Jaye Viner's Blog

So happy to announce that on Tuesday, the Kickstarter for my new book is launching.

The Island of Dreams hard cover special edition is only going to be available via pledges from the Kickstarter. Follow today so you're ready for all the goodies on Tuesday.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

Today is the cover image release of my new novel, Terrible Love, the sequel to Elaborate Lives.

Taking my career into my own hands has been such a joy and brought forth its own creativity as I work on social media posts and marketing and communicate directly with readers.

Elaborate lives has sold thirty copies in its first month. This doesn't sound like much. But its a start. And I'm so happy to have started.

With Terrible Love, I've been able to settle into the relationship of Larisa and Quinn and really explore this strange situation of falling in love after you've pretended to be in love. They're not strangers, but they also don't know each other as they should. And Larisa knows Quinn far better than Quinn knows Larisa because his most meaningful relationship was with the Queen, who seems to him an entirely separate person.

So they're going slowly. It's a g rated Toy Story relationship at the beginning. Dinners with her parents, movie nights, talking. She's waiting for him to be sure that he loves her and not just the Queen. And that's a harder question to answer than one would think given how much noise they've got pressing in around them.

If you haven't read Elaborate Lives yet, and you read romance, definitely check it out so you can be ready in July when Terrible Love comes out.

Ya'll,
So excited to announce that my new contemporary romance, Elaborate Lies, is ready for advanced readers.

If you like romances with fake dating, wedding dates, social pressure, a bit of BDSM, and messy characters who we know are perfect for each other, send me a message and ask to be added to the beta reader list. I'll send you a reader copy and feedback questions. You'll have the chance to have a say in the final draft of the book and have early access to all kinds of goodies when the book is published.

I'll be releasing a teaser book trailer on my socials this week so if you're not following me there, be sure to find me on your favorite platform!

Elaborate Lies follows the Larisa, the daughter of celebrities who is trying to build a normal life for herself as a psychiatrist even though everyone she's ever known is determined to set her up as a trophy wife. Quinn is a film director haunted by demons of imposter syndrome and a terrible temper. When he looses his cool on set, his producer sends him to therapy. Not just any therapist will do. Larisa knows the industry as well as she knows psychiatry. Only she can give Quinn the help he needs. What neither of them expect is just how much the can help each other.

If you enjoyed , , , , there's a good chance you'll enjoy Elaborate Lies.

Hi All,
Book launch chaos is indeed chaos. I've been too swamped to keep up with blogging, but I hope next month is better.

I wanted to let ya'll know that in October I'm teaching two classes for Literary Arts Portland.

Writing Beyond the Stereotypes of Disability
Oct 2 and 3rd for two hours each session.

and

Writing Characters Who Take Up Space on the Page
Every Sunday in October starting the 10th.

We'll look at theories of embodiment and subconscious social communication to create and revise characters who feel like they actually take up space and interact with their environments in a lived-in way.

https://literary-arts.org/bio/jaye-vi...

The biggest difference between a symphony and a film score is that the symphony was created to stand on its own, to be the focal point of our attention. In comparison, a film score is meant to blend into the background of our attention adding to the emotional experience of the film without distracting from the story.

But film scores are unique an stimulating works of art that can be appreciated both as part of a film and on their own as a listening experience. Here are some ways you can deepen your appreciation and notice of film scores on the screen.

Music in movies is most often scored through entrance cues tied to particular things going on in scene. These cues can act the same way chapters used to work on DVDs dividing the film into its central beats. Most traditional three act films especially in the 90s can be read in this way.

Notice the music at the beginning of the film. How does it change to signal the significance of the inciting action? When is the next time the music’s character changes in a significant way? What does its timbre signal about the story on the screen?

Another way to notice music in film is through themes. In his book, Music and Mythmaking, Timothy E. Scheure dissects the early history of film themes as ways to short hand information to the audience about heroes, villains and damsels in distress. These themes can also be called leitmotifs. This is a technique where significant people, ideas, or objects, are assigned a particular arrangement of notes. Wagnerian operas first made this technique famous and it carried through to films as soon as they began to be scored. Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings score makes excellent use of leitmotifs and if you watch the trilogy with attention to these themes, you will learn new things about the subtexts of the scenes that is not otherwise visible.

The last way to notice music in film is the contrast between diegetic (music heard by the characters) and non-diegetic music (music heard only by the audience.)

In Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1998 film, The Legend of 1900, the interplay between diegetic and non diegetic plays an important role in the texture and story of the film helping build the sense of the story as a fable that is both true and perhaps not so true.

When you notice music in a film does it exist for the characters or just the audience? How does it change in different roles?

Sources of inspiration for a writer are as vast as they are mysterious. I’ve been writing for decades, yet the things that spark an idea continue to surprise me. I tend to think that they come from actively expanding the boundaries of knowledge, but sometimes I write from places of old knowledge. When this happens, it is most often an accident.

When I started writing my debut novel, Jane of Battery Park, I did not plan for it to be about music. I was writing about a culture gap, which also tends to be a gap in world views/belief systems and the role of pop culture. I was writing to explore extreme faith and also do a little fantasizing about Hollywood and knowing hot actors and GASP, having them fall in love with an ordinary person like me who outside of fashion that she doesn’t bother shaving in summer.

But film music has been part of my life since I was young, and as I was digging through the archives of my life to build my main character, Jane, I used film music to develop and articulate her emotional journey. That journey then found its way onto the page.

Film music becomes the thing that speaks romance to Jane. But more than that, it gives her access to a world outside of her conservative upbringing. Because it is instrumental, it could be a bridge between what she knew and what she wanted to know, without being morally corrupt or suspect in her culture. In a pivotal scene towards the end of the novel, Jane goes to a studio and watches James Horner record an original score for a movie in production.

When I wrote that scene, I admit, most of it was wish fulfillment. I wanted to be Jane in that moment. For a while, I thought it might be a fantasy come true. But then, Horner died on June 22, 2015. In the midst of all the emotions of launching a debut novel this year, I’ve been taking June to think about Horner and what it means to his legacy that he is part of my book.

Many people have been touched by Horner’s music, the most obvious way a film composer lives on. So, here are my five favorite tracks and what writerly me thinks when I hear them.

The Ludlows from Legends of the Fall
The piano beginning of this track feels like young love, something larger than innocence. About thirty seconds in, the piano fades into a lush full orchestra for the film’s main theme. It builds through the melody to a crescendo that I always think is the ‘reveal moment’, that time in a scenic movie where the camera moves from closed space to a panoramic shot. When you drive around the bend in the mountains and suddenly before you is the most beautiful valley you’ve ever seen.

Main Title from Apollo 13
This is the music I think about during the meet cute of Jane of Battery Park where Jane and Daniel are in Battery Park and he’s discovering that she’s not quite a normal person (whatever that means) she tells him that his brother’s life (blockbuster movie star) would be scored in perfect fifths, which are also called patriotic fifths and there are a lot of them in this score.

To the Rescue from The Rocketeer
The sparkly harmonia-like fairy music at the beginning of this track is also used in Horner’s score to Twister. It feels like the introduction to a fable with teeth in it. The opening of the theme is fractures of melody, each one a question posed with a delayed answer. It creates a sense of play, children’s call and response across open fields. The first 2:30 are like this, a prelude, something that feels like its building energy to leave the ground, and then, with a crescendo, a new tempo, and more sound, we do.

End Credits from The Land Before Time
I probably like this album because it imprinted on me from childhood. Listening to this track, which has all the main motifs in it, I remember scenes from the film, I remember rubber puppet toys from Pizza Hut. And just before the 2 minute mark, when the main theme kicks in, I get a little weepy because this is also the melody for the Dianna Ross song that plays at the end of the movie. I have more feels about this song than We are the Champions from the end of Mighty Ducks. This is the only soundtrack where I insert actual words when I hear the instrumental melody.

Ocean of Memories from Titanic
At a pivotal scene in Jane of Battery Park, Jane is in her kitchen in Nebraska cheating on her husband with movie soundtracks. She’s crying while trying to cook spaghetti because the music, this track in particular has unlocked something in her that she needs, but she doesn’t know how to get. I chose this track because it is my favorite from the album. It blends the promise of new life with lost love and old memory.
It is also a prototypical late 90’s Horner track in that it utilizes ethereal electronic music with the strong lyrical phrasing and repetition of phrasing characteristic of his early work. At 4:20, is my most favorite of favorite Horner transitions into what I call the ‘Horner quote’ a series of phrases that he put in many of his scores. It’s carried by a melancholy horn solo here, a beautiful addition to the funerial tone.

