If The Goddaughter moved to other Genres (a seriously non-serious post)

Last year at about this time, my publisher gave me a challenge. 

“We want to try some women’s fiction for the Rapid Reads line,” she said.  “So I need a book from you by June.”

Huh?  Me, the scribe of mob comedy, write Chicklit?  Romance?  Okay, can I make it funny, I asked?  Luckily they went thumbs up.  And so Worst Date Ever comes out in September this year.

More on that later.  This column is about something else.

Point being, all this writing-out-of-genre caused me to think about what would happen if Gina Gallo, the original mob goddaughter, were to be dragged kicking and screaming out of crime, and plunked right down into another genre.  Or three.  So here goes.

Western:

(on a stage coach near you)

Gina:  “Please move over.  You’re taking up two seats.”

Bad guy Cowboy: “Hey little lady.  You can sit right here on my lap.  What’s a pretty little thing like you doing with that mighty big revolver, anyway?”

Gina (demonstrating):  <BLAM>

Cowboy drops to the floor.

Gothic Romance:

(in a seriously spooky old manor)

Fiendish male character, rubbing hands together:  “You’ll never escape me, my pretty.  Never!”

Gina (looking around): “Are you sure this isn’t a set for The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”

Fiend:  “Enough!  You’ll be my wife with or without the church.”

Gina (sighing): <BLAM>

Fiend drops to the floor.

Literary:

(at a slam poetry evening)

Male Poet:  “Stop.Cry.Laugh.Love not war.Peace not profit.Climate change.Capitalists.Love crimes.War crimes.Killing oceans.Killing whales.Every other cliché you can think of.Pain.I’m in pain.A pain so great.

Gina <BLAM>

Poet is out of pain, and so is everyone else.

To be continued…

My Novel is a Mess (How to survive the chaos point in your novel)

Reprinted for my Sheridan students.  Yes, I work to outline, just like I taught you.  And then this happens.

By Melodie Campbell  (Bad Girl)

Yes, I’m at that point.  Writing to a specific word count, three-quarters written, and my fourteenth novel is an unqualified mess. 

If you are a veteran writer like me, you say it’s not going to happen this time.  But it does. EVERY FREAKING TIME.

Here’s why:

The Linear Approach:

This time, you are going to write linear, by gawd.  One chapter after another, in mathematical order, until you reach the end.  Each chapter will have an outline.

But here’s the problem with that.  You signed a contract that specifies a pretty exact word count.  Is your story going to magically end at the precise word count you need?

Damn straight, it’s not.  It’s going to meander along, minding its own business, taking little side trips, refusing to stay on course.

Because, of course, outlines are just that.  They’re a guide.  You don’t know whether the story is really going to pull together with sufficient motivation and all the goodies until you actually write the thing.  And here’s what happens mid-writing:

You need a new character to make the plot work.  You just thought of a fab new subplot.  Orlando doesn’t work as a side-setting.  You need to move it to Phoenix, and that means a whole lot of changes…

And before you know it, you’re scribbling on the outline, adding this, subtracting that, and then it happens.  Your book is a mess.

Scene plus Scene

I write comedy, and comedy is finicky.  Those good lines come when they come, and you have to get them down fast.  Sometimes they’ll present themselves to me when I’m in a restaurant.   

Sometimes, when I’m already in bed.  (Yes, I keep a pen and paper on my bedside table. Ditto, by the loo.)

I always have an outline.  But when writing a highly comedic book, you have to write those funny scenes when you are inspired.  This means hopping around the timeline, writing the scene that works for you today, thinking of another great line, hopping back to an old scene to insert it, when you should be moving forward. 

Which brings you to this point: the important scenes are written, and they present themselves like completed sections of a jigsaw puzzle.  You need to put them together.  Find the pieces that are missing and write the bits to connect them.

Because Sister, your novel is a mess.

That’s the point I’m at now.  The comedy is there.  The conflicts are in place.  The climax is written.  Now I need to take that kaleidoscope and move those pieces into the pattern that works best.

How to cope?  I think the best thing you can do is accept that this is going to happen.  Unless you are a robotic automaton lacking inspiration, you are going to veer from the plan more than once. 

At some point, every novel you write is going to be a mess. 

