Category: In which Anna vomits her thoughts at you

Yes, it’s actually day three of advent, but I’m only doing week days. I agreed to be Christmas quizmaster at work so the team can fight it out for our advent calendar’s 0.2g of chocolate each day (0.6g on Mondays, as the winner gets the weekend chocolates as well). It’s fierce.

I thought I would share my quizzes with blog readers. You don’t get any chocolate, but I will count up the overall winner on the 21st (my last working day of the year) and mention you in a Tweet or something. Hashtag best Christmas quizmaster ever.

Day 1: Music Round

I’ll give you the opening lines of five famous Christmas songs. I want the title of each song. And it goes without saying… no cheating!

1. It was Christmas Eve, babe

Continue reading “Advent Quiz: Day 1” →

My m/m romance novella Tulsi Vivah is out in the big wide world!

The festival of Tulsi Vivah ushers in the Hindu wedding season and tears away the love of Kristopher’s life. Three years of passion and tenderness are reduced to a shameful skeleton in the closet as Arjuna submits to the marriage his parents have arranged for him. His family has never even heard Kristopher’s name.

The festival, a ritualistic wedding between the holy basil plant, Tulsi, and her eternal lover, Vishnu, is as much of a play-act as Arjuna’s upcoming nuptials, but he believes the wedding will honor his parents and please Vishnu. So why is his Tulsi plant—whose leaves heal and bless the devout, who is Vishnu’s representative on earth—dying? Arjuna tends to her with all the care of a concerned parent, but it might take more than his devotion to save her. She might need Kris, with his clever green-fingers—and maybe a revived Tulsi can heal two hearts.

Buy direct from the publisher: https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/tulsi-vivah-by-anna-kaling-10163-b

Or on Amazon EU: http://amzn.eu/d/0XKDBOw

Amazon US: http://a.co/d/iILMcNo

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/book/show/42845024-tulsi-vivah

Other Amazons and retailers also available.

If you do read, I would so much appreciate a review (does NOT have to be glowing!) on Goodreads, Amazon, or wherever else you hang out.

I hope you enjoy it!

 

I might write light-hearted romance, but I read and watch a lot of horror. I love it all, whether it’s monster movies featuring alien octopi which can only be fought when drunk, the 105th sequel to Saw, or the new release A Quiet Place (which is bloody excellent: go and see it!)

I thought I did a good job of keeping Romantic Anna separate from Bloodthirsty Anna, but judging by this recent feedback on my latest manuscript, maybe not:

“… you’re a horror-fan, so maybe it’d be fun for YOU, but for normal people like me? Being that scared is BAD.”

This was my friend’s feedback on the hero and heroine’s first date. At a zombie apocalypse experience. They have to shoot lumbering humans in the face while trying not to be axe-murdered, then they go home and give each other competitive orgasms. I’m not sure what’s un-normal about that.

Then I read a romance that begins with that oh-so-classic horror movie scene: a woman running through the woods from a psychopathic killer. She even trips over a root and lands flat on her face, and then hides ineffectually behind a tree trunk.

It got me thinking – what would romance look like if we inserted common horror tropes?

The Jump Scare

The horror equivalent of being Rick-rolled: the slow-burn sequence teases you into watching the screen intently and then BOO! – something almost as frightening as 80s pop music flashes up on the screen, and you jump.

I’m thinking the romance equivalent could be really violent premature ejaculation.

After chapters of loin-burning sexual tension, our hero and heroine are ready to get it on. There’s an exchange of witty dialogue. There’s the excruciating description of clothes being removed because a) who the fuck cares but b) no romantic hero can wear socks in bed. Finally we arrive at Foreplay Junction, and the heroine’s hand creeps down Rockard Abbs’ stomach and…

Oh.

Sex = Death

If you manage to get past the jump scares and have sex in a horror movie, especially as a young person, you will DIE. You may first experience the joy of cooking a demon baby in your uterus, a baby which will probably claw its way out of your vagina and suckle from the milk of your jugular, or you may be chased through a woods by a psychopath who really, really disapproves of the shocking lack of foreplay among teens, but the end result will be the same. DEATH.

Some would say this trope is epitomised in the 2014 horror movie It Follows (mediocre, don’t bother watching) where an evil presence is passed on from one person to another via sex. It’s like crabs but less itchy and more fatal. Or The Ring if Samara were horny as well as needy (Naomi Watts doesn’t want to be your mommy, okay? And brush your hair.)

*I* say the trope is epitomised by the 2007 release Teeth, in which Dawn’s vagina grows a healthy set of molars to help keep her purity pledge. Presumably she can fashion it some kind of dentures when she gets married. I’m not sure how she manages to floss.

Thinking about romance, this could really up that sexual tension. Want to screw, characters? Want to rip each other’s clothes off real, real bad? Are you thinking of giving in to that sizzling chemistry an—WELL DON’T, BECAUSE YOU WILL DIE.

This would solve my issue with writing sex scenes.

Vampires

Nope, can’t think of anything to say. It’s absurd to even imagine soulless, blood-sucking creatures being figures of romance.

A Psychic is the Answer to All Problems

Whether there’s a ghost in your attic, a demon possessing your daughter, or a wet patch that just won’t go away (Dark Water, 2005), a psychic will sort it out. Bonus points if the psychic is a Wise Ethnic Person, probably taking some time out from mentoring an orphaned Chosen One in a fantasy novel.

