Category Archives: Books

May 28, 2013 · 5:40 pm

Manners in the World of the Ephemeral

MC900343857Manners.

Etiquette.

Just what are they and what do they mean in the world of the internet? Indeed, what do they mean in our world at all?

Wikipedia, the Fount of All Knowledge, describes etiquette as a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group.

Wendell Willkie, the early twentieth century American politician and author, said, “The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.” 

I confess that I do this with great difficulty, but I do it and try not to brag about it.

Benjamin Banneker, born November 9, 1731 – died October 9, 1806, was a free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer. On the subject of manners he is quoted as saying, “Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.”

Whoa! How prophetic was that? In this era of instant communication, a carelessly worded post on a forum can lead to flaming responses and accusations of trolling.

MC900445014Flaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users, often involving the use of profanity. This occurs most commonly in eMail nowadays when the people involved have an emotional attachment to the subject and is compounded by the profound miscommunication caused by the lack of social cues available in face-to-face communication.

In the early days of the internet incidents of trolling were considered to be the same as flaming, but this has changed with modern usage by the news media to refer to the creation of any content that targets another person. The Internet dictionary NetLingo suggests there are four grades of trolling: playtime trolling, tactical trolling, strategic trolling, and domination trolling.

None of those activities are nice, as they are deliberate acts of bullying, and bullying is not polite.

Just sayin’.

The great American author, Flannery O’Connor,  has been quoted as saying, “Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers.” 

If she had lived to see the internet and the explosion of “invisible friends” with whom the average person is in daily communication she may not have said that. This world we live in is no longer a world where snail-mail and telephone conversations are the means by which we communicate. Today we live in a world where people are isolated and insulated from each other, and communicate via the internet using forums and social media. People of all walks of life come together in this vast melting pot of anonymity and they become ‘close friends’  or ‘dire enemies’ despite never having physically met.

Manners and proper etiquette are critical to maintaining one’s credibility in a world where you are represented by the picture you have selected as your ‘icon’ or ‘avatar’ and by what you write in the comments sections of public forums.

In this world, an icon or avatar is the graphical (pictorial) representation of the user or the user’s alter ego or character. This photo or graphic is the image beside our user-name before every comment we post in any forum on the internet. We are careful of what we put up to represent us, because we want people to see us as who we think we are.

I believe common courtesy that a person would extend in a face-to-face conversation should extend into our online conversations.

And this brings me to the ongoing breech of common courtesies that brought this subject up in my mind.

If you, as an author, are invited through a forum to ‘like’ another author’s facebook page or website AND you choose to do so, it’s not appropriate for you to then post a comment on their page that you have done so and also post the links to your pages or books.  The proper way to inform the author you have ‘liked’ their page is to send them a personal message saying you have done so and include those links in that message.

Frustrated Woman at Computer With Stack of PaperTo post links to YOUR website or books on another author’s page is tantamount to pissing on their doorstep. You are saying to this author and his fans that you consider this author to be nothing more than another venue for your marketing strategy. You are marking their territory with your scent, claiming a piece of it for yourself. I am sure most of the offenders have no idea how rude such behavior is.

We denizens of the 22nd century live in a world of the ephemeral, but the ramifications of what we do and say in that world are monumental. The internet is forever, and deleting a comment won’t make it go away, because it has already shown up in the in-boxes of all the users on that forum.  We communicate instantly and frequently with no filters  between the brain and the keyboard. In this world of instant communication and myriad opportunities for damaging your own reputation it is critical to think before you do.

To that end, I offer up this list of suggested “manners” for authors in the world of the internet. I didn’t invent them; they are copied directly from the website “Common Sense Media” and made to apply to indie authors trying to make their way in the cruel world of the internet:

Rules for Online Etiquette

Context is everything. If you want to have a silly online name that conforms to the convention of a particular online community and only your friends there will see it, fine. But for more formal communication — like email addresses, posting comments, or anything to do with work or school — choose a respectable screen name (though not your real name) that they wouldn’t be embarrassed to utter out loud in front of, say, their grandmother. If it is author related, use your author-name.

Double-check before you hit “send.” Could something you wrote be misinterpreted? Is it so littered with slang that it requires a Ph.D. in Urban Dictionary to be understood? Were you upset when you wrote it? Check to see if it’s rude, mean, or sarcastic. If so, don’t send it.

