Star Trek at Fifty

One of my earliest memories was watching the Apollo Moon missions on TV.

One of my other earliest memories was hiding behind my mother from a frightening image on TV: a giant, alien, disembodied head. No, this was before Nixon. If you don’t know how those two could possibly be connected (besides an early indication that my generation watched too much TV) … then you don’t know Star Trek. (That episode, by the way, was “The Corbomite Maneuver”.)

Could it have really been fifty years ago? A whole half century since the single most influential entertainment show in television history debuted.

Yeah, that’s a big claim, but think about it. That weird space show with the bad special effects did more than spawn a bunch of movies and spin-offs. It influenced people who became astronauts themselves, as well as scientists of every stripe. It became a cultural phenomenon, to the extent that even people who hate science fiction recognize “Live long and prosper”, and “Beam me up, Scotty”. It went all the way from there down to a little kid who was inspired to write stories about space himself, and who now defines himself as a writer above almost all else.

Just to be clear, that would be me.

Lots of electronic ink is being spilled this week over the big five oh. Why did Star Trek become so huge? The simple answer is that it held one thing that so much futurism of the time didn’t: optimism. It posited a future universe in which we not only survived nuclear weapons, racial conflict, despots and election campaigns, we triumphed. We went out beyond our world together, as one race.

Can’t we all just get along? In Star Trek, we did. That was what it was about, not the rubber alien faces and over-emoting.

On a personal level, it led me not only to write stories myself, but to have my first fictional role model. I was a shy kid, suppressing my emotions, misunderstood—alien. The character of Spock spoke to me … I even had a blue long-sleeved shirt with an insignia on it that looked a lot like his uniform shirt.

The less said about my haircut at the time, the better … although it may help explain why I wasn’t the most popular kid.

As a teen, it seemed like I was in an exclusive club, maybe too exclusive—sometimes I thought I was the only Star Trek fan in the state. In a weird way, I was upset when it went from a canceled cult show to a franchise. It was like losing ownership. But now Star Trek belongs to the world, and after fifty years it’s still going strong.

That’s a good thing—the world needs all the optimism it can get.

An Interview with Ingrid Hahn

An Interview with Ingrid Hahn

Could we at least finish summer, first?

September Sixth is the day I first saw Christmas items on the shelf of a local store. September Sixth. Well over a quarter of a year before Christmas.

And yes, I have now been banned from still another store for still another anti-early Christmas tirade, but the jokes on them: They had to clean up after my head exploded.

Or the path

I took the road less traveled ... and that made all the difference in me wondering where the heck am I?

50 Authors from 50 States: Oklahoma – The Sooner State with Author and Tour G...

50 Authors from 50 States: Oklahoma – The Sooner State with Author and Tour G...: The moniker “Sooner” is plastered all over the central Oklahoma. In addition to t-shirts and park names, numerous businesses attach it ...

Coming Attractions: Not Attractive Enough?

To continue discussing the rejection of my novel Coming Attractions (What? You’ve got an appointment with a supermodel?) It might be a good idea if you knew what the book is about:

In the darkness of an Indiana drive-in movie theater, Maddie McKinley returns from the concession stand, climbs into the wrong van, and gets tackled by the father of the kids inside. Logan Chandler is embarrassed about roughing her up, but also intrigued by the beautiful young woman from Boston, who arrived alone at the movies wearing an expensive dress. Unfortunately, he’s the local businessman leading a battle to save the drive-in from developers--and she’s the attorney sent to make sure it’s torn down.

See, there’s your back cover blurb. Coming Attractions was actually outlined, and some of the first draft written, at the Auburn-Garrett drive-in theater. My kids and I liked to get there early to grab the best spot, and we brainstormed this book while people-watching and hitting the popcorn.

Over the years I’ve made many changes. The biggest came at the request of a major romance publisher, when the editor agreed to take another look if I made revisions. I did so, the biggest being splitting up a climactic scene and moving part of it closer to the end of the book. In the end they still rejected it, saying Maddie wasn’t a relatable heroine: They thought she came across as “very snobby and rather unlikable”. Also, the word hoity-toity was used.

In the opening scene Maddie has just finished an exhausting flight from Boston. She feels she’s been exiled to Indiana, after a very bad public breakup with her boyfriend—a partner in her firm. She’s in career purgatory, and she’s doing grunt work, and it’s the low point of her adult life. So yeah, she’s not sunshine and puppy dogs.

