37 Rimrunners

Well, it's not a good novel. But it used to be one of my favorites. What's up with that?

I spend some time grappling with genre conventions, the Taco Bell menu of genre-specific literary tropes, and OneDrive, which I want to kill with fire. While I'm typing this, I am restoring it, even though I just deleted it, because I discovered it was BACK after being deleted about six times this week--probably more--and I HATE IT. I carefully saved my new recording to the Desktop, out of its reach, only to discover that the Desktop is PART OF ITS REACH and it had deleted that too.

Why won't it die???

I joked I was going to end up editing my win.ini file but truly I'm going to end up in a C prompt editing the regedit. I will destroy this thing. 

It is 1997 over here in computer land. They drove me to it. 

Maybe that's relevant to Rimrunners, which is really super From The Past in a way that's kind of unpalatable now, a time when "tough heroine" meant "is like a dude hero from twenty years before." She's tough! She kills a would-be rapist guy with her bare hands (and bootheel) when starving to death! She murders a creepy molester guy slowly and camps out in his apartment! She doesn't have nerves of steel--she's a wreck--but that's how we know she's not a hero dude from twenty years before, I guess! She has sex with everyone because that's what the dude hero would do! She takes care of the crazy man who needs her help, ditto! She's strong and mighty and everyone's equal in the future but there are still rapists around every corner! WHY. In the end she saves the day despite being persecuted and repeatedly beaten up by the mean lieutenant because she has the special skills they need!

Sometimes genre conventions are exhausting to me. You can just tell a story. You don't have to Taco Bell it up, rearranging beans and cheese and meat and tortilla chips and salsa in umpteen forms. 

Guess who really wants Taco Bell right now.

It's been a thousand years since I've been there. And one of my students was the drive-through cashier when I went. Oh, hi.

Rimrunners used to seem so awesome to me, but then I too am from the past and it wasn't overdone yet then. I would never in a million years write a heroine like that. I'm not sure anyone would now. Okay, not true, there's a review of a book on this site that does a lot of those things and some much worse ones with a heroine who's supposed to be cool because she's gross, I guess? And doesn't wash? And lives on coffee and cigarettes and whiskey and has blood under her nails all the time? Sure, okay. I mean, absolutely not. It's so TRITE to do that. C.J. Cherryh has the excuse that it wasn't trite yet when she did it. This person, no. 

I finished Summerlands, had a massive migraine from it, kind of don't remember a lot of the week after the moment I posted the formatted version to KDP. Where you can now buy it! But don't because my friend read it (and loved it, YAYYYY) and mentioned two errors I need to fix. Give me a minute. 

Never yet seen a published book without a typo or error of some kind, but I'd like to eradicate them in my own work, if possible. Much like OneDrive. 

I'm working on the Becca book, aka Forty Days and Forty Nights, aka Gone Away, aka I haven't figured out a new title quite yet. I'll know I have it when I can imagine good cover art. 

Speaking of which, it's fascinating to look at all the variant covers for Rimrunners over the years, as they reimagine what a cool mighty 37 year old space Marine would look like. It's worth a look through the image search if you're curious. This is my paperback's cover. Isn't it atrocious? Strong forearms! Rolled up sleeves! True to story haircut! Pencil thin eyebrows! Surprising chest for someone literally starving!

Anyway, it's sad when one of your old favorites ages out of awesomeness, but so it goes.