Jordan Summers

I’m over at the Innsmouth Free Press site today talking about writing paranormals.

I thought this joke was funny. Not exactly politically correct, but funny in its slightly exaggerated view. I wasn’t alive in 1960 nor was I in school that decade, but this was how things were handled many years later when I was in school. And keep in mind, I went to a school where it was common to see deer rifles hanging in the backs of trucks on school property. Nobody even thought about getting them out and using them as a weapon. Oh how times have changed.

1960 vs 2010

Scenario #1: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1960 – Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up
buddies.
2010 – Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge
them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario #2: Jeffrey won‚t be still in class, disrupts other students.
1960 – Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the
Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class
again.
2010 – Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for
ADHD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a
disability.

Scenario #3: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor‚s car and his Dad
gives him a whipping with his belt.
1960 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to
college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2010 – Billy‚s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster
care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy‚s sister that she
remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy‚s Mom
has affair with psychologist.

Scenario #4: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1960 – Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2010 – Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car
searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario #5: Pedro fails high school English.
1960 – Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2010 – Pedro‚s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear
nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for
graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state
school system and Pedro‚s English teacher. English banned from core
curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway, but ends up mowing lawns for a
living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario #6: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July,
puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1960 – Ants die.
2010 – ATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic
terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home
computers confiscated. Johnny‚s Dad goes on a terror watch list and is
never allowed to fly again.

Scenario #7: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his
knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort
him.
1960 – In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2010 – Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She
faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

As I mentioned earlier, January was a real BEOTCH. We had a death in the family, a dear friend experienced a devastating loss, Amazon punked Macmillan, and my agent and I parted ways. In the scheme of things, the latter is of little consequence. The timing might have been a surprise, but the overall result was sadly not.

The end of that relationship has caused me to do a lot of soul searching. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is I need in an agent. Like a good marriage, the agent/author relationship takes a lot of work. It’s never perfect. No one expects it to be, least of all me. And like a marriage, breaking up is hard to do–most of the time. I take pride in the fact that I have a decent working relationship with my two ex-agents.

I do not pretend to think that it will be easy to find a new agent. I’ve had several published friends struggle in their search for representation. My writing interests make it even more difficult. I’m not just interested in one genre or two. I want to write in Urban Fantasy, YA, and Romance. There are a lot of very good agents that represent Urban Fantasy or YA or Romance, but very few do all three. And even fewer do all three well. Add to that my need for aggressive representation and the list grows even smaller.

Fortunately, I’m not in a hurry. Considering I’ve sold every book I’ve ever had published (except foreign rights) on my own, waiting isn’t a problem. *g* I’ve decided to take the next several months off to work on new material. I’m going to complete the YA and an adult UF (maybe even a romance partial), then I’ll start querying. I still have a lot of work sitting in New York, so I believe there’s time to get my ducks in a row.

In the meantime, I’m reading a lot of wonderful fiction and finishing my online writing class. As a bonus, I just saw the line-up for the new Blood Lite 2 anthology, which will be due out at Halloween (2010). You can check it out on Kevin Anderson’s blog.

Dh and I went out this past weekend and did a little retail therapy. We both came home with 27 inch Macs. Now I should probably mention, unlike dh, I’ve never owned a Mac, so I have quite a learning curve happening at present.

Of course, if dh hadn’t spent the last several days trying to copy over everything from my PC to my Mac, there wouldn’t be a learning curve because I probably wouldn’t have switched.

I am looking forward to working on this machine. I figure it goes along with all the other changes taking place in my life at present. *ggg*

If you switched from a PC to a Mac, how long did it take you before you were comfortable on the new machine?

Man, has this been a rough up and down month both personally and professionally. I will be glad to see the back of January. I know I’ve been rather absent on the blog as of late. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to do. And how I’d like to proceed.

Anyone who’s been involved in the publishing industry for any length of time knows it’s like riding a bull. It’s hard to remain in your seat long enough to get to that eight second whistle.

Well, I may be covered in dust and cow shit, but that never stopped me from getting back up. (And yes, I do speak from experience. *ggg*) I will continue to write. I’m actually looking forward to it. The class I’m currently taken has really opened my eyes and shown me many ways to improve my craft. Can’t wait to dig in and apply what I’ve learned.

Unless a surprise sale comes through in the next few months, I will be retiring Jordan. It’s impossible to get a fresh start without doing so. I’m not taking down the site because I still have releases coming out this year. I won’t leave you hanging.

Part of me is sad about retiring the name, but part of me really looks forward to starting anew without any preconceived ideas about what type of writer I am.

Julie Leto said something recently that really stuck with me. She said, “I decided as tough as this business is, I’m going to be tougher.”

Never give up. Never surrender.

It was bound to happen. I’ve been searching for a long time and was tempted on occasion to settle for less, but I persevered. I just never thought it could occur so suddenly. Meet my new love HERE.

I received an email over the weekend from editor, Kevin J. Anderson to let me know that my short story, ‘Tastes Like Chicken’ has been accepted into the Blood Lite 2 anthology. The anthology is a collection of humorous dark fantasy/horror stories. I am beyond thrilled to be a part of this anthology. For an idea of what the anthology will be like, pick up Blood Lite 1.

