4 out of 5 stars for Salvaged by Madeleine Roux

Right away the first thing that I felt strongly about in Madeleine Roux's sci if novel Salvaged was the main character, Rosalyn Devar's, alcohol abuse. I am very close with a few recovered alcoholics, and so whenever I see an author include alcohol abuse in their stories I'm a little wary. First, because I've seen it used lazily as the only defining personality trait for a character. Second, because I've seen it portrayed in ways that really ring false and take me out of the narrative. And third, because I've seen it terribly overused by specific authors. I was pleased that Roux avoided all of that with her portrayal of Rosalyn's drinking problem. There's even a narrative purpose to it, as the drinking is the reason why Rosalyn is sent on a last-chance type of mission that becomes the plot of the book.

Something that Roux does well from the start which is not so apparent is laying the groundwork for the ending of the book. Right from the beginning, there's foreshadowing and hints, things that seem like they don't matter but do. Normally I pick up on these elements, but in this case Roux wove a lot of it into the narrative in a way that felt natural and didn't stand out at the time. I don't want to include spoilers in this review if I can help it so I won't say what parts were significant, but as I think about this while I type right now I have a feeling that this will be a book I'll wind up re-reading at some point.

Roux introduces Rosalyn's back story gradually, including the fact that she's a survivor of domestic violence. This theme of survivorship is empowering and runs through the book, driving the plot forward in that it's a large part of why Rosalyn has the job that she does that leads her to the events of the book. There was only one time that the theme of being a survivor struck a sour note to me. Rosalyn is talking to another character after everything has gone bad, and she mentions that something bad has happened to her before, and the other character essentially says “good, that's what prepared you to handle all of this.” I may be reading too much into that one line, but I didn't like it. I don't like the idea of someone telling a survivor, “It's good that you were abused, it made you strong.” I understand that in the context of a sci-fi horror novel, Rosalyn needs that strength to make it out alive. But in the context of the real world, saying something like that sounds like it's both excusing a society in which it seems like enduring hardship is viewed as virtuous rather than tragic – in which strength is called upon more often than compassion – and excusing the abuser to an extent by implying that they somehow helped create the strength of the survivor. I do not for a moment believe that this was the author's intention when writing that line, it's a common theme in discussions around abuse survival, and it always strikes me as incorrect every time I hear it.

One thing that I think Roux does handle extremely well in terms of Rosalyn's survival of domestic violence is that the character is given positive reinforcement for removing herself from the toxic situation and cutting out the people who either helped her abuser or didn't believe her. I cannot abide the concept that family must be forgiven for all transgressions simply because they are family – as if blood absolves all. If someone does something unforgivable to you, you are never obligated to forgive them. Rosalyn is never forced to speak with her parents in the narrative. She's not forced to forgive them for taking the side of her abuser over her. Another character praises her for leaving that all behind. By the end of the book, she has still not reconciled with her family, and I think that for her character and what her back story is, that's great and empowering.

The descriptive writing in this book worked well for me. I could picture the scenes and the characters clearly. I do wish, though, that what the writing was describing had been scarier. Again, I don't want to give spoilers, but I was a little underwhelmed by the nature of the threat in this story. It felt not cliché, but like a plot that's beginning to be overdone.

I really enjoyed the character writing. It would have been a little better if two of the more minor characters had not had chapters from their perspectives. I feel that perspective changes in narration should be reserved for the main characters. Otherwise, I really like perspective changes in books, particularly when the author does a good job of giving the different perspective characters their own distinct internal voices and fleshes them out well, which Roux did. She also created a good emotional connection to the characters, which is necessary in a book like this where the reader is meant to be invested in the stakes. Sometimes horror authors focus too much on creep factor or sheer gore and not enough on making the reader care about whether these things happen to their characters or not. Roux does not make that mistake, and I did care about these characters.

The pacing throughout the novel was good. I never felt bored while I was reading it, I didn't skim parts or flip through to see when a chapter would end. In fact there were one or two times when I didn't want to put the book down. Particularly at the climax of the story, the pacing and tension were perfect.

I don't have a whole paragraph to explain it, because again I don't want to do spoilers and also it was short and to the point, but the epilogue was great. Also, this is a book that has a solid ending and can stand alone, but which Roux threaded enough hints through so that it would also make sense for there to be a sequel. If no sequel comes, it's wrapped up and tight. If a sequel does come, it doesn't feel unearned or tacked on. And if you've read the book and you'd like to talk about that, I'll gladly do so in the comments. I love speculating, I just don't want to do it here in the body of the post because – again – I am anti-spoiler.

