Justice Has Been Panda-Approved for Human Readers

"Jade Varden really has a way with bringing her story to life, I could easily picture everything that was happening and I was never bored." 

"You really can't go wrong, especially if you're looking for a quick, light YA read filled with intrigue and mystery."

Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) has been reviewed at Panda Reads and approved for even non-bear readers.  Visit the blog to read the whole thing, and find out which well-known author the reviewer compared me to!

Fiction Fashion Icon: Cathy

It is the job of all authors to bring their characters to life. Most well-loved characters have a distinct look, noticeable characteristics, great flaws and strengths. Some authors even take things one step further, and create a distinct style for their leading ladies. To honor some of the great fiction fashion icons that I've read over the years, I'm introducing a new feature with one of my most favorite characters: Cathy Dollanganger.

Fashionable Femme Fatale 

Cathy Dollanganger is the main protagonist of the Dollanganger series, which spanned five books. The series was introduced in a debut novel from V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic. It became an instant hit, though the movie didn't fare quite so well, and launched a career that has, phenomenonally, continued with new novels even beyond the author's death.  

It all began with Cathy. Through the series, she goes from age 9 to age 59 (or thereabouts), and that's a whole lot of clothes. For some special scenes, readers are treated to Cathy's outfits in exquisite detail. In fact, clothes are used to illustrate a lot of the turmoil she feels in the first book of the series. 

While Cathy is locked away in Flowers in the Attic, clothes are given to her by her mother Corrine, the woman who did the locking up. They're a compensation of sorts for the miserable life Cathy and her sister and brothers are now being forced to lead. In one memorable scene, Corrine gives Cathy beautiful ballet costumes so she can continue to live her dream of one day becoming a prima ballerina. The clothing is so beautiful, and represents so much, it fills Cathy's heart with love.

Later, clothes fill her heart with anger. After an extended trip away from her children, Corrine returns with tons of gifts...and more pretty fashions for Cathy. But as she tries them on, Cathy realizes that her mother is still buying clothing for a little girl -- a little girl she no longer is. The clothes represent all the neglect, and the blind eye Corrine is using to view the situation she's trapped her children inside. Cathy hates those clothes! She rips them off, tears them up and cries bitterly. 

Fashion...it's such a fantastic plot device. Clothing continues to be important in Cathy's life. She goes on a shopping spree in the next book of the series, Petals on the Wind, and the new items represent a freedom of choice she has never before enjoyed as a young woman. 

When Cathy is an adult, later in the book, fashion becomes her greatest weapon. By now, many years separate Cathy from her attic days of captivity, but the bitterness and anger has taken root in her and blossomed into full-blown revenge. It's not enough that she's free. It's not enough that she's achieved her dreams. It's not enough until her mother Corrine suffers. Isn't fashion a great way to make that happen? 

When Cathy decides to take her mother's husband, she invites him to dinner and dons a sexy red dress. The details of Cathy's seduction outfit are carefully revealed, and it's fair to say that she doesn't get the reaction from Bart that she wanted. He gets the wrong message from the red dress, and the entire plan pretty much falls apart. 

For the most climactic scene of Petals on the Wind, the huge confrontation for which readers waded through hundreds of pages to get to, Cathy plans her outfit much, much more carefully. For the ending scenes of the book, Cathy dons an outfit so important and so well-described, it cements her as one of my favorite fiction fashion icons. 

The green dress Cathy wears the night Foxworth Hall burns down was first seen years and years before, in Flowers in the Attic. The Christmas Party represents one of the only times during their attic imprisonment that Cathy gets to leave the little room in the big mansion, and the green dress is a fundamental part of the imagery of the party. It's worth by the ever-beautiful Corrine, Cathy's mother, as she dances and flirts with her soon-to-be-husband Bart. The green dress is a combination of velvet and chiffon, and it represents everything Cathy hopes to be when she grows up. 

Years later, the green dress becomes her symbol of revenge. She has it re-made in exquisite detail and copies the hairstyle her mother originally donned when it was worn so many years before in Cathy's childhood. She even sneaks into the mansion to steal the same emerald jewelry that Corrine paired with the dress the first time. In this grand fashion, Cathy makes her re-entrance into her mother's life. 

