did either felt like it was a token nod or the girl was a victim.  Was that all the world thought of us?  I felt like I didn’t matter because I was a girl.

Then three TV shows came along: The Secrets of Isis, The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, and The Bionic Woman.  All these women had some form of super powers.  The Bionic Woman was different from the other two, in that the actress, Lindsay Wagner, had a say in how the character was portrayed.  She didn’t believe in guns, and the character never uses one on the show.  It made for a creative use of  action scenes, because Jamie Summers is a school teacher and former tennis player, not a highly trained spy.  Creative meant the action scenes often brought Jamie’s characterization in as well, as in the scene from the “The Return of Bigfoot” episode below.

But the show did something else, which I realized while I was revisiting it recently.  Most shows that have women in them tend to have a lot of guys, and only one woman, who often feels like the network shoehorned her in to get women viewers. The Bionic Woman always had a lot of women on the show, and it naturally fit into the stories.  Jamie had a friend, Callahan, who worked for Oscar Goldman, was a semi-regular character.  The Bigfoot episode had Sandy Duncan and Stephanie Powers, both with important and distinctive roles in the story.  That’s a credit to the writers and directors, who could have gone with tradition and didn’t.

Right now we’re seeing a lot of discussion about women in action films because of The Hunger Games.  Everyone is surprised, because unfortunately, it’s still an unusual thing.  If a movie or a show is a big success, the media thinks it’s an isolated thing.  If another one comes out and then fails, then the assumption is that the first one was purely luck and people must not want to see action-adventure heroines — not the problem might have been a bad story.  The Bionic Woman premiered in 1976 — 36 years ago, and now we have the U.S. Marine Corps looking for women volunteers for infantry school, and yet it’s still hard to find stories for us.

What do think the impact Hunger Games will have?  Do you think we’re going to see more films with characters like Katniss in them?  Is it going to influence the book industry?  I want to hear what you think!

 

Sightseeing Tour: Driftwood Washed Ashore

Here’s a few links I’ve run across in my internet sightseeing that I wanted to share:

Sometimes there are unexpected finds in research.  I was searching on driftwood for photos, and I found Zuza Fun’s blog on Driftwood Horse sculptures.  What impressed me the most was the personality Heather Hansch got out of the driftwood.  I wish I could see these in person!

Eccentric Roadside:  Gunnar and Sherry travel around the country and share us photos of unique Americana, like this street sign.

Right-Brain/Left Brain Infographic.  Sometimes pictures say more than words.  Online College breaks down the traits for each type.  Nice tips under the advice for each section.

Finally a mashup of Star Wars to the MacGyver theme.  The author of this did a great job matching up Star Wars images to give it a MacGyver feel.  I always liked MacGyver because he appealed the creative part of me.  He didn’t plan things out; he just picked things up along the way and made do with what he had.

The internet has given us great opportunities to look in other places and times, learn new things, and even connect across countries.  What has the internet given you that’s changed your life?

 

I Want Her Hair

When I was growing up, I hated my hair.  It was too thick and curly, and I thought it made me look like a shaggy dog.  It didn’t help that my mother got me perms, which made it worse!  Why would any sane person put awful smelling chemicals into their hair?  Then there was Peggy Lipton, who was on reruns of The Mod Squad.  Her hair was thin, long, and straight — and cooperative.  I so wanted her hair!

Have you ever suffered from hair envy?  What hair horrors have you been through?

 

Remembering Jonny Quest

Music can be a powerful memory.  Hearing the theme from Jonny Quest brings back of exciting adventures to exotic places.  I always watched the credits to try to match them up to episodes I’d seen and make sure I’d hadn’t missed any.  Unfortunately, not all the footage was part of an episode.  Not fair!

It was rerun for a while but eventually went off the air, for quite a few years.  But there were two episodes that were my favorite that I remember:

1.  The spider in the spaceship.  A spaceship lands, and this creepy spider comes out.  The military tries to blow it up with artillery, and nothing works!  Really creepy when the guy gets hit with the suction tentacle.

2.  The invisible monster.  A scientist accidentally creates a monster that feeds on energy.  The only way anyone can see it is by its path of destruction.

Thankfully, it’s available on DVD so I can enjoy all the episodes all over again.  One of the things I was really impressed with was that despite the age of the show, it still holds up well after (pauses to subtract dates) — 48 years!  Holy cow!  Has it really been that long?  But good writing always stands out, and it’s obvious that the writers there were trying to turn out something good.  I was also amazed at the quality of the animations.  No computers, and yet, the animators took the time to draw everything realistically, right down to the  shadows to give the scenes depth.  Even the characters had creases in their clothes from sitting or moving around.