Take the high road (but don’t boast about it). Chatting, texting, and status updates are all “in-the-moment” communication. But if there’s an escalating sense of rudeness, sign off. No good will come of firing off a nasty comment. Authors, who are touchy, hypersensitive creatures at best, will NEVER forget how you flamed them. You can always write out a response to get something off your chest … without sending it.

Grammar rules. Rumors of grammar’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. (I love that line!) But again, context is key. An IM to a friend can dangle as many participles as you want, but anything more formal — for example, a public online comment or a note to a colleague — should represent your best self. This applies to capital letters, too. By now, everyone knows that writing in all caps means that you’re shouting, but it bears repeating once your kid starts interacting online.

Keep a secret. In today’s world, photos, texts, and videos can be posted, copied, forwarded, downloaded, and Photoshopped in the blink of an eye. If you think something might embarrass someone, get them in trouble, compromise their privacy, or stir up drama of any kind, keep it to yourself — and maybe delete it from your timeline or the thread for good measure.

Don’t hide. For safety’s sake, you should use untraceable screen names, but using anonymity to cloak your actions can poison the atmosphere — and hurt people. If your kids want to be contributing members of the online world, encourage them to post productively, and walk the walk yourself.

Eye on Flat Panel MonitorRemember the Golden Rule. Don’t post something online that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. If you do have something negative to say, discussing it in person is a better way to resolve your issues. Post nothing on someone else’s wall that you would not be glad to have on your own.

These suggestions translate directly to Do No Harm. Behave with dignity, and extend the common courtesies to others that you wish to have extended to you.

To that end, I leave you with this quote from the beloved tennis great, Arthur Ashe, “Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.”

I think that goes doubly for indie authors, because for us eking out a living in the world of the internet, appearance is everything.

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May 25, 2013 · 9:31 pm

Stephen Hawking, Morgan Freeman and the Randomness of Squirrels

Stephen_Hawking.StarChildHere in the wild world of blogging, we spend many hours writing posts, only to find when we read them a day later that our personal editing skills are somewhat deficient, especially if one wings it, as I frequently do.

I’ve been told it’s a technical problem with my keyboard–something about operator error–but I disagree. The incidents of inappropriate self-editing are usually accompanied by the sightings of random squirrels and shiny objects. I’m sure it’s something to do with extra-dimensional  doppelgängers and particle physics as it seems to happen on a sub-atomic level, so I blame Stephen Hawking, Morgan Freeman and Michio Kaku. After all, if their documentaries weren’t so darned interesting and educational I would never be assailed by these thought of “what if….”

As I was writing this post, I was suddenly bowled over by a passing squirrel who casually reminded me that even worse than a badly edited post is the number of times I forget to properly tag my posts.

If you have a blog, and you are not having much luck attracting people to it, it could be as simple as you haven’t discovered the importance of ‘tagging’ your posts.

Many of us have WordPress blogs and many of us have Blogger Blogs. I have both, so I have a basic understanding of how some things work in both formats. Each one has its positive points.  One thing they have in common is that blog posts must be tagged in a way that attracts the eye if you want to attract readers from various search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Tagging is an art I’ve not quite gotten the hang of in regard to twitter, but I’ve figured out what works for my blogs.prnt scrn bif

Blogger is simple. The right side of the dashboard has a section that refers to tags as ‘labels’. On my Best in Fantasy book review blog which is blogger, I label each post with the Author of the book I am reviewing, the series the book is a part of if that is a factor, and the other labels say book view, epic fantasy, and anything else that pertains to the book. This could be a ‘Dungeons & Dragons theme,’ or even ‘Society for Creative Anachronism,’.  I will use even just the label ‘humor’ if appropriate. You don’t want to use more than 9 labels. Because it is a book review blog, I just post once a week, whatever book I read that week that I really liked, and then tweet the post and sit back and let it perk along on its own. That blog is pretty much a self-maintainer, as long as I remember to assign ‘labels’ to each individual post.  Then I tweet the post and my work is done on that blog for the week.

prn scrn tag and dragThe blog you are currently reading is a bit different because it is WordPress. It is a two-step process but it is simple once you figure it out. First go to the right hand side of your dashboard. Underneath the “Publish” button is a drop-down menu labeled “Categories.” Decide what categories most clearly represent your post and assign them.