The romance equivalent would surely be a relationship counsellor, in which case I can see the average length of a romance manuscript reducing from around 80,000 words to 800.

…unless we bring the therapist in on some kind of ménage deal, which then means a second therapist has to be found, and then it becomes a quartage, and I lose track of who’s putting whose Rick in whose roll and go back to killing everybody who tries to have sex.

So… 800 words and no sex scenes? Writing romance just got a whole lot easier. Thanks, horror!

This weekend I was minding my own business, browsing Steam for a new game, when I was selected from the October labour lottery to be a border guard between a newly-created Communist state and the capitalist scum on the other side.

The two countries have just finished a six-year war. Terrorists, wanted criminals, and suicide bombers will be trying everything in their power to get past me.

As the makers of my new game, Papers, Please, explain:

Congratulations. 
The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled.
For immediate placement, report to the Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border checkpoint.
An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling. [Anna’s note: Class-8 roughly translates to ‘shit hole.’]
Glory to Arstotzka

The communist state of Arstotzka has just ended a 6-year war with neighboring Kolechia and reclaimed its rightful half of the border town, Grestin.

Your job as immigration inspector is to control the flow of people entering the Arstotzkan side of Grestin from Kolechia. Among the throngs of immigrants and visitors looking for work are hidden smugglers, spies, and terrorists.

Using only the documents provided by travelers and the Ministry of Admission’s primitive inspect, search, and fingerprint systems you must decide who can enter Arstotzka and who will be turned away or arrested.

Playing turned out to be a surprisingly psychological experience, and I learned a lot.

Continue reading “What I Learned Manning a Communist Border Point” →

This is the second blog post in a row I’ve written on etiquette and the irony hasn’t escaped me: yes, I am a potty-mouthed, socially inappropriate reprobate who struggles not to tell parents their babies look like elderly wizards.

It’s also ironic that I’m advising people how to be graceful. I’m roughly the size and shape of a submarine and I would sulk for three years if I ever lost at Monopoly. Not that it’ll ever happen.

But I do know about critiquery (totally a real word). And, on that note, critiquery artists are called critiquers (also a real word) because critics sounds negative.

I critique on several writers’ sites as well as privately, and I’ve completed around 50 beta reads of novels. I’ve also had close to 50 betas for my novels and short stories. I know what it’s like on both sides.

There’s a right way to do critiquery, and a wrong way to do critiquery. In fact, quite a lot of wrong ways. I know, because I did most of them when I was a n00b.

You never, ever, want to be that poor, abused cake.

Read on to be the beautifully arranged peppers.

Continue reading “Critiquette: Giving and Receiving Writing Feedback with Grace” →

Twitter is a glorious melting pot of socially awkward people blurting out thoughts that probably should have been kept private.

In fact, not a melting pot because we stay strictly in our own homes, afraid of human contact, and would never become close enough to coalesce.

Or is that just my Twitter circles?

Anyway.

The point is, I love interacting with people on Twitter in exactly the way I hate interacting with 3D people in that horrible Outside place. My good friend Kim explains why in a much more eloquent and less sweary way than me in this blog.

So it makes me sad when people do things that force me to unfollow them.

Then why do I do it?

Continue reading “Twitterquette – Or Why I Unfollowed You” →

It will come as no surprise to regular readers (or Twitter followers) that I have anxiety.

Diagnosed Generalised Anxiety Disorder, I mean, not just normal anxiety about money or exams or whether G.R.R Martin is going to die before he finishes Game of Thrones.

I’m outspoken about it because I spent many years suffering in unmedicated shame, too anxious and embarrassed to seek help. When I finally did, citalopram changed my life. A few days after I started it, when I drove home from work for the first time ever without going over and over every social interaction to analyse just how idiotic I’d come across, I found myself laughing maniacally at how free I felt.

So, you know, I traded anxiety for looking like something that’d escaped from a lunatic asylum in 1923, but swings and roundabouts.

Continue reading “A Day in the Life of a Ball of Anxiety” →

I realised how British I am recently when I had (minor) surgery and was too polite to tell the doctor the anaesthetic hadn’t worked.

I didn’t want to worry her, and anyway, the automatic Brit response to any question is, “Fine, thanks.” or “Oh yes, lovely!”

For example:

Crying with pain at a massage, probably while wearing a Victorian-style bathing suit because good old British sexual repression

Masseuse: “Is the pressure okay?”

Brit: “Oh yes, lovely!”

Two Brits in a restaurant

Brit 1: “There is an actual pube in my meal, under the mould.”

Brit 2: “Oh my god, you should complain!”

Brit 1: “I know. It’s disgusting.”

Waitress: “Hello! Is everything okay with your meal?”

Brits in unison: “Fine, thanks!”

In fact, there’s an entire Fawlty Towers episode based on the premise that Brits are unable to complain, in contrast with Americans. It’s 103% accurate.

But what about other stereotypes? Do we deserve them or not? I should probably put some sort of disclaimer that I don’t represent all Brits but this is my blog, and here I am King.

Continue reading “British Stereotypes – Fact or Fiction?” →