Kate's Blog
Golden Crown Literary Conference 2011
by Kate McLachlan on 07/10/11
Tonie and I attended our first Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) Conference this June in Orlando, Florida. Con Virgins, they called us, and they had a special introductory section for us. There were a lot of Con Virgins. GCLS is a literary society devoted to lesbian writing. Writers, readers, publishers, editors, and even a literary agent showed up at the Con. My best estimate is that there were between 250 and 300 people each day, though some people came on some days and not others. Most, though, stayed the entire time, like I did.
I'm fairly new to the lesbian fiction world. I've been a lesbian for a while, and I've loved fiction my entire life, but it wasn't until after I'd written my first lesbian novel that I learned there was a whole world out there with a culture all its own surrounding lesbian fiction, and that part of that culture is GCLS. I didn't learn about last year's Con until it was too late for us to attend, but Tonie and I started planning to attend this year's Con many months ago. Tonie traded her time-share for a week in Orlando, and we lured a couple of friends from Seattle into joining us there with the promise of Harry Potter World at Universal Studios.
We arrived Sunday night, with several days of play ahead of us before the Con started. We'd been warned about the terrible heat and humidity, but I was thrilled with it. I think it was the first time I really was warm since last August. First thing Monday morning we set out for Universal Studios. First thing Tuesday morning we set out for Universal Studios. First thing Wednesday morning we set out for Universal Studios. Yes, we spent three days in a row at Universal Studios! We had a great time, walked until we had blisters and aching muscles, and rode rides that I would never in my right mind ride. I wasn't in my right mind. Maybe it was the heat. But this is a blog about the GCLS Con, not Universal Studios, so enough of that.
I'm shy. I think most writers are. All those years of my youth, when the rest of you were out there developing your social skills (aka 'partying', 'dating', 'getting stoned'), I was in the library reading. My social skills were honed on Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott and Georgette Heyer. In the books I read, there were RULES about social conduct, and everyone knew what they were. In modern life, though, social skills aren't a set of clear cut rules. They're more of an instinct that is developed at one of those developmental stages of life. Those of us who spent those crucial years with our noses buried in books are a little stunted. In other words, we're shy.
The opening volley of the GCLS Con is the Meet and Greet on Wednesday evening. I was nervous about going, but thought I should, and Tonie agreed to come with me. At first, it was as bad as I thought it was going to be. We didn't know anybody, and everyone seemed to have groups they were talking to or they were meeting up with old friends. We bellied up to a half-full table and asked if we could sit there. Of course they said yes. A group gathered around them and we soon realized that this was a group of Blue Feather people. I worried that we'd committed a faux pas, since I'm a Regal Crest author, so we went to get some ice cream and let them have their table. We'd had a big dinner and weren't hungry, but ice cream gave us something to do, an excuse to move and leave the chairs for Blue Feather folks. But we cast a look a bit longingly at them as we left. Let me tell you, those Blue Feather people are highly entertaining!
We sat at a couple other tables for brief periods, and Tonie started conversations with them, letting me join in as I chose. Tonie is not developmentally disabled, as she spent her youth honing her social skills in the traditional methods listed above.
There were a few people I was eager to meet. Lynette Mae, another Regal Crest author, and I had struck up an on-line friendship and were looking forward to meeting in person. I wanted to meet Lori Lake, my editor for Rip Van Dyke. And I wanted to meet my publisher, Cathy Lenoir. She'd changed my life, to some extent, when she accepted Rip Van Dyke for publishing, so I was curious to finally meet her.
There was Lori Lake! I probably interrupted her in a conversation, I was so excited to meet her, but she was gracious about it and gave me a big hug. I don't know if it's because she was my first editor or because she's Lori Lake, but I felt we bonded during the editing process. I didn't realize until the GCLS Con what a rock star Lori is. I didn't get to talk to her much after our first greeting, but everywhere I saw her after that I got a smug feeling and congratulated myself. "That rock star is my editor."