But it doesn’t matter what an author intends; you can’t go explaining your intentions to each individual reader. (Well, you can, but you’ve got another book to write, fella.) I thought I’d made her more sympathetic in edits, but apparently not enough.

I won’t go into detail on the second editor’s rejection letter. Much of what the editor had to say made sense, and will be addressed before I move on. But there was one thing.

Over the years the rules for romance novels have loosened quite a bit, and there’s not such a cookie cutter approach to what is and isn’t allowed. But there’s one big trope the industry as a whole sticks to: When the couple acknowledges their love for each other, the story is over.

In other words, the primary story in a romance is the romance. Not the mystery, not the adventure, not the legal thriller. No matter how many balls you have in the air, once the path to the couple’s happily ever after looks clear, the juggling is over.

No matter how much Maddie and Logan love each other, there are huge issues in the way of their happiness. For complicated reasons, it’s way more than just business for either of them. The story’s climax is a sometimes comic court battle, ending with a scene I love so much deleting it would be the very definition of the cliché “kill your darlings”.

The thing is, the only way I could have them refuse to acknowledge their feelings for each other would be if Logan blamed her personally, but that’s not who Logan is. Meanwhile, Maddie would have to keep hiding things from Logan, and she prides herself on her honesty.

So the characters talk it out. There’s still a whole battle in which they’re on opposite sides, but that doesn’t keep them from acknowledging their feelings.

I reject that a romance story has to stop the moment they say “I love you, we’ll figure it out”. I think it can go on through the figuring it out stage, and still be interesting, and romantic.

Does that make sense? ‘Cause this is getting way long.

There’s a place for stories that don’t fit the conventional outline, so I’m considering self-publishing Coming Attractions. I’d rather get a contract with one of the big publishers, to get into bookstores and not do all the work myself. (By myself, I mean my wife does a lot of the work.) I could go to small publishers too, although that doesn’t guarantee the bookstore part. But I believe in this story.

I know some people are firmly on one side or another of the self vs. traditional publishing debate, but maybe this is one of those books self-publishing was originally made for. What do you think?

A Personal Rejection

When a writer gets a personal rejection letter from a publisher, it’s a good thing—kind of. Many of us spent years working our way to this point: First to submitting at all; then form rejections; then maybe a rejection with a scrawled note.

A science fiction magazine I once submitted to would reply with a list of common story problems: The slush pile reader would underline the particular problem that got me rejected. Over the years I got a lot of underlines. But now that most submissions go e-mail, that kind of personal contact is less common.

So actual written content from an editor shows how far you came, and also shows you came this close to getting in. It’s like getting a silver medal: Yeah, you were a close second, but you’re not going to be on a Wheaties box.

Because it’s still a rejection, dammit.

I got a letter from a major romance publisher, about my submission of Coming Attractions. They really enjoyed my characters and setting. Unfortunately, that one line was followed by a very long paragraph of what they didn’t like. My characters and setting got me there, and everything else got me back.

And then there was that very short sentence at the end: “Should you choose to revise this project, you are welcome to resubmit it for consideration.”

Oh?

Now, I spent weeks revising Coming Attractions once before, at the request of an even more major romance publisher … in fact, the major romance publisher. Feeling I hadn’t addressed their main problem enough, they ultimately rejected me. And to show the vagaries of the writing industry, this new rejection didn’t even mention what the first publisher objected to. Publisher 2 had a whole new list of problems, some of which made sense and some of which I didn’t really agree with.

In order to make the new publisher happy, I’d have to completely remove most of the last third of the novel, which means writing new material to fill out the word count. My dilemma: Spend at least several weeks tearing the novel completely apart and stitching it back together again (with no guarantee of an acceptance), or send it on to another publisher, or self-publish.

I wrote the first draft of this novel years ago, and I’ve been trying to sell it since 2010. In other words, there aren’t that many traditional publishers who haven’t already seen it. That leaves small publishers or self-publishing, which leads to the next question:

Was the novel not right just for this publisher? Or is it not good enough at all? I have my opinion … but I’m the writer, and this is my baby, and my opinion is suspect.

These are the problems that drive writers to drink, or at least to chocolate. I’m going to go into a little more detail about the book itself, and the latest rejection, in a future post—so you can help me decide.