Author: Moriah

The Cult of Traditional Publishing, Part 1: The math don’t lie

Moriah
Mormons aren’t a cult. I know because I’m a Mormon and I was in a cult. The cult had me far more brainwashed than Mormonism ever did or ever will.

I didn’t actually do the math.

I didn’t have the numbers for one side of the colon. But based on the proliferation of newsgroups, online critique groups, publishing forums in 2008, and the number of such denizens all trying to get published, I could guess. And it was huge.

Then there was me. 1 : x6214

Mormons aren’t a cult. I know because I’m a Mormon and I was in a cult. The cult had me far more brainwashed than Mormonism ever did or ever will. Read more →

Utilities

Moriah
A screenshot of a mostly clear desktop (Win 3.x green rivets background, task bar on the right), dated 04/15/2020.
Writhe in misery, fools! Obviously Windows 3.x green rivets is not a utility, but I think of it that way. I ❤️ it so much I’ve ported it from computer to computer for 25 years.

I love utilities. Love love FLOVE me some utilities. I have utilities for every single damned thing I ever did and do, and some are already built into Windows. I even have a utility to make whatever latest Windows OS look like XP. Yes, really. You will find that some of these are quite primitive and/or aren’t developed anymore. I. Do. Not. Care. They do what I want and when what I want to do is something I can’t do, I go looking for more utilities. No, I don’t want one program with all the bells and whistles. I want one program that does one task well. Read more →

David Bowie’s cod and what women really want

Moriah

Wherein a women’s studies professor missed the most obvious thing about Jareth the Goblin King—and it isn’t his cod.

The movie Labyrinth (1986) is a tale of an adolescent girl’s quest/hero’s journey/sexual awakening. It’s a fantasy that features muppets good and slightly evil and everything in between. It also features David Bowie in very tight tights with his cod on obvious display. You can’t miss it—and that’s the point.
But why is it the point? Read more →

Premeditatio malorum (or, borrowing trouble)

Moriah

A Musing:

A lot of things really bad and really good have happened around Chez Moriah the last couple of years. One of the good things is that XX tax deduction has learned how to drive and is getting out and about on her own. She works only a few minutes away, so we got used to her driving to work and back. But she has an internship 20 minutes away from home, all freeway, heavily trafficked, and sometimes very windy. Today was her first day driving it by herself, and I am nervous and scared.

Read more →

My well was dry …

Moriah

… and then suddenly it wasn’t.

So what happened was, 1520 Main was a very difficult book to write for many reasons. It wore me out. I already had two titles on the table awaiting my tender hacksaw that I did not want to work on. I had had, in the back of my mind, since The Proviso, the idea of a Scottish historical featuring Bryce Kenard’s ancestors.

Because Bryce Kenard … le sigh.

All I knew was that it would start with a cliché: Interrupt a wedding to snatch the bride.

Read more →

A hot new writer

Moriah

Clipart of a silly cartoon yellow school bus with happy cartoon children in it.One day, on a school bus, the bus driver was driving a load of kids to school. They were at an intersection when the bus driver made a right turn on red. A kindergartner who just so happened to be sitting in the front said, “Hey! You can’t make a right turn on red!”

The bus driver then turned around, not focusing on the road, yelled, “I CAN MAKE A RIGHT TURN ON RED!”

So since he wasn’t looking, a city bus came speeding and hit the school bus. Everybody died. The end.

This is why busses don’t turn right on red.

La Bodega

Moriah

An image of the dining room at LaBodega tapas restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri.I’ve been thinking about the way I eat (for various reasons) and how/why my eating habits are so bad, why I fall back on banal comfort food, why I’m not adventurous in the least.

As I was writing Paso Doble, I kept finding myself associating my characters’ meals at tapas bars with romance. Small bites in small dishes. Tasting. A meal of hors d’oeuvres, eaten slowly, from a lover’s hand. I wanted to be able to do that.

Read more →

Musings on the “placeholder” heroine

Moriah
A still shot of actress Patricia Heaton of the TV show THE MIDDLE buckled in the driver's seat of a car looking distressed and about to blow.
Everywoman.

I.

Except for those little moments relieved by the occasional huge moment, everyday life can be a drudgery. Whatever you are engaged in, be it work (no matter how glamorous or lucrative it is) or raising a family or fulfilling your calling at church or attaining some long-held goal (usually all of them at once), at some point, you’ll find yourself slogging through it and wondering where the magic is. Read more →

Rook Takes Queen

Moriah
A still shot from the movie THE FUGITIVE. Here, Tommy Lee Jones's character (a federal marshal) is interacting with Julianne Moore's character (a nurse).
*le sigh*

So I dug an old manuscript out wondering how/if I should rehab it. I wrote it so long ago, head-hopping was still acceptable, although on its way out. It’s 84,000 words. And there are no f-bombs. (IKR?!) The thing about headhopping, at least for me, is that I could tell a story in so many fewer words with it.

This story has a story.

Read more →

Paint the corners

Moriah

A poster for TV series PITCH, featuring a female major league baseball pitcher. It shows a young Black woman with a baseball and baseball mitt in her hands.My 10-year-old XY TD can’t wait to see Pitch. He wants to watch it because it’s something that’s never been done before, a woman pitching in MLB.1 He doesn’t see a girl. He sees himself. In her. The underdog2  3 misunderstood, not wanted or liked, basically alone with too few allies, too different to have as smooth a ride through malehood as his peers.

______________________________

1.  Or, as Dude pointed out to me last night because we’re both kind of fascinated with XY’s reaction to the series (whereas 13-year-old XX is so not) (she already knows she’s a badass), a 17-year-old girl struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game and a woman hasn’t been in the MLB since.

2.  “A girl will never be able to throw hard enough to compete with boys. It’s biology and we can’t change that.” My dad told me a girl would never be able to throw a curve ball because their elbows are constructed differently from a boy’s. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not interested enough to find out. But I was kind of shocked to hear it from someone else.

3.  I introduced him to Rocky last year. He’s now a devoted disciple of underdog movies. He gets it from his mom.