Bite me, Yoda. (Or Spice Things Up!) by Wendy Russo

Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things!

            Yeah, bite me, Yoda. That’s why the prequels sucked. I mean seriously. I think its because the Jedi, arguably the most important people in the Star Wars Universe were dead inside. Ask the question, how does any movie with a lightsaber battle suck? As evidence, I present the Execution of Zett Jukassa. You have no idea what I’m talking about, right?

Well, during Anakin Skywalker’s slash and burn mission at the Jedi Temple in Episode III, there was a padawan who almost escaped. Senator Bail Organa had landed at the temple. The guards sent him away, but before he flew out, a young boy, about ten years old or so, ran out of the docking bay doors. He swung his lightsaber with precision and grace, fending off the blaster shots until one got him. And Organa watched helplessly and cried as the boy went splat.

Zett Jukassa didn’t fail because he was outnumbered, though he was, or because he didn’t have the skills, because he did. He died because the Jedi had successfully squashed any desire for excitement and adventure. He had no fear, but he also had no joy, no creativity. Just a Force and a lightsaber, and in the end, they weren’t enough.

What does this have to do with spicing things up? Everything.

In Zett Jukassa, we have a perfect character. He’s young, handsome, gifted, powerful, rational, and well trained. He’s also ten-years-old, and when a kid gets shot, the audience should care. But, we don’t. We actually need Bail Organa in that scene to care on our behalf. You know whom we do care about?

R2-D2.

That’s right. A rolling trashcan stuffed full of computer crap that emits beeps and fart noises. He gets fried and the whole audience takes a collective gasp. Why? Because the audience can relate to him. He’s weirdly shaped and put in horrible situations he’s not designed to handle. (He's a wheeled robot who treks alone through Tatooine sand dunes. There was a doubt my boy could handle the Death Star? Please.) R2-D2 says exactly what’s on his mind, often mortifying his comically uptight companion C-3PO.

I can’t tell you how to add spice to a story, but I can tell you what spice is.  Flaws. Snark. Normal people in extraordinary circumstance. Failure, and the consequences that follow. Surprises.

Humans are spicy, when they manage to shake off their Jedi training.

Ruby's First Scene from My WIP, Glitch by Wendy Russo

Parvana’s song faded out to let the dramatic opening chords of The Phantom of the Opera play through. Ruby rolled her eyes and inhaled sharply at the sound of the ringtone. She reserved that tune for Lorelei.

She paused with her finger over the “Ignore” link as the Phantom banged the organ keys again. A photo of two girls hugging each other cheek to cheek lit up her phone screen. Lorelei was the ginger on the left. She didn’t leave the house without lots of make-up hiding her freckles. Between the flash and the green lighting in the room at the moment they snapped the selfie, the girl appeared ill. Ruby’s coffee-and-cream skin fared better. Green light shifted it toward olive and made her Asian traits stand out more than usual.

She smiled a little at the photo, just for a second. They snapped it at the back-to-school dance, before everything changed.

The Phantom’s chords repeated a third time. She mulled letting the call go to voice mail. Sighing heavily, Ruby pressed her thumb down on “Answer”.

“Hey, Lora.”

“Roo! I’ve been texting you. Why aren’t you answering?”

Because texting means you want something and I’m busy. “My phone’s muted. I’m at the hospital.”

“What! Why? Are you okay? Can you—”

“I’m fine. Thank you for asking. No, it’s Micah.”

“Oh, okay.” Hearing relief in the girl’s voice, Ruby glared at the phone. “The committee's meeting at 7:45. Usual place. Don’t be late.”

Suddenly, Ruby remembered why she and Lorelei rarely spoke these days. Micah slept in a hospital bed. His mother blamed her for his seizure. Her parents had kept quiet so far, but their faces said it all when they learned the boy collapsed in their kitchen. She broke a rule and they were not happy about it. On top of that, the Advanced Placement Chemistry test would hit Ruby’s desk in ten days and she wasn’t remotely ready for it.