Lynette showed up, and I was surprised and delighted to see that she is short like me! If you've read Lynette's book Faithful Service, Silent Hearts, you might expect it's author to be something like it's main character, Devon. In fact (it's a secret, but I can tell you), the woman on the cover of Faithful Service, Silent Hearts IS Lynette Mae. But you can't tell from the photo how tall that character is, and Devon is tall. Lynette is not. In fact, I think I have an inch or two on her.
Lynette and I were getting to know each other when we heard that Cathy Lenoir was in the room. After a bit of sparring ("You go say hi," "No, you go first!") we womanned up and went to meet her together, along with Tonie. Cathy was gracious and jovial and in love. Sorry to be so blunt, but when people are that newly in love, it becomes part of their character description. Besotted.
So Lynette and I hit it off, and so did Tonie and Sandy, Lynette's wife, who we got to meet on Friday. By Saturday my shyness was wearing off and I was getting ready to really have a good time, but of course, by then, it was nearly over. We still had the awards ceremony to look forward to, though.
Rip Van Dyke was up for two awards, Debut Author and Paranormal Romance. I'd like to say it was an honor just to be nominated, but I nominated myself. Cathy doesn't like to nominate books from Regal Crest because she doesn't want to appear to pick favorites. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided it was a good policy. After all, what if she did nominate the books she thought might win and didn't nominate mine? That would be awful.
I realized I only had one chance in life to win a debut author award, and that was with Rip Van Dyke. So for sure I had to nominate it for that. Then, because Debut Author was such a long shot, I nominated it for paranormal romance as well. It was a smaller category. Maybe I'd make the short list.
When the finalists were announced, Rip Van Dyke had made the short list for both categories. I was thrilled. I can honestly say, though I nominated myself, it was an honor just to be a finalist. Truly, it was the first indication I had that maybe, just maybe, Rip Van Dyke wasn't crap. I mean, my friends and family liked it, but they can't really be objective, can they? And the book wasn't getting much attention. It got one review, but it was luke warm. What if it was crap? When it was named as a finalist for both categories I was able to tell myself, finally, it can't be all that bad.
And then it won. Debut Author, one of the first awards of the evening, before I even had time to get nervous, they said my name. Rip Van Dyke won! Rip Van Dyke is not crap! I think I screamed. I know Tonie did. We kissed, and I went up to accept the award. I made an on-the-spot speech, thankfully coached at the last minute by Dejay (Regal Crest author of Redemption), who thought I ought to be ready, just in case.
Back at our table, which was in the back of the room, I was giddy. Lynette had been chosen to announce the Paranormal Romance category. I told her I didn't care whose name was on the card, just say mine. Joke was on me, because when she went up there and said my name, I had a momentary freeze. Was it real? Did she mean it, or was she kidding with me in front of everyone? She meant it. Rip Van Dyke had won again.
Well that was the highlight of the trip. It had to be. But there were so many other highlights. Being interviewed for Lara Zielinsky's radio show, Readings in Lesbian and Bisexual Fiction. Meeting the fans at the book signing, where I was comfortably seated between K.G. MacGregor and Lori Lake, whose lines of autograph seekers let me imagine they were there for me. The fans who were there for me. Meeting Elizabeth Sims and learning from her. K.G. MacGregor telling me after the awards, "Don't ever forget your fans. They'll always be loyal to you." (I don't remember the exact words, K.G., but it was something like that.) Hugs from Patty Schram and Lori Lake after I won the awards. I think Cathy was proud.
We can't wait until next year.
March Madness
by Kate McLachlan on 04/29/11
How the heck is anybody supposed to get any writing done with all this basketball going on??? Especially us poor fans of women's basketball trying to get some work done in Spokane, the basketball city of the NCAA tournament. Yeah, I know you Indianapolis folks had a little basketball thing going on there too, but it was nothing compared to what was happening here in little ol' Spokaloo. For the first time in NCAA history, games from the first and second rounds AND the third and fourth rounds were held in the same city. What. A. Thrill. We all knew, though, that when the Zags Women reached the Sweet 16, which we had no doubt they would do, they wouldn't be placed in the Spokane Region. That would be ridiculous. Still, we'd get to watch some pretty phenomenal games, four rounds of games, without even having to leave town. We were in heaven.