Posts for Life in the Realm of Fantasy usually fall under one or more of these categories:  Adventure, Fantasy, Humor, Writing and Vegan Lifestyle.  DON’T FORGET TO DO THIS OR IT WILL DEFAULT TO “UNCATEGORIZED.”

That is bad, because then your blog will fall into a giant heap of uncategorized blogs with nothing to show what they are about. If you are writing about the potato famine, you want to make sure your category is Irish History, and so on.

Just as important as the categories in a WordPress blog are the TAGS.  The drop-down menu for the tags is located just below the categories. THIS IS CRITICAL! Select keywords AND themes that are mentioned prominently in the post, or that people who are Googling a subject might use in their search. This post’s tags will be:

fantasy, humor, literature, 
tagging and labeling blogs, 
writing, 
Stephen Hawking, Morgan Freeman, Michio Kaku,
Squirrels

According to what I read on the internet (so it must be true) the best rule-of-thumb is to not use more than nine or ten tags for a blog, and never more than three tags in a tweet.

So back to squirrels and particle physics.

According to Particle Physics for Dummies, we still do not understand 95% of the universe.

220px-Michio_Kaku_in_2012It comforts me to know that Morgan Freeman, Michio Kaku, and Stephen Hawking are just as confused as I am.

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May 20, 2013 · 6:53 pm

Hacking through the brush

Shispar by Brian McMorrow CC 2.5 license Wikimedia

Writing is mountain climbing. Half of it is uphill.

Yesterday I spent all day writing a scene that occurs in the relationship of a main character, Billy Ninefingers, with the woman he loves. It’s a pivotal scene, and the way I first wrote it, she makes a decision that hurts Billy, but he goes along with it because he doesn’t know what else to do.

It didn’t read right to me.

So I rewrote it, making him angry, making him push to have his needs met in the situation. I was still not happy with it, so I trashed the new scene.

What I did yesterday was waste 11 hours writing 3624 words, which I then threw away.

Today I’m going to rearrange the living room instead.

MH900402708Some days you’re writing and the prose flows like fine wine into a crystal glass, gorgeous, smooth; a delight to senses.

Other days your writing takes you deep into the bug infested jungles of  Look-There’s-A-Squirrel Valley and the divergent paths you find yourself on are downright frightening.

Where does my mind come up with some of the crazy things that pop up in my work? I don’t know, but some days writing is as much about hacking through the brush trying to find your way back home as it is basking in the glory of a completed chapter.

The bright spots on my horizon are the two women who’ve dedicated a great amount of time to making my work readable, Carlie Cullen and Irene Roth Luvaul.

Irene is what some people in this industry are beginning to refer to as a ‘line editor.’ She helps me make my manuscript submission ready – that is, she makes sure I’ve dotted my ‘i’s and crossed my ‘t’s (insert comma) (delete comma) and that the manuscript is as clean as it can be before I submit it to my editor, Carlie Cullen.  Irene checks the manuscript for  consistency in spelling the frequently made-up names of people and places, so that my spelling doesn’t inadvertently drift (Liam…Lyam….)  Some authors have spouses who will do this for them, but  my husband doesn’t read fast enough and has a day-time job. Fortunately my best friend Irene saw I was struggling, and offered to help. This is the first stage of the process, and clears the way for Carlie to work her magic.

Irene is a retired legal secretary with  40 years of proofreading and punctuation behind her. That she WANTS to do this mammoth undertaking on my raw, bloody manuscripts is amazing to me. I’m not as well-educated as many other authors are, and my first drafts are clear evidence of that.

MH900448490By having the brush cut back (so to speak) before she gets the manuscript Carlie is able to concentrate on the true task of editing the work for publication. I’m not wasting Carlie’s time on things that should have been corrected before she was handed the manuscript. After all, she has other clients and also her own writing. I want her to enjoy working with me, not dread it!

Of course, she will make edits on grammar and things Irene and I may have missed, but Carlie guides me in cutting out the fluff and excessive backstory that finds its way into the tale. She has me expand on the important things, the points of the tale which are the real meat of the matter. She may have me take a minor thing and expand on it, or she may think something is not as important as I think it is. This is where the real story begins to unfold. Carlie turns my manuscript into a book.