A best friend helped girls get through problems like these, but Lorelei didn’t know about any of them. A question and a minute would get them caught up, but no. Prom mattered more.
She supposed she should feel flattered. Lorelei needed her to help solve a problem. She knew the girl too well to believe it. There were a dozen people on the committee, and if the Devil offered his hand, Lorelei would ditch them all and run off with him.

“I’ll be there.” She wanted to tell Lorelei to kiss off, but held her tongue. The call terminated on the other end.

Ruby removed the earbud from Micah’s ear, then her own, and wrapped the thin cables around her fingers before shoving them into her front pocket. She slipped her phone into a back pocket and then leaned over to kiss sleeping beauty’s cheek.

“I’ll see you later.”

She grabbed her book bag and swung it over her shoulder as she spun around toward the door. There she stopped. Looking back at the last minute, she bit down on her lip and thought, Please wake up.

Glitch is the first book of a YA Science Fiction Romance series, set in an alternate timeline, that meshes the angelic war, high level string theory, and immigration policy to turn Lucifer's story on it's ear.

Deliciously Dark Tresa Billings by Wendy Russo

The hero of January Black, Matty Ducayn, lives in an orderly place, where people live under an unspoken expectation of good behavior, self-policed by snobs. He’s a free thinker, and as such, a social pariah. He has no friends, which doesn’t bother him much, but when he meets people like him, he gravitates toward them.

The Hill’s elite denizens don’t touch dirt. They don’t touch things that have touched dirt. They don’t pick flowers, eat fruit from the trees, or walk on the grass. They certainly don’t maintain their own gardens, which is why they employ a very large landscaping crew.

Matty meets gardener, Iris Locke, early in the novel while she and another landscaper, Tresa Billings, are planting trees. Tresa manages to drop all of their hand tools on the ground while unloading, and Matty approaches them to help. Despite Iris and Treasa’s concern of Matty getting into trouble, he helps them plant fifteen trees that afternoon, in defiance of everyone who sees him.

While Iris lives on The Hill, in the laborer campus, she isn’t burdened with the societal expectations of the ruling class. She lives in a working class community, unified by their good fortune to secure labor contracts with The Hill, and their mutual, and quiet, dislike they have for the hand that feeds them. Matty not having friends makes sense in his situation. In Iris’, it would be natural for her to have many, but she doesn’t.

Iris is a free thinker, which part of why Matty likes her so much, and also an introvert. She’s friendly, but her only real friends were Julia, her roommate, and Julia’s boyfriend, Josh.

Treasa was introduced as someone as a work partner, someone that she spends most of her time with and grew the trust. She really wasn’t meant to be more than that. But, she’s a clever girl. As time went on, she began inserting herself into action of the story in ways I never expected. She displayed jealousy, bitterness, cunning, and snark. Treasa even managed to worm her way into the main plot.

She starts her journey as simply Iris’ coworker, but by the end, she reveals that she’s a vitally important piece in the story’s motor. For my part, I decided early on to stay out of the girl’s way. When you meet her, you might agree that’s the best way to approach someone like Treasa.

The Dark Deliciousness of Working with Editors by Wendy Russo

During the publication of “January Black,” I worked with five editors. I’m including myself in the five because, of all of us, I made the most passes and caused the most trouble. More on that in a minute. First, have you seen that jumbled text of Facebook that demonstrates that jumbled text is readable so long as the first and last letters of every word are in their proper place?

I mean this one:

“I cdn’uolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg: the phaonmneel pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rseearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Scuh a cdonition is arppoiatrely cllaed Typoglycemia.
“Amzanig huh? Yaeh and you awlyas thguoht slpeling was ipmorantt.”

If you can read that text in the square above, you will have problems editing your own work.