Revenge fashion is delicious when it's described by V.C. Andrews. The dress continues to be present through all the final scenes of Petals on the Wind, which ends in stunning fashion, and it left a huge impression on me the first time I read it. Every time I see green velvet paired with green chiffon, I think of Cathy Dollanganger, revenge, and blazing fire. It's a lot of powerful images, and it's all held together by some of the best fiction fashion you'll find in any book.

Writing 101: First-Person Interaction

Writing in the first person takes a lot of skill. When it's done well, it can really bring the main character and the story to life. Readers will truly feel and think like that character, truly live inside your fictional world. But when it's done badly, your writing will feel distracting, confusing...and sometimes, even silly. 

It's My World, You're Just Reading in It 

Writing in the first person takes a very delicate hand. You don't want to over-load the book with "I." It gets boring when every sentence or paragraph starts out that way, and the last thing you want to create in your writing is repetition. You have to make sure you describe the character to the audience somehow, and that's tricky. You have to remember to see everything through the character's eyes; they probably can't read minds or hear thoughts, so they have to rely on observation alone to figure out what's going on. 

But you also have to remember something else when you're writing in the first person, something that many writers tend to forget: you character can't see their own face. 

And when authors forget that, it's just bad writing. Here's an example of what you should not do if you're writing first-person interaction: 

"Jade, I really hate to tell you this...but you use bad grammar." Lily was afraid to meet my eyes when she told me. 

She could tell from my stricken expression that I was upset. We both looked tense as we sat, staring at each other across a chasm of truths.

Stop! There's so much wrong here, it's hard to know where to start. First and foremost, "Jade" in the example above doesn't know what Lily is thinking, or what Lily can tell. But more importantly, "Jade" shouldn't be able to tell that her own expression is stricken because the scene infers that Jade is looking at Lily, and Lily is clearly not a mirror. The main character is also clearly in her own body and relating this experience because she was present inside of it. Therefore, she can't know how her and Lily look as they're having this discussion.

These are some of the reasons why it's so hard to write in the first person. If you're coming at the reader with an "I" perspective, you may not be in a position to make a lot of observations about how "I" look. But there's still plenty of room for description. "I" can still hear my own voice, and "I" can feel my own face. The first-person character will know when they're smiling, or raising an eyebrow, or crying. They may not necessarily know that they look crushed and hurt by something, or that they are glowing with happiness -- observations like this need to come from dialogue with other characters or interaction with a reflective surface.

First-person interaction with another character is a fine art. The best way to write it well is to completely immerse yourself inside your character's world. Really see your scenes unfolding as you write them and literally put yourself in that character's place. This will make it easier to write naturally from the first person and make observations that are actually plausible.

Writing 101: Quotes Within Quotes

Ever told someone about a song you like, and they didn't recognize it, so you had to sing a few lines? Ever mention a great line you heard on that TV show you love? Ever told a friend what another friend said about them, word for word? Yeah, there are lots of reasons why you might need to use quotes within quotes when you're writing. Don't ignore the simple punctuation rules that dictate exactly how you're allowed to do it. 

Double Punctuation, and Other Disasters

Lots of things have to be enclosed in quotation marks when you're writing. Proper titles of magazine articles, exact quotes, clever nicknames, popular sayings -- you might use quotes around all that stuff. But if you're already using quotes because you're mentioning these things in dialogue, then you've got to use a form of double punctuation: quotes within quotes.

It's really easy to get them wrong. It doesn't help that there's a lot of confusion surrounding proper quotation punctuation in the first place; the British do it differently than the Americans, and it turns into a punctuation free-for-all where authors have trouble figuring out the proper format and going a wildly inconsistent route instead. 

But I digress. Here's all you need to know about quotes within quotes: you can't repeat the same mark consecutively. What's that mean? I'll show you:

"Mary told me that her and Johnny are just 'friends.'" Christie rolled her eyes when she said it, making her own opinion on the matter pretty clear. 

It goes without saying that you won't put quotes in red when you're writing, but I'm making a point. The single quotation mark is surrounding friends because Christie is repeating a direct quote from Mary, as the passage explains. Both the single quotation and the double quotation, which is at the end of the sentence because it closes the dialogue being spoken aloud, are behind the period. It looks terrible. 

But it's technically correct. Now, you may not always be ending a sentence on a quote, but basic punctuation rules still apply. 

"She told me last week that she would 'consider it' if he asked her out, though," Becca offered.