If you have been suffering from a series of rejection letters and you don’t know why, it may be that your manuscript was not submission ready when you sent it in. You may not even have known your pride and joy was an unruly child. Many editors and agents will reject manuscripts with plots based on wonderful concepts and with great characters simply because the task of getting the grammar and punctuation corrected in order to get to the real editing is not worth the effort.

But after having been in this business for a while now, I’ve come to realize that it takes more than a great story to make a great book. I’ve seen manuscripts a third grader would not have been proud of, but they were the blood sweat and tears of an author and it killed me to tell them it wasn’t acceptable in its current state.

I’ve had other authors look at me with disdain and say, “Well I always refer back to Strunk and White when I am writing, so I don’t need an editor.”

Yep.

Well, so do I, when I pause long enough to think about it, but I write like a freight train–once the tale has me and I’m rolling, I’m not going to stop for anything so minor as grammar.

Strunk and White IS the final word when it comes to grammar and use, but unless those two lovely men have actually laid their eyes on your manuscript, you may have missed a few things or you may have a tale that, while it is grammatically perfect, it is full of dead ends and lackluster prose.

Having been through hell and back with “The Last Good Knight” I cannot express strongly enough the importance of having TWO sets of editorial eyes on your work.

Editors have eyes AND they have Strunk and White, and they are not afraid to use it. But editors also understand what makes a good tale and they will guide you in that direction if you will let them.

Elements of Style

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May 14, 2013 · 7:26 pm

Creativity

MH900314016

Creativity. Making something good and wonderful from something ordinary.

Sometimes writing is more about inspiration than it is anything else, and other times it is all about the perspiration.

Even when we are inspired and our work is flowing, there is a lot of work involved.

Research. The internet is an awesome resource and I highly recommend you do not rely solely on Wikipedia, The Fount of All Knowledge, fine repository of sometimes mythic information that it is.

Stitching the plot holes together. Finding them is the trick, because everything looks perfect to me, until Irene gets hold of it!

*doh*

Meeting and greeting the characters who people your tales. I write descriptions and biographies of them as they appear in the first raw draft of the tale so that I know them and how they will react in a given situation.

The day 14 writing prompt for the short story a day  in the month of May from  StoryADay.org for today was (and I quote:)

“Simple task today (ha!): The Prompt Write a story that opens, “On the edge of the mountain, silhouetted against the setting sun, there is a small ramshackle cottage made of wood.” Tips This sounds, at first blush, as if it has to be set in a fantasy or fairy-tale world, but I bet you can […]”

SOOOOO this is what MY somewhat less than fertile mind came up with today:

On the edge of the mountain, silhouetted against the setting sun, there is a small ramshackle cottage made of wood. The wind blows through the cracks and crevices, and the glass that once graced the windows has long since fallen prey to the winter storms.

Once it was full of laughter, love and merriment. Children played in the now wild garden. Raccoons now raise their young beneath the floor boards, and owls nest in the rafters.

The cottage and the mountain are one; both have always been and only time will tear them down. Nature always takes back her own.

This is in keeping with my commitment to writing my shorts in 100 word bursts, even though I’m not that impressed with it.  It’s an exercise, and just doing it is good for the writing muscles.

Am I any closer to being able to write a decent pitch for my forthcoming novels?  I don’t know, but I’m having fun.  One day I wrote my 100 words as a love poem, too frank and soul-baring to post here.

It’s cathartic in a way – 100 words that fall out of me for no one’s amusement but my own. Some are good enough to share, some are just mental crap. But it’s a good exercise, and it stirs the creative juices.

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May 10, 2013 · 7:15 pm

The View from the Fishbowl

Me working in a starbucks, through the fishbowl, copyright Dan Riffero 2013 <– The Starbucks in my son’s office building has a fish tank, and this is what the fish see when I am working there!

One of the more awesome things I get to do frequently is drive to and through Seattle.  It used to freak me out to even contemplate making that journey, but now I’m so used to it I barely notice it unless something is on fire alongside the road.

We’re stopping…we’re going…stopping…going…meh….

Downtown Seattle isn’t all that user friendly if you are in a car.  I am becoming the queen of negotiating  one-way blind-alleys and parking garages designed by Daedalus.