My advice: just accept it.  And understand that part of your role as writer is that of clean-up artist. 

That’s where I stand today, staring at a story that looks like a tornado just ran through it.

Time for the cleanup crew. 

Many thanks to Alison Bruce for the cool new graphic, combining many aspects of the Goddaughter novels! 

Why I could Never Marry a Disney Prince

By Melodie Campbell (Bad Girl)

Continuing on the Disney theme here…

Being a Disney Princess is one thing.  But did you ever wonder what life might be like if you actually married the guy who rescued you?

To be straight, I’m all for manly men who risk their safety to prove their love for you.  But here’s the thing.  In many Disney tales, Prince-dude doesn’t even KNOW the dame he sets out to rescue.   

They’ve never met before.  It’s like one-way online dating.  He gets to know about you beforehand, but you’re on a completely blind date, sister. 

Sleeping Beauty

Okay let’s start with this one.  Stranger Prince walks into a girl’s bedroom.  Sees her sleeping on the bed.  Walks up to her, and kisses her, AN UNCONSCIOUS WOMAN, without her permission.  Fast forward to our time. 

Beauty:  “Who the hell are you?  And how did you get into my bedroom?  Get the hell away from me!  Police!  Help!  Take that, you creep.”  <picks up spinning wheel and smashes Prince over the head with it>

Rapunzel

This one is better illustrated entirely by dialogue.

Prince:  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

Rap:  “So you can climb up it, Dude?  Are you nuts?  I’m not your freaking staircase.  If you think I’m going to let you walk all over me… And who the hell are you, anyway?  Some hair fetish pervert?  That settles it.  First thing tomorrow, I’m going to the hairdresser for a pixie cut.”  

“But wait!” you say.  Sometimes the Prince and Princess know each other.  Yeah, and sometimes it doesn’t help.

Cinderella

Okay, this one really gets my goat.  Prince has lost his beloved, and has to search the whole kingdom to find the gal who fits the tiny glass slipper perfectly. 

Cin:  “Really??  You need a flipping shoe to find me?  We danced for three hours, and you didn’t once look at my face?  Keep walkin’, loser.  I don’t need no foot-fetish creep in my life.  Unless of course you happen to own a high end shoe store that stocks Manolos and Jimmy Choos…”

Wait!  There’s more. 

The Frog Prince:  Enter Stalker Prince…in which a frog stalks Princess begging her to kiss him, because, you know, he’s the REAL THING under all that green, and all she’s dreamed of, he just knows it.

Beauty and the Beast…in which a terrifying but lonely beast confines Beauty (boy, they really phoned in that name) and keeps her in his castle until she FALLS IN LOVE WITH HIM.

This was meant to be a funny column.  But the underlying message is starting to gnaw at me.  Sorry, Disney girls, but you don’t know what you want.  Just listen to the man who is obsessed with you.  He knows best.

And that’s why I could never marry a Disney Prince.  Luckily I married a Scottish guy instead.  He can slay dragons as well as any Prince.  Not only that, he prefers Zena Warrior types.  A match made in heaven, instead of Disney.

Why I would make a lousy Disney Princess by Bad Girl

Bad Girl here, with a sad revelation.  I would make a lousy Disney Princess.  This goes back to my early childhood days, when it occurred to me that being a princess might actually suck.  “Princess? 

Why would I want to be a freaking princess?  Doesn’t the Queen have all the power?  Who cares about being pretty and wearing pink.  Give me control of the charge card, thank you very much.  And the castle, while you’re at it.”

Okay, so I may have a slight aversion to the helpless female trope.  It frustrated the hell out of me that every damned fairytale princess was a helpless ninny.  What kind of role model is that?

So it occurred to me that a few scripts could use some rewriting.  Dialogue is my thing, so here goes.  (With apologies to just about everybody in the entire world.)

Cinderella:  “What do you mean, I have to sweep all the floors in here?  Is this the dark ages or something?  You’re clearly affluent, right? Hey! You! Pick up the phone and call Molly Maids.”

Sleeping Beauty:  “You’ve got to be kidding.  Sleep for 100 years? <hysterical laughter> I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in years, and I’ve tried everything, believe me.  Melatonin, meditation, little blue pills… Listen, sister, if you think you can spell-me, BRING IT ON.  Don’t bother with the mincey Prince, either.”