The fabulous Anne Mini, publishing expert extraordinaire, preaches the strategy of reading the entire manuscript in hard copy, out loud, before sending it anywhere. Our brain’s ability to correct the words in real time are the reason why. I personally made eight passes over my novel before it was accepted by a publisher, and my first* editor found hundreds of errors. Structure. Grammar. Typographic. Continuity. World building. Suspension of disbelief. And my personal favorite, Frankenstein sentences. (You know those...you wrote a sentence, then edited it, then put some deleted parts back, and removed them again. A few months later, you read over the sentence and find two sentence fragements from two separate attempts, tied together with two helping verbs, both wrong, and at least one other word that you have no idea why it was ever there.)

*My first editor was actually a screener. She acquired the book for the press before leaving for nursing school. The “first” editor was actually the second to get the manuscript.

In small presses, your editors will often be a fellow writers. They are people. Humans. They have families, day jobs, health problems, and works in progress of their own. They don’t know you, the thickness of your skin, or your preference for how to receive criticism on your work. I established a casual connection with my editor up front and we chatted off and on during the first few months she had my book. That’s right. Months. Some editors turn around quickly, which has its pros and cons. Others take their time. It was during these conversations that I learned about a dozen or so things in her life that would keep her from working on my novel. And, when I got the edits back from her, I got the distinct sense that she wasn’t the right editor for my story despite what had become a friendly personal relationship.

It’s important to listen to these instincts. Just like a parent, you are the first and best advocate that your novel has. I didn’t listen at the time. I spent two and a half months rewriting the middle third of the book—which I do not regret—and gave it back to her. The second round edits didn’t make me happy and resulted in the publisher reassigning my novel to another editor.

Was she a bad editor? Not at all. It’s not as easy as “good” editor vs “bad” editor, although there are both. Even if you get a good editor, s/he may not be the right editor for you on this book. She may point out all of the things she should, but do it in such a way that makes you want to stab her repeatedly with coffee straw. Or she may love your story too much to critique much at all, and errors slip through publication to be found later on by readers later. These are warning signs. If you’ve built a beautiful friendship with your editor—likely if you’ve connected on Facebook—you may want to sever your business relationship before it all goes sour.

What I have learned is to be patient, but not too patient. Ask questions. Communicate my expectations. I waited too long to see how it would all play out. There’s no shame in admitting when things go sideways with an editor. Sooner, I’ve learned, really is better.

Dishing Secrets about January Black’s Cover

In the past 15 months, January Black’s cover has been called pretty, rich, mysterious, and ominous. One blogger, whose thing is to call out bad covers, posted it solely because of the bird. Some people just don’t like birds. Mostly, the response has been incredibly positive. Readers male and female, young and old have told me they love it. My husband loves it, and as a graphic designer and a 20-year Photoshop expert, he’s a tad bit opinionated.

But did I like it? (Taria, honey, if you’re reading this, please put down whatever beverage you’re drinking, lest you destroy something expensive.) Truthfully, not at first.

We judge books by their covers, but the book is not the cover. A book is the product of months, even years of hard work, of lost sleep, of time spent away from family and friends. And, while working on them, it’s impossible to not think about how it might look on a shelf with other books.

I created an account on Authonomy in 2010 and uploaded a Japanese Maple leaf I had drawn to go with the review chapters there. That was the cover for a year. After that, I worked on dozens of covers that included teen girls and boys, chess pieces, books, buildings with glass roofs, sunsets beyond open doors, and the decimal places of e. Jackson Rathbone was a favorite of mine for a while, even though I could never use it.

Basically, I had been thinking about the cover of January Black for more than two years when Taria Reed, who’s never read the book, received my cover information sheet. She worked solely on my requests, which I intentionally very vague, and the guidance of the publisher. Less than two weeks later, the finished product dropped into my inbox on December 31, 2012.

January Black’s kingdom has more in common with modern America than medieval Europe. I had never played with green or stone. I love the title font, but it is handwritten and Matty’s world is very digital, so I never would have chosen it. There are no iron gates in the story, and I don’t think I ever mentioned a bird.