Driving in heavy traffic has a great deal in common with writing a novel. It is important to develop a sense of Zen-ness, ninja-like calm; keeping the flow going in the face of roadblocks and characters with limited vocabularies.

You start out going really well, at the speed-limit or even above. You’re sailing along! Suddenly you notice brake lights ahead and you slow down, or even come to a complete stop, hoping the guy rapidly approaching your rear bumper has insurance.

Then you go, real slow. You may be doing 10 mph, but you are doing in a forward motion. You are rolling! You pick up a little more speed and you think “This isn’t so bad, I think were past the worst of it.”

You’re wrong, but hey, you actually gained 500 feet of forward motion toward your goal before you had to stop again!  After 10 miles of that you find yourself once again sailing along and life is good!

Negotiating rush-hour traffic on I-5 is exactly like writing a book, or indeed, completing ANY artistic endeavor.

What’s important is not how fast you made the journey.

The important thing is arriving at your destination alive and with your temper and your dignity intact

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May 5, 2013 · 1:35 am

Sell me that book in 100 words or less!

Aquarell_gemalt_von_August_Menken-1875 By Creator - August Menken [Public domain] via Wikimedia CommonsI’ve been participating in a month-long exercise where you get a prompt and you write the story. I have set the bar a bit high, as I am giving myself only 100 words to tell that story.  It’s a bit difficult, but I have a reason for this, beyond my usual insanity.

The back of a book has something we writers call blurbs (I know. I shouldn’t use author-speak in company, it’s not polite.)  Technically it is called “the pitch” because you are pitching your product to prospective buyers.  This little thing is critical.  Your cover must make them pick up the book or click on the icon and your pitch must sell it. But hello – you have only about 30 seconds to capture the prospective buyer’s interest enough for them to crack it open, or use the look inside feature for eBooks.

I’m not real good at writing pitches. Neither are the Big Six Publishers, oddly enough!  Even the big companies have found ways of avoiding pitching a novel simply by putting glowing reviews of other works by that author on the back cover.

Back Cover of Mage-Guard of Hamor by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Back Cover of Mage-Guard of Hamor by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Bleah.  That doesn’t sell me a book, Tor-Forge, publishing giant that you are. As you can see, on the back cover of this book there is no blurb, only glowing comments about the author’s other series of books.  This may work for a well-known author like L.E.Modesitt Jr., or Brandon Sanderson, but it doesn’t work for me as a reader.

I have observed many indies taking the same route, and skipping the blurbs entirely.

Indie authors take note: I (and millions like me) don’t buy books without blurbs of some sort, somewhere, unless I am already familiar with that author’s work. I want to know what I am buying, so even a bad blurb will interest me more than a quote from a glowing review by one of your Beta Readers.

Just sayin’!

So here I am, suffering the curse of the indie author, trying to not only be my own publicist, but also my own advertising agency.

Thus, I am going to learn how to write a blurb, if it kills me. Writing a 100 word piece of flash-fiction is called a “drabble”.  I figure if I can get this down to a fine art, I can write a decent blurb.

The original prompt went as follows:

Write A 100 Word Story (“Drabble”) . . . although a 100 word story will probably take longer than expected, it’s still going to take a manageable amount of time.

To make a drabble work,
-Choose one or two characters
-Take one single moment/action/choice and show us how it unfolds
-Give us one or two vibrant details in as few words as possible
-Show us (hint) how this moment/action/choice is more significant than the characters probably realize in the moment

I decided to use these parameters for the entire month of flash fiction.  Here is my first one, written May 1st.

Ted  (5-1-2013)

Edna stirred her coffee and looked out the window toward the shed.

“Did you feed the chickens?” Marion always asked, though she knew Edna had.

Edna looked away from the shed. “Of course I did.” Her eyes turned back to the shed. “We won’t be able to keep him in there much longer. He’s growing too big. We should have a barn built for him.”

“Ted was always a greedy boy.” Marion stirred her coffee. “I warned him he behaved like a beast.”

A rumbling bellow shook the shed. A long green tail snaked out of the shed door.

I will keep practicing until I get the hang of creating something interesting in 100 words. Blurbs  don’t have to tell the whole story, that is what the inside of the book is for! All they have to do is sell the book–be that tantalizing bit of interest that hooks the reader into buying your book. 