An excerpt from my June newsletter, which has reflections, links, and exercises to explore its emotional impact on our lives. Subscribe at my website https://www.jayeviner.com

Last week I went to Disneyworld by myself for fun. It was a strange, extremely impulsive and extravagant decision. I made it with two days notice, not stopping to doubt, not even asking myself why, now that it was finally safe to travel, was this the place I wanted to go?

Something I didn’t really understand until I was on my flight home already regretting I hadn’t found a way to make the trip longer. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t miss home. I hadn’t worn myself out as I expected. From this experience I learned two things that I am now using to try and understand what exactly made Disney so compelling.

The first is that I LOVE constructed realities. The artifice of themed restaurants, the rides that make movie worlds into a larger experience. The very idea that I climb on a boat and ride around in a circle in the dark watching animatronics float by for a movie I’ve never seen, is deeply satisfying.

The second thing (which perhaps I should’ve mentioned first) is the music. For me, music makes the lie of a constructed world feel real. I have been to Paris. Seeing little Paris at Epcot center is not impressive. But sitting in a fake Parisian theatre, singing along to Beauty and the Beast with a bunch of strangers in the dark, had me in tears. (I don’t even like Beauty and the Beast.)

Even as I’m crying, I feel a little cheated. Because feminist me is like, B&B is really terrible. And the anti-capitalist in me is like, Disney is responsible for lots of destruction for independent storytelling and rights abuses for authors. But I’m still crying. And I want to cry. I am sitting in that theater without any people within six feet and I realize I came to Disney specifically to be alone and to cry. To feel whatever I want and not have to explain it. I want to be part of this world no matter how problematic because it is not the world I’ve been living in for the past fifteen months full of death, and stupid people, and uncertainty.

Doubters could argue, Disney music works this way on me because I’m a child of a certain generation. Fair. But people also hardwired to embed emotion from music. I am particularly interested in the perfectly timed music cue adding another dimension to a moment whether it is my lived life or a film. We embed emotion when we tie songs or listening experiences to our personal lives at key moments.

But when we want to experience something bigger, to feel bigger, to be away from our responsibilities and doubts and fears, the only place to really experience that is through movies. And if movies aren’t making magic for you, as they continually fail me, I guess you go to a theme park. And you ignore the screaming children, and the heat, and the 6 dollar waters. In this constructed landscape you go somewhere else that isn’t a real place, it’s a feeling. Probably, its a feeling that doesn’t even have a name. And you look for moments that provide the perfect cue for you to make magic within yourself.

My May newsletter goes out today and it feels dangerous. Granted, it doesn’t take much for me to feel like I’m trespassing the bounds of polite (female) society, but so much of pandemic rhetoric has been about good vibes. As though, we’re being asked to float around to Bob Marley in our heads (don’t worry, be happy).

To be honest, I’m tired of good vibes. (This is why I feel dangerous.) There are hugely important, dark, terrible things happening in our country and in the world. And to be honest, I don’t want my response to that darkness to be: take care of yourself, focus on what you can control, focus on the good in your life.

I’m conflating macro and micro perspectives here. And yes, many people need to learn to take time for themselves and be generous to their needs. So what I’m actually talking about is a social norm of feeling the pressure to be positive, to not be a downer.

My newsletter feels dangerous because in one of my #ExpandingBoundaries2021 exercises I suggest that you can write a poem focusing on gratitude where every line starts with “I’m grateful for…” OR you can write a poem where every line starts with “I hate when….”
screen shot of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow staring agahst at his hand.

Just typing the word ‘hate’ gives me a visceral body response. I’m not supposed to hate. Its ugly. It ruins the good vibes and grows ugliness like Jack Sparrow’s black spot.



But perhaps we could consider what we lose by having societal norms that push for positivity so much that we’re not allowed to hate? Bad people hate. The ‘other’ side hates.

But we’re better than that. The topic of my newsletter this month is the future of climate change and how hard it is for humans to appreciate the time scale of planetary change to see the catastrophe that is coming. I argue that if we’re going to mitigate that catastrophe, we’re going to have to allow for a little hate. Hate, I have decided instigates change. Hate is powerful.

If we’re not allowed to express hate, it not only devalues our feelings, it defangs the perception of true evil being perpetuated by the powerful at the expense of the not so powerful. By allowing myself to hate, I keep myself from being complacent. I don’t want to forget the deliberate actions of a very small portion of the world’s population who believe that making money is a moral obligation that stops for nothing.