Then the unthinkable happened. GU was placed in the Spokane Region. Which meant that not only were we (I say 'we' to mean the Zags Women's Basketball team -- which I consider myself to be part of despite the fact that I'm 51 years old and just under 5'2". Hey they're always saying they couldn't win without their awesome fans, so I take them at their word. They win because of us.) Anyway, not only were we guaranteed to play rounds 1 & 2 in Spokane, but when we reached the Sweet 16, we'd get to play in Spokane too, and the same with the Elite 8. If four rounds of tournament games in Spokane is heaven, what's four rounds of tournament games rooting for our beloved Zags? Especially since they made it all the way to the Elite 8? Does heaven one better.
Four incredible games, four pre-game socials with free food and free beer, four post-game parties at our house to watch the recorded games (well, actually only three post-game parties -- we didn't really want to watch a replay of the last game. Those Stanford girls killed us.) Add to the mix our day jobs and sleeping and -- oh yeah, Tonie's mom was in the hospital during all this -- well, writing just didn't happen.
Of course, it could have been a whole lot worse. Last year rounds 1 and 2 were in Seattle. We went, of course. Seattle's only 4 1/2 hours away by car. And when the Zags won there, we followed them to Sacramento for the Sweet 16. Road Trip! Two days down and two days back, overnight stops with our pals in Oregon (thanks Mavis and Valerie!) Easy cheezy. But I'd just received the edits for Rip Van Dyke, my first book. There were a LOT of edits, and we had a very short deadline. I sat in the back seat the entire trip down to Sacramento and the entire trip back, frantically typing away on my laptop, now and then interrupting the conversation to ask, "What's another word for 'look'? Anyone think of another word for 'look'? I can't use it again!" It was a memorable trip, to say the least.
This year I also had a book to edit, but my edits for Rescue at Inspiration Point didn't arrive until after the Zags were eliminated, after the Final Four, after the WNBA draft (Courtney Vandersloot picked # 3 -- our own little Courtney Vandersloot!) I was able to stay home all weekend, sit at my desk, and work on edits without any distractions. No basketball games, no roadside stops at The Olive Pit (after first stopping at the disappointing Olive Hut, misled by deceptive road signs), no accidentally stumbling upon the best ice cream in the world. Just edits. Easy cheezy. But not nearly as memorable as last year.
Writings Tips 4, 5, and 6
by Kate McLachlan on 01/15/11
As promised nearly three months ago, I continue now with writing tips # 4, 5, and 6.
Writing Tip # 4: Don't quit your day job. And not because you need it to pay your bills. You need it in order to have something to write about. If you're young (which I was once, so I can write about it), it's especially necessary to keep yourself out in the world experiencing life, including those things you'd rather not have to experience, but it's important not just for the young. We writers tend to be reclusive. We are shy. We'd be perfectly happy sitting home all day writing our innermost thoughts and feelings about our lives, if we had lives. Going out into the real word, putting ourselves in situations that make us uncomfortable, stretching ourselves in ways we didn't know we could stretch -- ugh! We don't want to do it. (Does anyone?)
I thought I wanted to be a teacher once, but I was so shy that the thought of standing in front of a group of people and talking to them made me tremble. I did it anyway, and ended up happily teaching for fourteen years. Children are people too, and so are their parents. As a teacher I met more interesting personalities than I ever thought existed. Story fodder!
After teaching for more than a dozen years, I decided it was time for something new and entered law school. That led to a career as a lawyer. Not surprising to you maybe, but it still surprises me, more than seven years later. I'd rather crawl in a hole than deal with confrontation, which is what a lawyer's job is. Who knew? But in addition to all that icky confrontation stuff, I've been lucky enough to go deep inside every major prison in Washington state, and in every unit from minimum security to the Intensive Management Unit. I've met murders and rapists and child molesters and psychopaths, as well as prison guards and superintendents and politicians (yes, there is frequently some overlap there.) Story fodder!