Links to purchase Salvaged by Madeleine Roux:

https://www.amazon.com/Salvaged-Madeleine-Roux/dp/0451491831/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1580646129&sr=8-1

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/salvaged-madeleine-roux/1130400690?ean=9780451491831#/

Let's Talk About Talking: How I Tackle Writing Dialogue

One of the things that I hear often is how difficult dialogue writing can be. And by “hear often” I mean “frequently curse under my breath about while I write.” I've tried the tip of reading your dialogue out loud, and for me I've found that this only works if I'm reading it to a willing listener. If I do this exercise all alone, what happens is that all of my characters just end up sounding like slightly more clever versions of myself. Which is more realistic than everyone talking like prose, but still not great. I still do this, because having everyone sound like me talking rather than like my writing is an okay starting point. But it doesn't finish the job for me, and maybe it doesn't finish the job for other people either. So I thought I'd share the trick that helps me.

I am very easily distracted. On top of that, I have a four year old and a one year old who constantly get up to small-child shenanigans, and a teenage stepson who once spent ten minutes trying to pretend that he didn't remember what our pantry was, much less where, because he wanted me to find a snack for him. So I don't exactly live in a distraction-free environment. What this means for me is that when I have a quiet hour or two or somehow find the zone in spite of the four year old announcing for the fifth time in as many minutes that he has a new name now, I don't want to pause too much or get too bogged down in any single aspect of the writing process. This especially includes dialogue, because that's where I can get stuck. So for the first part of my writing day I don't try to make the dialogue exceptional or even, honestly, good. I just get it out.

Then, when something happens to break the flow – like the baby waking up or the teenager trying to leave the house without a coat in January in the Midwest or the cat somehow finding her way into a closed, baby-proofed cabinet and needing to be freed – I leave the writing for a little while. Or, you know, sometimes for a long while. Either way, I try not to fret about it until I come back to it, usually after lunchtime when everyone is either content or napping. What I do at that point is to re-read whatever I had written before real life reasserted itself. I don't go into a deep edit for this, mostly skim until I find dialogue and then focus in on that. In this way I don't bog myself down and lose the flow, and also it gets be back in the headspace I was in when I was in the flow, so I'm able to get back into the writing more quickly.

What are some turns of phrase that you use that aren't terribly common? Or maybe a common phrase that you use very often? I have no idea why or where it came from, but when I am trying to emphasize the phrase “no reason,” particularly if there's an element of absurdity to whatever there was no reason for, I say “no ass reason.” I've never heard anyone else say that and I don't know where it came from. Also, I say “straight up” for general emphasis a lot. I didn't even realize how much I say it, until my four year old started saying it all the time. I feel like everyone has these little verbal quirks. So when I'm editing the dialogue, I keep in mind what character is likely to use what phrase, and include it where it fits naturally. That gives me my first layer of distinction in character dialogue.

A character who stammers when they're nervous, an absent-minded character who makes filler-noises like “uh” or “um” in their conversation often, a character who frequently starts to say one thing and then stops herself and says something else. How a character is described as speaking is more important than how a character is described as looking. You want it to feel real, but this is one of those times when I feel like we shouldn't make it feel too real. Let's go back to the “uh” example. My high school principal read the morning announcements every day over the loudspeaker. And he said “uh” a lot. Not just a lot, but extremely a lot. Once my first period class and I counted the number of times he said it, and I am telling you that we lost count. There was also an argument over whether one of the “uhs” should be counted as more because of how incredibly drawn out it was. He said “uh” for the amount of time it would take to say an entire sentence. That's an extreme example, but I think you get my point. I want my characters to sound like real people, but I don't want them to sound like that. So pick your verbal missteps for your characters, but use them a lot more sparingly than people actually do in real life. That gives me my second layer of distinction in character dialogue.

Does one of your characters have an accent? Do you want to include different spelling for that accent? What comes to mind immediately in this regard, for me at least, is when a character with an accent replaces hard TH with Z. “Come zis way. Sit over zere. Ze headmistress will be along shortly.” I personally think that this should be used sparingly. More interesting, in my opinion, is to briefly include a description of the accent without going overboard, but to pay attention to things like how someone's sentence structure might differ when they speak.

Now this question is more for fantasy and science fictions writers — but what about when your characters encounter a foreign language? Of course we all know that Tolkien invented the entire elvish language for Lord of the Rings. I don’t think we have to go that far! We should take more care, though, than the book I read in which a character was listening to two others speaking a language he didn’t know, and the author wrote their dialogue as just, “Gabble gabble gabble gabble. Gabble.” Gotta find a middle ground there. Personally, there’s only two ways that I handle this. In the initial writing I don’t put that in dialogue at all. I would just write in the narrative something like “The strangers spoke for a moment in their own tongue, and Lyssa wasn’t able to follow it.” And I make sure that if it’s important then I know what they’re saying even if I never write it out. Much more rarely when I go back and do my dialogue edit, I’ll make up fantasy foreign language phrases to have spoken out loud in the narrative. This is much less common for me, and I do it primarily if I feel like it’s important for the feel of that part of the book or if there’s any specific plot reason to do so.

