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“The name’s Vicious. That’s V-I-C-I-O-U-S. Unlike Tragic Hero Vo-Tech, spelling is on the curriculum at Hot Villain U.”

(Sorry. I love me some J.R. Ward, but I couldn’t resist.)

Image: COWBOY BEBOP © Sunrise.

Person Who Is Now On My List: You know, if you’re going with the genie theme, you really ought to make your blog more genie-like.

Me: Yeah, but that means screwing with the template. I had to screw with the template for a month just to make the damn thing functional. I’m kind of scared to screw with the template anymore. Last time I screwed with the template, all the white disappeared, and the whole blog was black text on a 95% gray background. I’m through screwing with the template.

PWINOML: But I found this cool graphic of a lamp for you.

(It is kind of cool. Watercolor or something, shades of pinks and blues and purples.)

Me: Meh. Needs to be about 600 pixels wider.

PWINOML: Come on. You can do something in Photoshop. Blotch some colors together, smear them around, do some kind of texture thingy.

Me: You know how I am with Photoshop. Last time I opened it up, I spent 19 days making a comic strip about my freakin’ romance novel.

PWINOML: But that’ll be a cute extra to offer your squeeing fangrrls when you’re famous. Plus, it’s funny as hell. (Plunks down in front of Me’s computer and gets fresh with the mouse. Photoshop awakens like the soul-sucking monster it is.) Did you ever finish coloring that?

Me: The base colors. I need shadows and highlights. I never do those right.

PWINOML: You know, since you’re a professional artist, people expect better of you.

Me: Shut up. You are so on my list.

PWINOML: Look, we’ll find some kind of genie-looking font and… God damn, how many fonts do you have?

Me: All of them.

(Six hours later…)

PWINOML: Okay, that font from four hours ago totally represented.

Me: What are you, a valley girl gangbanger? “It, like, totally represented, fer sure, yo.”

PWINOML: Get off my dick, homes.

(Twenty minutes of hysterical laughter, as PWINOML lacks male genitalia, and we can’t stop reenacting memorable moments from the BDB and various video games and Resident Evil movies, all of which we have watched this week because we both have a girl crush on Milla Jojovich)

PWINOML: (Taking advantage of Me being weak with laughter and pulling some stealthy ninja move that seamlessly shifts me into her place in front of the computer) Okay, get to work.

Me: Yeah. (sigh) See you in a month.

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So, at some indefinite point in the future, the blog will either get a makeover or explode.

Or be overrun by zombies that should have starved months ago from lack of human flesh to feast upon.

You never know around here…

Sign up now, and for the low, low price of $94,789,219.99, you too can receive twelve months of sexy, romantic, spellbinding fictional men delivered right to you, right there where you’re sitting now, on the first of every month!

Or don’t sign anything and don’t send me $94,789,219.99 (although, if you could, that would be great). Just check back here at the beginning of the month and behold the wondrousness of my favorite fictional men.

Of course, I’m doing David first. (Hee… I’m doing David! The maturity around here is staggering drunkenly and giggling like a fifth grader after learning about Lake Titicaca, is it not?)

Not only will it be an easy post since these are the guys who keep me coming back for more (so I know them quite well **lecherous grin**), but it’s also educational. I certainly want to write heroes readers fall in love with, so examining how other writers got me hooked should be a valuable exercise.

Feel free to chip in at any time with the heroes/hunks/hotties who have made you want to rip your bodice and scream, “Take me!”—or tackle them, rip their bodices, and scream, “I’m taking you!”, if that’s more your speed.

Don’t be shy. It’s all in the name of research.

‘Twas three months before the night before Christmas and all through the house,
Every creature was stirring, probably even (with my luck) a mouse.
Six partial/synopsis packages by starry-eyed novelist were assem-bled
While visions of Golden Heart glory danced in her head,
When what to her wondering eyes should appear
But a sneaky little typo overlooked by many a peer!
“Son of a bitch!” she cried, distraught.
“I’ve sent this out there,” she wailed, reaching for a shot
of bourbon to numb the excruciating pain
And singing that song from The Wedding Singer begging someone to “put a bullet in my brain.”

A few minutes later, booze and nerves interacting,
She decided perhaps she was overreacting.
“Phonetically, there’s not much difference between a T and a D.
Maybe no one will notice,” she said hopefully.
Who is she kidding? Is she out of her head?
There’s a huge freaking difference between a safe bet and a safe bed.
The decision-makers seize any excuse to reject.
Overlooking stupid little errors is a fine way to get no respect.
“Maybe they’ll be so engrossed in the story,
Their eyes will skim over like all those befory.”
She read it again, then released a great sigh.
Once seen, ’twas subtle as a fish hook in the eye.

“Well,” she thought, “so much for that illusion.
My dreams of being published were only a delusion.
I have a better chance of winning the lottery
Or being struck by lightning when I take the dog out to pee.”
Then she glanced to the left and her eyes lit upon
A tower of books filled with writing just wron(g).
“Hey, I’m better than that,” she said with relief.
“I’ve snarked most of those on The Editing Polief.”
And so she returned to her contest collating,
Heartened by all of those books she’d been hating.

But due to her fleeting dismay and despair,
She now has more bald spots than curly brown hair.

Yay! I haven’t been the Editing Police in months!

Today’s infraction: Criminally Bad Dialogue.

Dialogue is not conversation. Dialogue should contain none of the wasted breath and useless babble that those of us in the real world pepper our communication with. (”Hi.” “Hi. How are you?” “Pretty good. You?” “Okay.” “Whatcha doing?” “Not much.” “I have something stuck in my teeth.” “Yeah, I hate it when that happens.” “Okay, see ya later.” “Yeah, bye.”)