There may be some extremely talented people out there who don't have to experience life in order to write magnificent opuses (opi?). In fact, I'm sure such people exist. But they're few and far between, and frankly, I'm not very interested in what they have to say, no matter how beautifully they may say it.
Writing Tip # 5: Quit your day job. Seriously, how is anyone supposed to get any writing done when you have to go to work all the time? It took me three months just to get back to this blog! Okay, I've managed to write a few books, stealing time on the weekends, borrowing from holidays, tucking a bit of time into a lunch hour here and there. Just think what I could do if I could write without the interruption of work!
I have not figured out how to implement writing tip # 5 yet. When I do, I'll let you know.
Writing Tip # 6: Grow a couple extra layers of skin. I think most writers were born with a layer too few already. That's why we're shy and non-confrontational and want to crawl in holes. We need to grow that first layer of extra skin just to survive the rejections we get while trying to get published. If we do manage to get published, we need to grow an extra layer to survive the slings and arrows of reviews.
Here's an actual review my debut novel, Rip Van Dyke, recently received on Amazon.com, in its entirety:
Rip Van Dyke is just terrible. Don't waste your time and money. It's slow moving, boring and just plain silly.
This review was written by someone named "lael". I think she didn't like my book. That's okay. I never expected everyone to like my book. As reviews go, this one is remarkably poorly written. It doesn't say anything about the book itself and gives no support for the opinions expressed. It's so generic, you could switch titles and it could have been written about any book. And I know for a fact that not everyone finds Rip Van Dyke slow moving and boring. It is a bit silly, of course. It's a time travel novel, after all.
Still, the review hurt my feelings. Not because "lael" found my book to be boring and a waste of her time and money. It hurt my feelings because I am convinced she's picking on me. Not only did "lael" not like my book, she apparently hated it so much she has transferred those feelings to me and wants to hurt me by posting a spiteful review that serves no purpose except to wound. It does no good to tell myself it's nothing personal. It's my writing; of course it's personal.
Ah, well. She doesn't know it yet, but "lael" has just turned into Story Fodder!
Writing way back then
by Kate McLachlan on 08/20/10
This is a blog about writing, so I suppose it's time I wrote something on that topic. Like most writers, I've been writing my entire life. Well, since I was six and learned to write. The earliest story I wrote that is still in existence starts like this:
Vickie walked into the tiny, cool store which was the sole item of old Mrs. Summerson's income. Vickie was 5'7" and slender with long blond hair. She had big light blue eyes fringed with long dark lashes and she has a few freckles on her small turned up nose. She was wearing a pair of old, rather tight fitting, faded cut-offs and a light blue flowered halter-top and her feet were bare. She saw the small withered old lady come pattering from the back rooms of the building and smiled.
I wrote the story at the request of my best friend Vickie. Vickie was 5'7" and slender with long blond hair. She had big light blue eyes fringed.... Oh, wait. You already know that. It was the summer between our sophomore and junior years in high school, and Vickie wanted me to write a romance about her and Dave, a boy she liked. The story is 24 pages long, and I don't know how it ends because I never finished it. There's a note at the bottom of page 24 that says, "Change Dave to Kelly." Because by the time I reached page 24, Vickie had a crush on a different boy.
WRITING TIP # 1: Write what you want to write, not what your best friend wants you to write. 'Cause she'll change her mind. Dave and Kelly may have been interchangeable to Vickie, but they screwed up my story.
The story is written in pencil on bright yellow notebook paper. Other sections of the notebook are of different colored paper, and I used each section for different projects. The green section has other stories about Vickie, but Katie joins her in them. There's the story about Vickie and Katie getting kidnapped, Vickie and Katie stowing away in the sleeping quarters of a huge semi-truck, Vickie and Katie somehow vanquishing the junior class with their instant and inexplicable popularity on the first day of school. The longest of those stories is 5 pages long.