From there, you can think of as many different layers as you want. Who is very short spoken? Who talks too much? Who uses big words when they feel threatened because they think it makes them sound intimidating? Who changes the way they talk around certain people? I think of these all as layers or filters that I don't fret myself to pieces over applying during the initial drafting process. I add them on after the bare bones of the dialogue are in place. Sometimes I keep a list of which character uses what kind of dialogue.

What are your favorite lines of dialogue from any book or story you've ever read? What about your favorite movie or television dialogue? What about these lines really stands out to you? Do you think there's a difference between them, and if so what is it? Let's talk about talking.

The Time I Didn't Back Up My Work...Twice...

I started writing one of my novels two years ago and had a massive delay with writer's block, which I eventually overcame, and you can read about that here. I mentioned in the other post that I'd been a handwritten-first-draft person and once I really got through my block and picked the novel back up I started by transcribing everything I'd written down into my laptop. 

And I realized that I was going to have to scrap nearly all of it and start over. It was … just … so … long-winded… 

So I tightened up the outline and started drafting anew! And it was going so well, I was really killing it. I got up at 5 every morning and wrote for an hour or two before the kids woke up, and during the baby's nap while the 4 year old was at preschool, and I was taking my laptop to the bookstore where I work and writing on my lunch breaks. 

A week later I was over 200 pages in and I took my laptop out of my bag in the break room at work, and it was… oddly warm. Then it took three tries to turn on. And when I got it working and tried to open my file, the entire thing had been converted to ###################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################

Two-hundred pages of the pound sign.

I gasped so loudly that a contractor who was in the building working on the wiring, a perfect stranger, stopped to ask if I was okay.

"Uh...yeah…" I said, in a very not okay voice.

"You don't look okay," he said hesitantly. 

"...No. Um. Do you know anything about computers?"

"I mean," he said, "I'm an IT guy, so…"

I showed him what had happened. He stopped his work and sat down at the break room table and tried to fix it. He tried three or four different things, none of which I understood at all, and nothing fixed it. Trying not to sound as despondent and, honestly, panicky as I felt, I thanked him for trying. 

Then I called my husband, who knows more about computers than anyone I know, and he left the kids with my mom and drove to my job immediately, set himself up in the cafe, and tried everything he could think of, also. He could see what the IT guy had tried to do, and said that those were all the first steps he would have taken, too. Then he tried three more times. And he couldn’t get it to work, either.

I had no back up file.

Now I’ve mentioned that I work in a bookstore. And I love my job. I love my coworkers and management and the environment (and my employee discount) and I even like most of the customers. And one of the things I love about this job is that I’d guess that seventy-five percent of my coworkers are also writers. So when my manager saw my face when I ended my lunch break and went back to work and asked what was wrong, I told him I’d just lost something like 70 or 80 thousand words of work on the second draft of my novel. He looked as horrified as I felt, which was a little comforting.

Then I told him that I hadn’t backed it up.

He put his hands to his mouth, eyes wide, and whispered, “Oh, no…”

This was the general reaction from everyone I worked with. Then came the scolding! From everyone I worked with! “Why didn’t you back up your work? Why didn’t you back up your work?”

Because…I don’t know. I’m lazy? Or dumb? Because of my overwhelming hubris? I don’t know why I didn’t back up my work! I started to, though.

Got back on track and finished that novel (which coincidentally I think I’m going to have to rewrite from scratch again someday). It came out better than the other draft was going to be. Then during NaNoWriMo I took a break from that series and knocked out my first attempt at a middle grade novel. Put both of those through their first round of edits and shot them off to beta readers. Then I started the sequel to the book I’d lost most of a finished draft for .And I backed it up....For a while.

But whatever malfunction my laptop had suffered, it didn’t happen again. And I got lazy, or dumb, or full of overwhelming hubris. I started to forget to back it up every day. Then I started to forget to back it up at all.

Then one day at the end of a shift at the bookstore I noticed that my laptop bag seemed...oddly warm. 

I yanked my laptop out of the bag tried to turn it on and couldn’t at first. It was the same thing, all over again. I drove home with it out of the bag so that it could cool down, and once I was home I finally got it to start. 

And it happened again. My main document for book two.

############################################################################

Whyyyy?

I had been at 81,000 words. I had been set to finish the first draft by January 15th. My last back up file was saved at only 39,o00 words. At least I had a back up file this time. And just like before, my outlines and character sheets and worldbuilding notes were all intact.