The show’s so popular that it was remade recently.  What did you think of the remake?  Like the other reboots, I thought the producers didn’t really understand what made the show successful.  I mean, while I would have liked to see girls represented, it felt like girls were simply shoehorned into the show.  I could imagine the network telling the producers, “Have a girl character.  We need girls to watch.”  So instead, she felt like the token girl, getting in the way of the adventures.

What are your favorite episodes?  Any favorite monsters or bad guys?

 

Hawaii Five-0: Action in Paradise

Hawaii was a great initial reason to tune into the TV series Hawaii Five-0.  It’s a Hawaii 2.0 of the original series which starred Jack Lord.  One of the comments made at the time of the new series premiere was that the original version was an average detective show with Hawaii, a great theme, and Jack Lord’s hair (hair makes people watch a show?).

It’s still a detective show, but it has Steve McGarrett now as a Navy SEAL (that’s a very elite military role that only a few attain), so there’s lots of action in episode.  But it’s a fun kind of action, meant simply to entertain.

My favorite characters are not the main stars, but the Asian actors who play Kono (Grace Park), Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim), and Wu Fat (Mark Dacascos, who is also appearing on Iron Chef America).  First time Mark Dacasos appeared on the screen, my response was, “No way!”  His casting made me want to see more.

Thankfully, one thing the show has stayed away from is dressing Grace Park as often as possible in skimpy clothing or bikinis in every episode.  There’s some of it, yes, but we viewers don’t see with regularity in scenes with the guys.  Many of those scenes have clothing that is appropriate for for climate and locale (sleeveless t-shirts).  Whereas, on Charmed, which had all an women cast, the way the characters dressed made me wonder how the women could be respected for anything.

Kono has a pretty decent role in the show — it doesn’t feel like she’s a token female the networks told the producers to add (Caitlin on Airwolf), especially since the show also has two other semi-regular women characters.  Kono’s had some storylines about her, and she’s — my own personal favorite — had some action scenes of her own.

But I have to say, one of the things I like best about the show is simply that’s in Hawaii. Since Magnum P.I. went off the air years ago, nothing’s been filmed there, and it’s such a great location.

What’s your favorite part of the show?  Tell me about it!

I hope you’ll have a look at my story Grateful for a Gift to ‘Any Soldier,’ published in The Washington Post.  Also check out Voice of a Soldier: Operation Liberty, an anthology of stories about soldiers.  My story “Clarity” is featured in the book.

 

Action, Adventure, Earthquakes — 3 Interesting Facts

An earthquake makes a great action scene.  Hollywood’s done a number of movies, including Earthquake and 10.5.  More recently, the TV series Bones had what looked like an earthquake but turned out to be a water main break.  As the shaking starts, Booth says something like, “Washington DC doesn’t have earthquakes.”

A year later Virginia was struck by a 5.8 earthquake that damaged the National Cathedral and the Washington Monument.

Hollywood is all about making the earthquake exciting, so moviegoers see the ground splitting open and then snapping shut after it swallows a hapless Red Shirt.  Or the ground splits open and follows the fleeing heroine (hmm — Didn’t know earthquakes could see and think).  Of course, the reality is quite different.

These are some interesting facts I discovered while researching earthquakes for my contemporary fantasy, Miasma:

Richter Scale

The Richter Scale is no longer used.  According to the Southern California Seismic Center:

Because he [Richter] defined his scale in terms of these torsion seismometers, once these instruments were replaced by more modern equipment, the conversion used to turn seismogram readings into a measure of magnitude was no longer the exact same scale established by Richter in 1935.

Thank goodness fore research.  This would have been easy mistake to make.

Taking Cover

When I was growing up in Southern California, we went through earthquake drills.  One of the things taught was when an earthquake starts to get into a doorway.  That’s now outdated advice, according to the US Geological Society:

In past earthquakes in unreinforced masonry structures and adobe homes, the door frame may have been the only thing left standing in the aftermath of an earthquake. Hence, it was thought that safety could be found by standing in doorways. In modern homes doorways are no stronger than any other parts of the house and usually have doors that will swing and can injure you.

Locations

When the word ‘earthquake’ is mentioned, we immediately think of California.  The state has been the site of several very destructive major quakes — I’ve been in two.  For Miasma, I based my story on Hawaii, and that state has earthquakes.  In the last week, there were 14.  Just for a comparison though, in the same time frame, California had 398!

What kinds of interesting facts have you run across in your research for your book?  Tell me about them!

I hope you’ll drop in for a visit with my article Writing a Novel When You’re Right-Brained on Vision: A Resource for Writers.  I also have a guest blog on setting on Sue Santore’s blog on October 28.

 

5 Reasons to Watch NCIS

NCIS is one of those television shows that has kept me coming back again and again to watch it, even as it enters its 9th year.  That’s pretty big deal because the writing often starts to suffer after about 7 years.  Each show is like a novel, so that’s a whole lot of novels.  Writers often simply run out of steam.  Last night’s show was the best of the season so far, with a B story about Abby discovering she has a brother.  That’s one story I want to find out more about.