No additional punctuation is required with the single quotation mark inside the dialogue above; I'm treating it the exact same way I would treat double quotation marks. 

More importantly, I'm not repeating quotation marks. The double quotes go around the entire piece of dialogue, as is proper, but I'm using single marks around the quote inside that dialogue. I wouldn't use double quotes around consider it (to use the previous example) because it's just too darned confusing (and also incorrect). 

If you're writing in the Queen's English and you read the Oxford English Dictionary instead of American Heritage, flip it around. Sometimes, British writers use single quotations around dialogue instead of double, but the rules don't change. Don't repeat the same quotation mark type if you're writing quotes within quotes. It's either double-single-single-double, or single-double-double-single, and those are your only two options.

That's what I love about punctuation. It's always very cut-and-dry, with definite rules. Punctuation is one of the only things you can get right for sure, because readers are going to have an opinion about everything else.

Writing 101: The Monologue

Some of the greatest fiction characters ever written have wonderful monologues where they reveal some inner truth or meaningful plot point. Fancier folks might call the long-winded, solo speech known as the monologue a soliloquy instead, but it amounts to the same thing. One of the most famous monologues ever written begins with the phrase "to be, or not to be." Lots of authors want to write a great one, and use them to create dramatic scenes. But writing the monologue is an art form, and it's not something you should be doing at all lightly.

Talking with Myself 

The monologue is just a one-sided speech. A single character takes center stage, so to speak, to reveal something important. A monologue can be an actual speech that's being delivered to one or more characters, but some writers have their characters speak aloud to themselves. In the same vein, monologues can be internal speech -- the character "talking" to themselves inside their own thoughts. 

What's the point? Monologues are used to tell the reader information they've got to have. Often, the monologue reveals the character's inner thoughts and provides explanation for past or future actions. There are many great dramatic scenes that feature a central character delivering a powerful monologue. Many actors memorize monologues from plays and movies for auditions; they use them to demonstrate their ability to bring drama or humor to their stage of choice. You'll find monologues in books like Dracula, The Princess Bride and The Crucible.

Writing Monologues

They're great. A good monologue can echo in the mind for ever. But like every other literary device, they can be over-done. If you're going to write a monologue, take care to do so in discerning, not distracting, way.

• People don't speak in monologues. 

It's hard to incorporate a monologue into a book for one simple reason: people don't talk that way. When was the last time you honestly stood up in front of anyone else and pontificated on a subject, revealing some inner thoughts to bare your soul? ...Without getting interrupted? We live in a very verbal society, and if you can rattle off four sentences of though-provoking subject matter without getting stopped by a stray comment from someone else you're either a politician or a gifted orator...or talking to very young children. 

When was the last time you stood in an empty room and eloquently discussed the inner workings of your mind with the walls? Exactly. People don't speak in monologues, and in books long speeches just don't make for good dialogue.

• Speaking of speaking...

That's another problem with monologues: formatting. Big chunks of text aren't pretty and they aren't easy to read, so you aren't doing your book any favors if you've got a lot of them. In books, speech is properly formatted when it begins and ends in quotation marks.

However, you have to start a new paragraph when you're pursuing a new subject -- even if you have to do it in the middle of a monologue. When a character is speaking, and continues speaking through a new paragraph, you do not close the previous paragraph with a quotation mark...but you do open the new paragraph with one. Example: 

"Henceforth, I shall be known to one and all as Jelly Bean, for I am now the czar of that particular candy and I'll accept nothing less.

"If I am incorrectly addressed by anyone from now on, I shall simply have their heads removed from their shoulders, lest they be tempted to make the mistake a second time." 

See what I mean? When the paragraphs are quite long (and the speech is quite long-winded), the eye begins to wander. Readers aren't going to stick with a long speech unless it's incredibly juicy. If it's really good and juicy, this only increases the likelihood that another character will interrupt the monologue. Always write to reality, don't write to be writing.

• Don't patronize me.

Monologues can become a little patronizing, depending on how much explaining you're actually doing. Writing a monologue for monologuing's sake can cause this mistake. Make sure you're giving the reader information that they have not already received. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time and your own book space. You usually won't have to explain things twice to your readers, and if you've written your character well enough chances are good that they're going to understand the character's thoughts and motives already. 

When they're necessary and dramatic, monologues can be wonderful. Just remember that it's a short slide from literary genius to bad writing; the line is very fine indeed. When you're writing monologues, keep this in mind: if you're bored while writing it, there's no chance that I'm going to be excited when I read it.