It took me just over a week to get back to where I was when I lost the data. And, once again, I think that the scenes that I rewrote are better than the originals, so I’m feeling fairly sanguine about the loss at this point. I’m now a few days away from finishing this draft of book two.

I don’t take my laptop to work on at the bookstore anymore. And I may be superstitiously nervous about 80k word marks for a while.

But you know what just occurred to me?

I forgot to back up my file yesterday.

What is wrong with me.

I’m going right now to back up my work. You should too!

How I Overcame Two Years of Writer’s Block

I've been writing fiction for as long as I can remember, and for most of that time I would make my first drafts handwritten. I would do my first edit by hand as well, and then my second edit would be part of the transcribing process.

It was arduous, but I loved it. Collecting notebooks and pens, having one of each always with me, sneaking in writing moments in classes or during down time at work. And after a particularly long-lasting poor decision, I would bring my pens and notebooks out with me during smoke breaks.

That's what sunk me. I had a deliberate hiatus from writing during the planning of my wedding and getting married, then I got pregnant very quickly and had my first kid. After I went back to work following my maternity leave I unfortunately started smoking again, and a little after that I started writing novels and taking it seriously again. With a little one in the house, I fell into the habit of only writing when I had a safe chance to sneak outside for smoke breaks; a quiet ten or fifteen minutes, longer if I had the time for two cigarettes, my notebook and pen, and I was in business.

Then on Mother's Day 2018 I found out that I was pregnant again. I immediately quit smoking, and discovered in that first week that I had trained myself to associate writing with cigarettes. Without the smoke breaks, and with the added stresses and discomfort of early pregnancy, finding the motivation to pick up my pen was incredibly challenging. And if I did manage to actually start working on my fantasy novel, I would crave a cigarette so badly that I couldn't focus. I think that during my entire pregnancy I eked out one sentence and a single note in the margins. I told myself that during the second trimester when I felt less sick all the time I would start writing again. Then I told myself that during the third trimester when I was going to be less active anyway, that's when I would start writing again. The joke was on me, though; my third trimester coincided with the holiday season, I was nesting hard, and I did not have the energy leftover to even feel like a real human being, much less try to be creative.

Then in January 2019 my daughter was born. I could turn this entire blog post into a detailed account of what it was like going from having a teenage stepson and a toddler son to having both of those children plus a baby. But there are probably a thousand posts like that in parenting forums and websites. I'll leave it at saying that there were challenges I expected and some that I didn't, and one of the things I didn't expect was that I felt an almost desperate need to have something in my life that was only mine again. My identity is changed forever by being a mom, and I love that. I just didn't want my identity to only be motherhood. I want my children when they are adults, especially my daughter, to also know that becoming a parent doesn't end the self. I made these humans, I want them to do what fulfills them and makes them happy and enriches themselves and maybe the world. They're going to spend their entire childhoods hearing that that's possible, from me and from kids' tv shows and from teachers and relatives. But they should see it too. And I deserve to live it, myself.

And even with all of that pushing me, I didn't pick up a pen and notebook again. I'd broken the habit of writing. I was still afraid that if I started then the urge to smoke would come back strong (like it does when I've had a bad day or a stressful shift or a particularly good meal or the wind outside is just right or…). And I'd let my novel sit for so long. Nearly a year and a half. 

Then I saw a submission call for short stories for an anthology, asking for a specific theme that I already actually had dreamed up the perfect characters for a few years previously during a joke conversation with a manager at the bookstore I work in. So I made a decision that wound up fixing… everything. I wouldn't try to dive back into my novel. I wouldn't grab the pen and paper again. I'd download a word processing app on my phone and write a short story that had nothing to do with my old project.

I've seen the writer's block busting advice to change your font to comic sans, and I bet that works for a bunch of people. Because it's about changing something up to rattle loose the block and get your flow back, right? I did a great big version of that. I changed my format, my project, my tone and mood and style, the tools I used to write, everything. I set a goal for myself. By August I was pushing myself to spend ten minutes each day writing. That was all. It was all I could manage at first and even that was a struggle.

But over time it began to shake everything loose. I started splitting writing time between my phone and my laptop and that was the last change I needed. In October I finished the first draft of that old fantasy novel (not without some major setbacks and one near meltdown, but that's a story for a different post). In early November I completed NaNoWriMo. I’m days away from finishing the first draft of a sequel to the novel I finished in October. I have a handful of short stories written. I have a few more novels plotted. 

None of that would have happened if I hadn't changed the way I do things. I mixed everything up and it shook me loose. I let myself start small and the momentum followed. If you're ever looking at a writer's block that seems impenetrable, maybe it's not that you can't get past it, maybe it's just that the tools you're trying to use to dig through it aren't working anymore. Try changing things around and see what happens, and be gentle with yourself.