Yesterday’s drabble went like this:

Quaglio_KipfenbergDrake – 5-3-2013

He stood on the parapet, silhouetted against the starry sky, his wings wrapped tightly about him against the chill wind. The sounds of the darkened world below drifted up to him. The nightbird’s song. The servants in the castle below. The lowing of cattle in the distance.

Hunger, intense and overwhelming clouded his vision.

Spreading his wings Drake fell forward, the wind catching and lifting him; soaring. A scent on the wind alerted him to his quarry.

On a corner she stood, ripe and full lipped—the tamale vendor.

Silently, he dropped beside her, whispering seductively, “Two tamales, please Senora.”

I’ve had a lot of fun with this, and I may have some ideas for longer short stories here, so it’s certainly not a waste of time, even if I never get the hang of selling my own work!

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May 3, 2013 · 6:14 pm

It’s all Greek to me

Blender3D_Dragonfight_03 Sascha Kozacenko, with kind permission for GFDL.Dragons.

Two tons (or more) of muscle, scales and, frequently, fire.

What’s not to love?

They are rumored to be as devious and crafty as your mother-in-law.

Don’t bandy words with a dragon or you may lose more than the argument.

Again, not unlike your mother-in-law.

St._George_and_the_Dragon_-_Briton_Riviere Briton Rivière [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsMy dragons are not really the kind who bandy words about, however some do breathe fire. That heats things up a bit!

Heh heh.  Oops.

Darn it. Now we need a new hero.

I hate that when that happens.

In English, the word dragon is directly derived from Old French – dragon, which in turn comes from Latin draconem (or draco) meaning “huge serpent, dragon,” AND also from the Greek word drakon meaning “serpent, or giant sea fish”.  Both the Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpent, not necessarily mythological, and this usage was also current in English up to the 18th century. So in that sense, dragons REALLY did exist.

Which came first Latin or Greek? Greek – it’s a living language and has been spoken for over 3000 years.  Many Greek words found their way into Latin, and other proto European languages. Thus English has some roots in Ancient Greek.

Tiepolo,_Giambattista_-_Die_Unbefleckte_Empfängnis_-_1767_-_1768_-_Drachen Giovanni Battista Tiepolo [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsNow as far as dragons go, in my two worlds they are quite different from each other.  In Waldeyn, (Billy’s Revenge) there are two kinds. The smaller wingless variety often has a second breath that allows them to breathe fire–quite an effective weapon, as Huw the Bard will discover. The bigger ones fly and prefer to eat people, so they are considered a nuisance.

No, my dragons are NOT vegans. But that would be an interesting twist….

In Neveyah, (Tower of Bones) they tend to be immense creatures of both magic and the element water. This puts the mage at a disadvantage, as the element that heals the beast is the element of water and you must never use it against them. Water is also their best magic weapon, and they are relentless. They have high reserves of chi and strong magic at their disposal, along with excellent shielding ability, so using any magic at all against them is a no-no.

Good luck, boys.

There are ways to fight them, and all my heroes will find ways to do so with varying degrees of success.  Writing those scenes is a real adventure, as I get to put myself in the battle, and choreograph it so that it flows, is believable, exciting, and hopefully no one crucial to the story dies.

St._George_and_the_Dragon John Ruskin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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April 29, 2013 · 5:47 pm

Inspiration

© connie j jasperson 2013

© connie j jasperson 2013

The town I grew up in, Olympia Washington, has a reputation for being just a bit, how shall I put this? Weird. Wild. Wacky.

The city is the state capitol, so there is that political side of things, that energy that drives the local economy.

Then there are two colleges, one of which is The Evergreen State College, a school that attracts some amazing people. There is a fine community college, and across town in the city of  Lacey, there is Saint Martin’s University.

Many students who come here from out-of-town choose to stay in the area, and so we’ve become a place known for our high-energy arts and music scene, and our…interesting…downtown life.

Olympia is one of the most Vegan-Friendly cities you could ever want to go to, as nearly every small restaurant and cafe has at least one vegan offering and many have an entire SECTION of their menu that is devoted to vegan options.

We are also the home of Riot Grrrl punk rock, with bands like Sleater Kinney and Bikini Kill to our credit.