Snow White:  “Em…thanks very much for the offer of a real Prince, but I’ll pass.  I’m doing pretty well here with these seven dwarfs. In fact, Grumpy isn’t grumpy any more, and I’m thinking of renaming him Randy…”

I’ll stop there, before the hate mail starts.

Okay, so I think we all agree that I would make a lousy Disney Princess.  All is not lost though.  I make a damn-good Jewish one.

More comedy about a mob princess!  Just launched at Chapters, Barnes &Noble, Amazon and all the usual suspects.  Book 5 in the award-winning Goddaughter series.

Probably the zaniest interview of my career...Which actress would you like to play Gina?

(reposted with permission)

As Gina gets ready for her Christmas wedding, all is quiet in Steeltown. Then she’s robbed, cousin

Jimmy has a heart attack, and someone in the city has hijacked a transport truck full of booze. But who? And why? Gina knows bootlegging used to be a family business, but they stopped that in the ’30s. Didn’t they? Gina and Nico work feverishly to keep the latest bungled family matter under wraps, but the police are closing in. And, once again, everything points to the Holy Cannoli Retirement Home.  
The Bootlegger’s Goddaughter is the fifth book in the Gina Gallo Mystery series.

What kind of research did you do for your book?

Um…keeping this rather vague as I look really bad in the color orange. But this book is called The Bootlegger’s Goddaughter. There’s a clue in that title.

Do you write in chronological order?

I usually start by writing the beginning twenty pages, to see if it’s something I want to continue writing. Then I skip to the end, to make sure I’ve got a great ending–I always know how it will finish before I start a book. Then I go back to the beginning and revise if necessary, then write forward from there to the ending.
Okay, sometimes if there’s a scene I’m really excited to write, I’ll step out of order and just write the bloody thing. Comedy does that to me. It comes in bursts.

What’s the hardest part of writing?

The actual writing of the first draft. It’s hard. The thinking is fun. The playing it all out in my head is fun. The editing to make it better is fun. But the writing of the first draft…that’s a whole lot of work.

What’s your favorite form of procrastination?

His name is Frankenpoodle. He lies on the couch next to my computer (the whole couch – hence “Franken.”) When he isn’t lying on the couch, he’s dragging me to the treat drawer or pushing me outside for walks.

What book do you wish you wrote?

The whole Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. I prefer Janet’s bank account to mine.

What is your favourite aspect / part of your new book?

The comedy. I’m particularly fond of Aunt Miriam–“If you think the men in our family are scary, wait ‘til you meet the women.” Nico has another fun role in this book, and the Last Chance Club from the Holy Cannoli Retirement Villa are back:
“That’s what the underground funeral home was all about. They wanted to raise money to play the tables.”
“I get it, Nico. Embalming for dollars. Continue.”
And of course, this time there’s a crow.

What is your writing ritual?

Wake up. Get coffee. Drink coffee. Boot up computer. Look around on Facebook. Drink more coffee. Bring up work in progress. Reread. Whine. More coffee. Fill up again in the kitchen. Back to desk. Sob a bit. Start writing.

Which actress would you choose to play your protagonist in a movie?

Zoe Deschenal from New Girl would make a fun Gina. If I could go back a decade, Tina Fey would have been great.
The Bootlegger’s Goddaughter is available now.

Melodie Campbell achieved a personal best when Library Journal compared her to Janet Evanovich. Melodie got her start writing comedy. Her work has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Star magazine, Canadian Living, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and many more. She lives in Oakville, Ontario. For more information, visit www.melodiecampbell.com.

1

The Biggest High for an Author!

Absolutely delightful to see a pix of yourself signing at the OLA conference (ORCA booth) and then a pix of a reader holding your book back at her high school library!

<also cool...I don't want to kill myself when I see this pix>

The Bootlegger's Goddaughter is an adult crime comedy, suitable for 14+.

In which our bad girl confesses...sort of

Q: What kind of research did you do for your book?

A: Um…keeping this rather vague as I look really bad in the color orange. But this book is called The Bootlegger’s Goddaughter. There’s a clue in that title.

See the rest of the interview here!

http://blog.orcabook.com/category/author-interviews/