There are a lot of places in this world (and outside of this world) that I’d love to visit, but there are ten places I’d like to see within the next five years—or sooner.

1. Egypt
2. Jordan (How can I resist?)
3. Thailand
4. China
5. Switzerland
6. New Zealand
7. Cambodia
8. Australia
9. Vietnam
10. Antarctic

And I’d LOVE to go into space. What can I say? I’m really into the whole ‘Boldly go where no man has gone before’ thing.

Where would your top ten be?

Went to see Daybreakers over the weekend. If you haven’t seen it, you may want to skip this entry. I am going to include SPOILERS.

First I’ll start with what I liked. I liked the fact that the movie played with vampire lore, while still keeping vamps tied to the night. I liked how they incorporated technology into making the vamps able to get around during the day. The cars they drove were really pretty cool– camera operated and shielded. I liked how the world’s work force had to change hours to exist normally. I liked how everyone smoked because it could no longer kill them. (Nice convincing touch.) I loved how blood deprivation mutated vampires into monsterous creatures. Would’ve liked to see a whole lot more of them. I also loved the fact that there were people who ‘liked’ being vampires.

Now for the dislikes. The story itself could’ve used some punching up. They had some fun ideas, but chose to go a safe/cliched (sorry about the lack of accent) route. I so wanted this to be a fun movie, but it fell short. There were a lot of characters who were put on screen, not because they actually had a part to play, but because they were needed to manipulate the viewer. They had no depth–most had no depth. Okay, only two had any depth whatsoever. That said, I still think it’s worth going to see the film, if you dig vampires and like a lot of blood splatter. Just don’t look to closely at the storyline.

I’m truly sorry that I’ve been so silent as of late. I’d planned to do a recap of 2009, but you all went through it just like I did, so there are no big surprises there. *g* Publishing has started to level off. Note: I didn’t say recover. It’s still a bronco attempting to buck everyone off. As part of my nefarious plan to better my writing skills, I’ve auditioned and been accepted into an online class. So far, it’s great. The homework is kicking my butt more than I thought it would, but ultimately that’s a good thing. I’ve already learned a lot and we’ve only done one lesson. Can’t wait to see what the next four weeks hold.

With that in mind, I probably won’t be blogging a lot until I get a few things off my plate. My intention for the New Year was to blog a couple of times of week, but make the entries meaty. No more fillers. I guess I’m already breaking that resolution. (Okay, it wasn’t exactly a resolution, since I don’t make those, but it was my intention.)

Along with my writing class, I’ve been working on my young adult urban fantasy. Figured out the problem that was plaguing the fifth chapter, which is a BIG relief. Now I’m just trying to juggle my schedule enough to get my daily word count in. That’s right, I’m back to writing six days a week. I blew it yesterday, but made up for it today. I’m also getting a lot of use out of my birthday present, Rosetta Stone French 1. I’m doing a lesson every day. The lessons move fast, but I definitely see what makes them effective. The picture match to the words and phrases really works. The writing section is still stomping me, but it’ll come eventually.

Every year I keep track of how many books I read. This year I think I read a little less than last year 08. I finished 77 books. Someday I’m going to hit a hundred. That’s my aim anyway. How did you all do with your reading this year? Read more? Less? What books stood out to you?
For me, it was the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, One Night of Scandal by Teresa Medeiros, The Absolute True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Darkfever and Bloodfever by Karen Moning, and Magic Burns and Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews. I read a lot of other books, but those are the ones that stood out for me.

I’ve started off the New Year right by reading Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. I can’t emphasis enough how terrific this book turned out to be. If you do anything creative or think about doing anything creative, you MUST pick it up.

I’m now reading The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan. It’s the second book in the Percy Jackson series. Really great stuff.

The one thing I realized about last year was that I spent way too much time editing and not enough time writing. I cannot express enough the disparity between those two actions. :-O Hence the resolve to write six days a week. I’ve purposely kept the word count low to make it easy for me. Have to work back up to productivity. So far it is working.

I’m working out five days a week. The plan is to work up to six days and make it for at least forty five minutes. I’m at thirty minutes now. I was fortunate enough to receive the Wii game Just Dance for Christmas. I’m having ridiculous amounts of fun trying to match the dancers on screen, which is a trick given that I’m convinced I have two left feet. *ggg* I also got the add on pack for the Wii Active. I believe it’s called Wii Active More. Let me tell you, it is a LOT more. I thought the other one was tough. This one is really hard (if you’re as out of shape as I am). At the same time, I think it’s more fun. They’ve changed it to be more interactive. My favorite activity thus far is the sparring section. Lots of fun. Lots of sweat. Have you all picked up any new exercise toys? Don’t tell me I’m sweating alone. *wg*

Tomorrow dh and I are off to a farmer’s market. (It’s this time of year that I’m truly grateful to be in the Southwest.) We’re also hitting Daybreakers. Like I’m going to pass up a vampire flick. Is anyone else going to see it? I’m counting down the days until Legion releases. Angels, machine guns, it doesn’t get any better than that.