Sit Down with Jade

I'm being featured this week on Ramblings of a Book Junkie. Don't worry -- you don't have to be a book addict to enjoy the interview (but it can't hurt).

What don't you already know about me? Why do I write mysteries? Am I anything like my main character, Rain? And what is my favorite TV show, after all? Get all the answers -- and a lot more -- when you read the interview! 

Writing 101: Person, Persona

Add a letter to a word, and you could change everything. Even if both words are extremely similar, they aren't interchangeable. Before you use one or the other, know the difference between person and persona.

Person

Person simply means human being. It can be any man, woman or child. When there's more than one person, it becomes the plural people. It's a noun. Synonyms include body, character, individual and personage -- not persona, which is sometimes mixed up with person. They aren't the same.

Persona

A persona means essentially the same thing as image, but it can also mean a role that's being played (like by an actor). If you're greatly upset by something but pretending to be fine, you're presenting the persona of an untroubled person. Like person, this word is also a noun. A persona is a public image that one wears.

The Difference

It's easy to use persona and person incorrectly; they're both nouns used to describe individuals in a story. If you're describing a specific character in the story, person is the correct choice. But if you're specially referring to some image that they're projecting, then you might describe something about that character's persona. It's easy to confuse the two because of the word personality, which can refer to a persona (a projected image or characteristic), but in a larger sense refers to a single person's inner workings as well as their projected image.

Books on Film: The Stepford Wives

What's your idea of perfection? The Stepford Wives explores this topic, and the original novel did so in chilling fashion. Two notable remakes later, some of the original message might be lost, but it's still a pretty scary story.

The Book

Ire Levin wrote The Stepford Wives in 1972, and it became a hit. It's a pretty quick read, and it's written in a wonderful off-the-page style where much of the horror takes place in the reader's imagination.  The story begins with photographer Joanna Eberhart, who's a modern woman with a career. She's moving with her family (husband and kids) to Stepford, Connecticut.

She has trouble fitting in right away. The women in Stepford have immaculate homes, but that's because they spend tons of time waxing and dusting and wiping and scrubbing. Yet they do so with a smile, as if keeping a clean house is their greatest joy in the world. To make matters worse, the women in Stepford are knockouts. They're fit, they're groomed, they're styled to the nines. It's like they're perfect or something. All of them. Even when they shop for groceries, which seems to be their main source of socialization, their carts are neatly stacked and picture-perfect.

As far as Joanna is concerned, it's enough already -- and she's only just arrived. Thank goodness she happens to meet fun-loving Bobbie, a lovable slob, and Charmaine, athletic and funny. Charmaine is so in love with tennis she has her very own court. Once Joanna forms a trinity of friendship with these two, it seems like things can work out in Stepford after all.

Then things change. Charmaine begins acting strange. She fires her maid and begins doing all of her own cleaning. Out of nowhere, she has the tennis court bulldozed so her husband can have a putting green instead. It's definitely out of character, and Joanna is concerned.

She begins to concoct some pretty wild theories about the women in Stepford. Are they being poisoned? Is there something in the water? Maybe the town husbands, who meet at the men's club, are brainwashing them all. Joanna starts to research some of these Stepford wives. As it turns out, they're sort of amazing. Many of them were professionals, activists, career gals like herself. When Bobbie suddenly shifts personalities and embraces housework, changing her previous slovenly ways, Joanna starts to become frightened.

She's going to get the hell out of Stepford. When she goes home to collect her kids, they're already gone. Her husband takes her keys away, but she escapes on foot. Unfortunately, the men's club finds her. She accuses them of turning all the women in town into robots, an accusation they deny. Joanna strikes a deal with them: if she sees one of the other women bleed, she'll believe they aren't all robots.

They lead her to Bobbie's house, where loud music is playing. Joanna approaches Bobbie, and Bobbie pulls out a knife....

In the epilogue, Joanna happily shops in the grocery store with a perfectly-organized cart.

The Films

How good is this book? So good that the term "Stepford wife" has become part of pop culture; it refers to a woman who seems to be a perfect housewife, perhaps unnaturally so. The first time, The Stepford Wives was adapted to film in 1975. Katharine Ross stars as Joanna Eberhart, and without a lot of banner stars the movie wasn't a huge success. Through the years, it's established a solid cult following and it's a favorite among scifi horror afficionados.