© connie j jasperson 2013

© connie j jasperson 2013

Downtown is fun, crazy and most definitely a walk on the wild side, even on a Monday afternoon. When I am not on the road, I frequently drive up to Olympia and go to a local coffee-house called Batdorf and Bronson on Capitol way just to spend the day there, writing. I do this especially when I have come to a dead-end, because something about being in downtown Olympia inspires me when nothing else will.

The best parade of the year is called the Procession of The Species, and it is not just a parade, it is an event. In a time-honored tradition, people put their lawn chairs and camp stools out on the curb two days ahead of time, staking out their viewing places. The chairs will sit there, lining the curb like so many abandoned soldiers for two days prior to the parade and no one will steal them.

The parade itself is awesome.

From Wikipedia, the Fount of all Knowledge:

© connie j jasperson 2013

© connie j jasperson 2013

“Taking place during Olympia’s annual Spring Arts Walk, the Procession regularly draws 30,000 spectators and 2,000-3,000 participants.[2]The celebration, now in its 17th year, is completely noncommercial, made possible by community contributions of money, materials, time, and skills.[3] The Procession is produced by Earthbound Productions, a 501 C-3 organization, and currently does not benefit from any public funding from the city of Olympia. Seven weeks before the Procession, a community art studio is established. This studio is open to the public and a minimal donation is requested, but no one is ever turned away for lack of funds. As there is no permanent studio space available for the Procession, each year Earthbound Productions locates and rents a space to serve as the community art studio; ultimately, the group hopes to find a permanent location.[4] The studio, staffed solely by volunteers, becomes a central location for art & music workshops and costume design. Participants use a wide range of artistic approaches, such as Batik, Papier Mache, and Luminaria. They use mostly donated or scavenged materials to express appreciation for the natural world and create their costumes, banners, floats, puppets, drumming, community bands, and more. During the event itself, bedecked in their costumes featuring the elements and various species of plants and animals, people of all ages join in the procession. The event itself has three ground rules: no live pets, no motorized vehicles, and no written words.[5]

I have to say though, while the giraffe and the whales were awesome, the giant clam costume (the geoduck) at this year’s procession drew many…surprised…comments.

© connie j jasperson 2013

© connie j jasperson 2013

One of the fun activities happens 30 minutes ahead of the procession. Two wagons loaded with side-walk chalk  pulled by volunteers make the journey along the entire parade route handing out chalk and the spectators then decorate the streets. Some amazing art happens. The wagons return to collect the chalk, leading the procession.

I don’t get direct inspiration from downtown as in “Oohh, write about this…” I just find it stirs my own already quite out-there mind and when the old brain can’t seem to pull up anything worth writing, the change of scenery does me good.

Alas, today I must hit the road once again, but inspiration travels with me this time. I think it will be a productive trip.

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April 24, 2013 · 10:40 pm

Squirrel!

800px-Klamelisaurus-scene-v1 wikimedia commonsI’m a dinosaur, lost in the woods.

I’m definitely a product of my generation. I have some college behind me, but not much, and what college I do have happened in the Dark Ages.

I am pretty much self taught. Because I am aware of my frailty in regard to REMEMBERING the English Language as it was taught to me in my American elementary school years, I am always trying to reeducate myself.

Fortunately, the internet is big, and full of all sorts of good advice.

Lots and lots of interesting things, all so neatly packaged for my  viewing pleasure.

grey squirrel close up © Neil Phillips 2007

grey squirrel close up
© Neil Phillips 2007

What usually happens is one question gets partially answered and  suddenly I see a squirrel!

Today’s squirrel is a paragraph in an article regarding comma usage I was directed to by one of my dear friends, editor Irene Roth Luvaul.

I got about half way through it before I was sidetracked by another issue I have struggled with in my writing.  Should I use That or Which when a relative pronoun is REQUIRED? I say ‘required’ because most of the time a relative pronoun is not necessary but, occasionally, one is needed to clarify a sentence.

According to  Mark Nichol, writing for the website Daily Writing Tips:

“The house which Jack built is falling apart,” without commas, is correct. It is identical in meaning to “The house that Jack built is falling apart.” However, the convention in American English is to avoid using which in this sense to prevent confusion with the meaning of the sentence with the parenthetical phrase.”