A few highlights on what I like about the show:

1. It never takes itself that seriously.  There’s always light humor in the story, but it’s humor that comes out of the characterizations.  It’s not the dumb humor I find in sitcoms that make me cringe.
2. It has action, but it’s not terribly violent action.  I don’t like gore, and this show keeps it pretty clean.  I’ve also heard from gun enthusiasts that this show is probably the closest on the way law enforcement uses their guns.
3. I like the way the military are presented.  They make an effort to get it correctly, right down to details like how the women wear their hair.  I wanted to smack Hawaii Five-0 the other night because they had a woman military officer, and she was outdoors and no cover (hat)!
4. The women characters are competent in what they do.  It seems like in a lot of shows and movies, the women are there basically to attract the guys, so they’re in skimpy clothes and have roles that just aren’t much of anything.  Here, we have women agents who take down bad guys and arrest them, and of course, women soldiers pop up periodically.  And they act like people doing their job.
5. Finally, the stories are just plain good, and consistently so.  It doesn’t just feel like another cop show, even though there are certainly some elements.

The one thing I do laugh about is how they use Washington, DC.  I live in the area, so I know that they’re not shooting the show here.  I remember one episode where they described a computer company out in Annandale, and I kept thinking, “Have you guys been to Annandale?”

NCIS is a good show that remains fresh, even after so many years on the air.

 

Considering Indie Publishing

Ever since Holly Lisle announced that she was leaving traditional publishing and going indie, I’ve been looking at the possibility of it for me.  Like when I decided to go with omniscient viewpoint, I weighed in on the pros and cons of what might be best for me.

Promotion

A huge con is that one aspect of the promotion would be completely gone.  The publishers have better resources for this, just with things like catalogs to bookstores, ARCs to reviewers, and libraries buying copies (though if it’s my library and a book is in paperback, they aren’t buying it).  However, many publishers are also looking for the writer to do publicity.  Some agents are asking for platform from novelists.

From the indie side, I’d have to do all the publicity and marketing and find a way that would draw people to the book.  A lot of the writers don’t sell anything at all.  But a lot of the writers don’t know how to market either. I’ve been following some writers who are good examples of how not to do it:

1. Buy My Book:  Honestly, receiving multiple tweets every single day advertising a book is just plain annoying.
2. Hit and Runs:  This was something I noticed when I did some maintenance on my Twitter account.  I ran a check on who was following me and discovered that about 30 writers were no longer following me.  Several of them had unfollowed me almost immediately after I followed them.  Evidently, they were only subscribing to get followers so they could do #1 but really weren’t interested.

It’s obviously difficult to figure out how to draw people in and be interested in what you’re writing.   I have been doing some experimentation with Miasma, though I’ll admit I’m still figuring out what works for me.  Others have talked about their characters tweeting, but that’s not for me, so I’m trying something different.  I’m using the hashtag #MiasmaNovel — would have liked #Miasma, but that was being used for a video game.

Word Count and Deadlines

A number of years ago, the publishing industry went to longer books to justify a cost increase.  The result is the a book today pretty much has to be in the 90K range.  I always run significantly short, and it’s very hard for me to get the word count to 90K.  It’s one thing to add 5K to a story, but to add 30K, it’s take the book apart and do a major revision and even then, it still may run too short.  If I’m trying to meet a deadline, and I’m too short — well, you get the problem.  On the other hand, indie books don’t have word count requirements.  I might actually be able to produce a lot more books if I didn’t have to spend so much time revising upwards for word count.

On the timelines, publishers are now requiring writers produce a book a year.  As a reader, I’ve seen the problems with this.  I have a number of authors that I used to like to read, but as the pressure to produce annually built up, the stories started not being worth the money I was paying for them.  On the indie side, I’d need to set a deadline for producing a book so I get it done.  My personal deadline is in December for Miasma — no matter what direction I go.

Safety and Risk

Publishers, frankly, don’t like to take risks.  They want a book to stand out and be different, but not something too different.  They want a little risk but not too much — they want to safe.  I’m not a safe writer.  I’d be the one the marketing department would reject because they wouldn’t be able to figure out how to market it.  How do I know this?  From several rounds with the agents and occasional personal comments.  From a market who freaked out because I was taking too much risk — and I didn’t think I was taking all that much risk.  But when the dollar controls what gets selected, the field starts narrowing a lot.  It’s likely we’ll see more of this narrowing in the publishing industry in the future.  It’s already happened with TV, with shows being cancelled after two episodes because the ratings aren’t there.

A change is being forced on the industry.  The question is what will be the outcome?