As in the book, the Eberharts move from New York to Stepford, a perfect little Connecticut suburb. Joanna's husband Walter quickly joins the Stepford Men's Association and makes quick friends, but she has trouble adjusting. Enter Bobbie and Charmaine, destined to be Joanna's best Stepford friends.

When Joanna goes to tell Bobbie about a gallery event featuring her photographs, she's shocked to find her friend behaving strangely. Joanna launches her investigation, and everything Stepford begins to unravel. As she suspected, things aren't as perfect as they seem. In fact, they're downright weird. She goes to a psychiatrist at her husband's insistence, but this doesn't change her mind. Things between Joanna and Walter become violent.

Determined to find out what's wrong with her friend, Joanna attacks Bobbie with a kitchen knife. When Bobbie doesn't bleed or even flinch, real terror sets in. Joanna sneaks into the building where the men's club is housed, searching for her children because they are no longer in her home. There, Joanna confronts her own robot double, not quite completed. The robot sees Joanna and holds up a cord before advancing toward her...

And later, in the supermarket, a very beautiful Joanna is shopping happily.

The 2004 remake of the film, and this time it did have a banner cast, turned the original story on its head. I'm not a fan of remakes, but this one is really good. Nicole Kidman stars as Joanna Eberhart; Matthew Broderick is husband Walter. Sloppy Bobbie is played by Bette Midler. Christopher Walken is the de facto leader of the Men's Association, and his wife (played by Glenn Close) is the nominal leader of the women's events. They get together to discuss catalogs, sewing methods, cleaning tips, and whatnot.

Stepford is shocking to Joanna, who this time is a high-powered television executive. When she becomes fired because a reality contestant she tortured went crazy, Walter decides to make a change and move the family to Stepford. Joanna doesn't find a shred of happiness until she meets Bobbie and Roger. This time, there's no Charmaine. Roger is an openly gay, fashion-obsessed former New Yorker who becomes fast friends with Bobbie and Joanna. All three are relatively new to the town, and all three are in committed relationships with men.

They begin noticing odd things about the town, which is filled with modern electrical conveniences. Joanna and Walter begin to have marital problems, and Joanna vows to make Stepford work for her. In an attempt to learn more about fitting into Stepford, the three friends go to visit one of the town's glamorous, vapid housewives. There, they find a funny device with the wife's name written on it. A scare chases them away from the house before they can find more.

Walter, who's enjoying the men's club, is slowly being introduced to the real truth about Stepford...and he seems to kind of like it. Like, what's better than a robot wife who can also operate like an ATM? In one scene, one of the men's club members uses a remote to bring his wife out, and she dispenses twenty one-dollar bills to him from her mouth.

In a stunning about-face, Roger suddenly drops his flamboyant and fashionable ways and becomes a Republican politician overnight. The next day, the robotic dog who lives with the Eberharts appears beside Joanna's bed holding another of those funny devices. This time, it says "Joanna." After doing some research, she learns that all the women in Stepford were once high-powered execs, like her, and placed in other impressive positions career-wise.

When she goes to see Bobbie, she finds that Bobbie's house is immaculate. When Bobbie doesn't react to being caught on fire, Joanna flees. She goes to the men's club to find her children, but finds only the town's men instead. They explain what it's like to be second fiddle to their wives -- the guys who hold the purse while they win awards, pose for pictures, or whatever. A new Joanna robot is revealed, and Walter confronts his wife. Just before he takes her into a private room, Joanna makes a final plea for some reason from the men.

And later, she's shopping in the grocery store. She looks perfect. 

 What Got Adapted?

The 2004 movie, unlike the movie that came before and the book itself, takes things even further. Now-perfect Joanna and Walter attend a formal ball with the other Stepford couples. Joanna dances with Mike (Christopher Walken), and the two go out to the gardens together. Walter is in the control room of the men's club, and he destroys the Stepforward software program that controls the Stepford wives.

They begin to wake up, and realize what's been done to them. It's a fantastic about-face and a great twist to the original story. But the movie throws in yet another twist, which I won't reveal, and ends in a very fun way. This version of the story is also very humorous, and there's a lot of great dialogue added to the script. It's definitely worth a watch, even if you haven't seen the original or read the book. But read the book! It's quietly terrifying, and very enjoyable.