It took three, maybe four seconds for me to get over the sense of it being a square peg in a round hole.

The cover provides the symbolism it should. The story is dense for YA, and suggests at a mysterious, of secrets lost under layers of something growing out of control. The bird, freedom, is small. He is unencumbered by his surroundings, but he also not very important to them. He can stay or go on a whim which is something I personally find distressing.

Mostly, the cover is beautiful, and it is sweetly romantic, both adjectives which have been applied to the story itself. Falling in love was inevitable, and I replied to Steph Murray at Crescent Moon Press to accept the cover about a minute later.

One Dark Secret About Wendy S. Russo

I didn’t publish my first book, but not for lack of trying. I boxed a trilogy, bound, with cute little labels on each of six parts, and mailed it to Bantam Spectra in 1999. I felt I owed it to my then-boyfriend to submit it after the two years I spent working on something that had ZERO chances of being picked up. It was, after all, Star Wars fan fiction.

Imagine my surprise when, ten months later, the mailman left the box at my doorstep with a  letter from Bantam Spectra praising my nerve and politely declining my submission. It impressed me so much that I sent them a thank you card because all that time, I honestly thought it was buried somewhere in a Staten Island landfill. Had I sent that box today, I am positive that it would be dropped in the trash unopened.

I didn’t publish my second book, a two volume epic fantasy, either. Or my third, a short contemporary novel. And I struggled for ten years on an epic fantasy that I worked into the fiction equivalent of meringue whipped way too long.

January Black is the first of my stories that I felt strongly enough about to research publication. It went through eight rounds of editing, endured dozens of rejections (mostly by non-response), and nearly missed an opportunity due to an interested acquiring editor having a serious family crisis. (A year later, she lost her sixteen-year-old son to cancer.) It was finally released by Crescent Moon Press on January 15, 2013, and since then, it has been enjoyed by people all over the world. It’s received high praise from Conservative Teachers of America, and won a silver medal at the 2013 Readers’ Favorite Awards.

Darkly Delicious YA asked me to talk about one dark secret. Today, I will admit to being very insecure. When I got that box back from Bantam Spectra, I shoved it in a corner of my closet because couldn’t bear to throw it away. It had somehow managed to avoid being tossed in the trash by people who had no reason to care, so how I could I, it's creator, be so flippant? At the same time, just looking at the box reminded me of what the letter from them said. I shoved it in the back of the closet so I wouldn’t be mortified by own audacity every time I saw it.

I am an author, and I am also a creature of doubt. I feel like I should be confident in my storytelling abilities, but I’m not. I feel like I should have being a published author figured out, but I don’t. I feel like I should have my first series in the bag and working on a second. So why am I struggling to progress on either series I’ve started since completing January Black in 2010?

Honestly, that book--despite the errors that readers have told me are on every page—is a tough act to follow. Readers have praised it highly. Conservative Teachers of America is hoping that I will continue writing novels that present traditional values in a way kids will absorb without realizing. And did I mention it won an award?! How in the f*@&  do I follow that but with a bigger award?

It’s a reality, for any author, that there will be a book that does not meet the readers’ expectations, one that just won’t be a good as the last one. It has to happen sooner or later. But, you know what thought creeps up on me while trying to beat Level 154 of Candy Crush? What if I never write anything that compares to my first novel? What if the readers who have enjoyed it are disappointed by everything else I put out? Can I change my genre? Can I start writing LGBT erotica or even open-door sex scenes without readers thinking I’ve sold out or lost my way. In twenty years, when I look at my backlist, will I think to myself, “Well that was a slow roll down hill?”

Of course, if I don’t publish another book, I won’t have a backlist for readers to have an opinion on one way or another. Instead, I’ll be a one-hit-wonder, without a hit, and I’m insecure about that as well.

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