I knew I was in trouble when, in the book I was reading, two characters met and promptly sat down to get to know each other better. The following several pages went something like this:

“What kind of music do you like?”

“I like Nirvana.”

“Yeah, it’s amazing how popular that music got after the poor-rich-famous-whiny-crybaby-drug addict-suicide thing. Almost reminds me of somebody else.”

“I also like jazz.”

“Me too! (Insert 5 paragraphs about the history of jazz here)”

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Poached duck, and my favorite beverage is green tea. How about you?”

Bored senseless yet? Wondering how the characters’ CD collections and tastebuds are going to be crucial to Resolving the Big Crisis?

Aw, sorry. This is nothing more than a failed attempt at character development—failed, as there is no character and no development involved, merely a random spew of items to which the reader is expected to assign the appropriate value judgments and get the intended picture of the characters.

Why is this a dangerous technique to employ? Well, my judgment was that these characters have horrible taste in everything, could be making much better of use of their time (which was repeatedly stated to be of the essence), and were boring as hell. I somehow doubt that was the intended picture, particularly since the result was me adding this book to the Too Awful To Finish/Never Buy This Author Again stack, which I assume is not a desirable thing if you’re this author or her publisher.

The verdict: Guilty, guilty, guilty.

The sentence: Permanent exile from my reading future (and be thankful you’re in America—in a less diplomatic country, I’d cut out your characters’ tongues).

If you are a member of an Evil Organization (hypothetically speaking, of course…) and you betray the aforementioned Evil Organization, are you now considered:

a. One of the good guys.

b. Even more of a bad guy because in addition to whatever flaws led you to become a member of an Evil Organization to begin with, you’re now also a dirty, stinking traitor to your comrades.

c. Depends on your motivation for the betrayal.

d. What difference does it make? Some sick bastard will draw you into a dude-on-dude lovefest no matter what you do. (Links in order of increasing wrongness. And I didn’t even get into the OMG EYE BLEACH STAT ones.)

(My god, how I hate yaoi. The appeal has been explained to me: “Two yummy heroes for the price of one!” But frankly, one of them’s always kind of a girl anyway, so I still don’t understand the obsession with forcing homosexuality on characters created by others with no obvious homoerotic intent. And it’s usually forced by girls. **meperplexed** Yummy guys uninterested in girls and competing with us for the remaining yummy guys is a desirable thing? Does not compute.)

But back to the topic that got lost way long ago, at what point does the Really Bad Boy become Heroic, or do you never find it believable that a character previously portrayed as a rank bastard could have legitimate reasons for behaving badly and eventually redeem himself?

(In other words, I’m feeling sorry for my villain at this point and whipped out—even with my gimpy hand, I whipped—50 pages of notes for his own quest for twue wuv, and I’m afraid I’ve made him so loathsome in his villain role, he’ll get booed off the stage when he’s the star.)

(Edit: This is completely a rhetorical question, I’ve realized. I have to write what I have to write, and if everybody hates it, that’s the way it is. No one will ever be able to accuse me of selling out, simply because I’m not flexible enough to write to order!)

I sliced open my right pinky finger while cleaning up broken glass. I was being really quite careful, but there was just no anticipating a shard being embedded in the crappy vinyl tile in my kitchen (it’s a rental; I can’t change it no matter how horrible it is).

The dog bled all over the place this weekend from a nipped toenail (she’s fine; she would have been finer if, the first time the bleeding stopped, she hadn’t had a spaz attack and ripped it open again sliding to a stop on the carpet; she was subsequently crated until she calmed down and the house looked less like a murder scene), and then, feeling left out of the fun, I ran around dripping all over the place.

It’s just a pinky. How bad could it be? Well, because of the location of the wound, the finger has to be splinted to keep the cut from popping open like one of those old coin purses.

Still, how bad could it be? Have I mentioned, in addition to the typing required in writing (and I was doing so well with Chapter One of Gabe’s book…), my Real Job involves typing 8 hours a day?

Still, how bad could it be? What’s under that finger, the semicolon? I probably type that once a day. No crisis. It’s not like it’s my left pinky, which has to cover the A. That’s a vowel, dude. It gets some use.

Enter. Enter is also under that finger. Enter gets a little use.

And also P. P is a surprisingly popular letter in my line of work.

The slash. In the ordinary course of events, nobody uses that key unless you’re manually entering an extended web address. Well, at the Real Job, I heavily use a “word expander” (which is what it sounds like—why type “Thank you very much for allowing me to participate in her care” when you can type “tybf” and be done with it?), and all of my addresses, headings, and things with special formatting are preceded by the humble slash.

In other words, I have developed an entirely new appreciation for my poor little pinky finger as I inefficiently peck away with my short-a-digit right hand.

Treat your pinky well. Take it out to lunch. Get it a massage. Kiss it tenderly goodnight and tell it you love it.

Don’t wait until it’s too late, like I did.  **sob**

Update 9/20: Skin sealed enough to remove splint. No pain with range of motion. Also no pain with being jabbed with a pin.

Nerve damage! Yay!

The outer half of my pinky finger from the last joint to the tip will perpetually slumber. Ah, well. Messing with the line of demarcation will keep me amused while waiting in lines. (”I can feel it… and now I can’t. Whee!”) (I’m easily amused.)

Going out later to buy plastic cups, since I really can’t afford to lose a greater percentage of my fingers, which are responsible for my livelihood, and I am far more freaked out by my zombie pinky than I’m letting on…