I wrote both a gratitude poem and a hate poem this weekend. What I discovered is that when I write about gratitude, I think about small personal things: having a house, my cats, my spouse with his ‘real job’ that makes my ‘not real jobs’ possible.

But when I write about hate, I think about large things. Things that don’t directly affect my life, but they are being done seemingly with my consent because it is impossible for regular people to consent to capitalism. And I feel powerless. I am, actually quite powerless. This is a valid feeling.

My Hate Poem (The Climate Change Edition)
I hate when politicians claim they support clean energy but do nothing to limit investments or the profitability of the petroleum industry.
I hate when misinformation politicizes and divides an issue that will eventually impact everyone
I hate when companies greenwash their carbon footprint for the sake of good PR
I hate when I pull out my two bins on trash day and look down my street and see a line of driveways with only one bin.
I hate when women being assaulted is part of the expected costs of doing business.
I hate when people argue that cold temperatures mean climate change isn’t real.
I hate when I go to the store and produce can only be purchased in plastic packaging.
I hate when state police are hired by foreign companies to protect their interests against American citizens.
I hate when I ride my bike in the same place I rode as a child. Where once I screamed in terror cruising through grasshoppers sunning themselves that then flew into my face and got caught in my hair when I disturbed them. Now there are one or two the whole ride.

Remember that old fable about the frog slowly cooking to death in a pot of water? He never jumps out because the temperature rises so slowly? That’s life on this planet. What do you hate today? There’s plenty to choose from. Would you ruin the positive vibes of your social feed by sharing some of that rage with the world? Link your sources. Build a conversation.

As a missionary kid, I was born in Japan where I was cooed over by elderly Japanese women and college students. I even made an appearance in a Japanese newspaper when a surgeon did work on my tear ducts. When we moved back to the U.S., my life continued to be filled with Japanese people. Eating rice for breakfast was a normal thing, and I regularly grossed my American school friends out by eating it for lunch with the seaweed-based condiment, furikake. My mother’s kitchen cabinets were nearly ruined by two young women making tempura in our house. I own a blanket that belonged to a Japanese student killed in a car accident while studying at my home university.

To this day, my family’s ‘traditional’ family meals are shabu shabu (hot pot) and golden curry. My cheap go-to snack is packaged yakisoba. My most prized kitchen appliance is a rice cooker. Japanese food is, for better or worse, part of my identity. I know things about it. Not the way a Japanese person knows things. But more than many white Americans.

It’s hard to know what to do with this. Because this culture isn’t mine. I am not a Japanese American and my claim on any part of that identity is overshadowed by the fact that I have a connection because my parents were missionaries in Japan, which isn’t really a comfortable thing either. Colonialism. American imperialism. Religious piety. It doesn’t feel like something I’m allowed to have. And yet, familiarity with Japanese food, and Asian food in general, is everywhere.

I’m currently reading Heather Diamond’s memoir, , about her experiences as a white American trying married to a Chinese man. Early in the book, she’s breaking up with her first husband and they have a series of conversations in restaurants. The first one is Chinese, the second is Japanese. These were regular places for them even before she had that connection to China. Later in the book, she shares the story of being on a fellowship in China and riding the train with other fellow white Americans. They make a list of all the things they hate about China. It’s an uncomfortable scene, but it rings true from my experience in college studying abroad, and of other experiences I’ve heard about with white Americans in places where they don’t blend in. We like to pick and choose what we like about ‘difference.’

It occurs to me that I am actually more like white Americans than I used to think when I was grossing other kids out with furikake. The food of other cultures, especially Japanese food, Thai, and Americanized Chinese, has become part of America. It is something we do without really thinking about where it comes from or the traditions behind it. This line between cultures is fuzzy.

In the wake of the shootings in Atlanta, and the myriad other hate crimes against Asian Americans and Asians living in the U.S. that have gone widely unreported during the pandemic, it seems a great injustice that we’ve taken this food as our own, but we haven’t fully taken in the people. If we’re going to eat in those restaurants and enjoy knowing how to use chopsticks (or not) and try sashimi instead of California rolls sometime, the least we can do as white people is support the people who are part of that food. They are part of us and have been for almost as long as there has been an America. Acceptance does not mean picking and choosing what we like or what feels familiar. It means valuing everything.