The purple section contains my favorite quotes. I frequently skipped class in high school and hid out in the library, where I self-educated by browsing the titles and reading what interested me. That's where I first encountered Gone With the Wind, Pride and Prejudice, and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. I spent hours perusing Bartlett's, jotting my favorite quotes in the purple section of my rainbow colored notebook. Here are a couple of the shorter quotes that had special meaning for me when I was sixteen:
Foresight is very wise, but foresorrow is very foollish; and castles are, at any rate, better than dungeons in the air. -- Sir John Lubbock
Never argue with a man who talks loud. You couldn't convince him in a thousand years. -- David Stair Jordan
There are no quotes by women. I know Bartlett's has them, but maybe I didn't make it as far as the sections where women had been educated.
The blue section contains my favorite story. There's not a hint of Vickie in it. The story takes place in the northwest in the 1880's. Teen orphan Katie (I wasn't big on changing names to protect the innocent) steals the cash box from her wicked uncle's store, hops on a horse, and runs away, stopping only to disguise herself as an old woman first. She wanted to disguise herself as a boy, but her womanly attributes made that a hard sell. As an old woman, though, she could escape the posse as well as other dangers the might befall a young woman alone in the wild west. I like this story. I might even revisit it someday and really write it.
WRITING TIP # 2: Write with tools that make you want to get started. If that means a rainbow colored notebook, get yourself a rainbow colored notebook.
Of course, this was all handwritten. Computers existed only in the movies and on remote secret government land and they took up entire rooms anyway. Electric typewriters had been invented. We had two of them in my freshman typing class, and the teacher rotated us through so that we could all have a chance to experience typing with just the touch of a finger, rather than pounding on the keys like we had to do with the manual typewriters. The only time I ever had to visit the vice principal in high school was when Suzy, my other best friend, and I got caught sneaking into the typing room through an open window. They found us typing away on those electric typewriters, giddy with the freedom of our fingers.
By the time I got to college, I had a typewriter of my own. Manual, of course. I bought it at a garage sale for $10, and only a couple of the keys stuck. In my English Literature 101 class, we were required to keep a notebook throughout the quarter with class notes and answers to the questions listed at the back of each story. I probably wasn't listening carefully to the directions, or maybe I didn't read the syllabus all the way through, but I thought the notebook was for my notes. I didn't realize it was graded, and I didn't find out until about a third of the way through the quarter that we had to turn it in periodically and that it had to by typed! I stayed up half the night typing that notebook on my second-hand key-sticking typewriter, and yes there were plenty of typos and strike-throughs. This was long before delete became a word in common usage. When you made a mistake, you either had to strike over it with correcting tape, which only worked so many times, or you had to type the whole page over. But this was only a notebook, after all. It's not like it was a real assignment or anything, so I didn't worry about it much. Until I got it back with an 'F' on the top, and a note from the professor that said, "You shouldn't even be in college." I'm not kidding. I wouldn't forget something like that.
To this day, I believe the real reason the professor gave me that 'F' and said that nasty thing is because I dared to argue with him in class when he insisted that it was impossible for anyone to read the short story about the hideous mutiliation of a black man's genitals without becoming sexually aroused. I'd read the story and I was not aroused, and I would not back down. He pissed me off. I pissed him off. He had the power, and I had a crummy typewriter. He won.
I stopped going to class, but it was too late to withdraw without actually going to the professor and talking to him about it, which I would rather have died than do. So I just quit going and took an 'F' for the class. I took the same class later at the community college, got an 'A', and wiped that 'F' from my grade point average. In fact, when we got to Shakespeare's Othello, I knew all the answers. The professor divided the class into two groups and she worked with one group and gave me the other to help them understand the play. I didn't tell her that the reason I knew the answers was because I'd read the play in my other English Lit 101 class, where I got an 'F'.
WRITING TIP # 3: Don't back down to asshole English Lit 101 professors. They might win the battle, but it doesn't matter because you're not in their war.
That's all for now. Stay tuned for WRITING TIPS 4, 5, & 6.
--Kate