SO this little paragraph explains the bipolar approach to writing I have when it comes THAT and WHICH!  One of my editors is BRITISH and the other is AMERICAN!  Both are educated and correct in their usage of the words, and both keep me on the right path.

I must simply decide which path that path might be…or something.

The key is to choose a usage and stick with it, I think.  This involves making a list and ♪ ♫ checking it twice ♪ ♫, gonna find out who’s ♪ ♫…squirrel!

Where was I?

Oh yes, relative pronouns.

Complicating things even further is the dreaded Zero Relative Pronoun! According to WIKIPEDIA-THE FOUNT OF ALL KNOWLEDGE (and I quote:)

Zero relative pronoun

English, unlike other West Germanic languages, has a zero relative pronoun (denoted below as Ø) — that is, the relative pronoun is only implied and is not explicitly present. It is an alternative to that, which or who(m) in a restrictive relative clause:

Jack built the house that I was born in.
Jack built the house Ø I was born in.
He is the person who(m) I saw.
He is the person Ø I saw.

Relative clauses headed by zeros are frequently called contact clauses in TEFL contexts, and may also be called “zero clauses”.

Note that if that is analyzed as a complementizer rather than as a relative pronoun (see Status of that below), the above sentences would be represented differently: Jack built the house that I was born in Ø; Jack built the house I was born in Ø; He is the person I saw Ø.

MH900407568The zero relative pronoun cannot be the subject of the verb in the relative clause (or on the alternative analysis: that cannot be omitted when the zero relative pronoun is the subject). Thus one must say:

Jack built the house that sits on the hill.
Jack built the house that was damaged by the tornado.

and never

*Jack built the house Ø sits on the hill.
*Jack built the house Ø was damaged by the tornado.

Neither that nor the zero pronoun can be used in non-restrictive relative clauses, or in relative clauses with a fronted preposition (“Jack built the house in which we now live”), although they can be used when the preposition is stranded: “Jack built the house (that) we now live in.”

And what did we learn here? Holy crap, Jack is a busy man, and the houses he builds…. I don’t think I want to live in a house he built, too risky.

So anyway I think I need to decide if I am going to go British or American, and STICK with it either way. It seems like a simple choice on the surface but it isn’t. I am an American, but I grew up reading Agatha Christie, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

What would Bilbo Baggins do?

What’s that in your pocketses or are you just glad to see me…?

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April 22, 2013 · 7:43 pm

Lurid and Unsuitable. Yup.

Pinocchio

As you know I have been dealing with 6-year olds a lot lately, and they are full of fibs and fabulous tales. They crack me up with how obvious they are about it.

But little white lies happen in adult life, too.  They are usually a gut-reaction — a sometimes irrational reflex that we justify with the comforting thought that “it doesn’t really matter, and this way we’ll avoid an argument.”  We’ve all done it at one time or another, and in much the same way as our toilet habits are, it’s not a subject we like to discuss in polite company.

But it makes an interesting plot development. In real life, white lies can escalate into big, complicated messes that can end marriages.  Love and white-lies are like the two sides of the family I grew up in – they don’t really mix well. In a good marriage, there are no white lies.  White lies happen when you don’t trust the other person to accept what you have either done or plan to do.

Trust is the key word here.

In Forbidden Road I have one character whose life is one long string of white lies, and that made for the most pivotal plot development in the story. It was difficult to write his tale and yet his penchant for avoiding the truth is the snowflake that causes the landslide and it drives the plot. The repercussions of his white-lies forms the tension for the next book in that series.

Speaking of books I’ve written, you may notice that The Last Good Knight is no longer available. It will be republished when Huw The Bard is published. Right now it is being readied for a complete re-editing, along with new covers to better reflect the fact that both books are a part of the Billy’s Revenge series.

TLGK was my first complete novel. I didn’t know much about writing, other than I liked a good story, so I wrote one. I had been writing for years, but I was working and raising kids, so all my writing was for my own amazement, and the rejection letters didn’t really matter, since they never said WHY my work was rejected.

I have struggled with The Last Good Knight. Carlie Cullen tried to straighten it out, and she worked a miracle, but there is one flaw inherent in this book that MUST be eradicated for it to live up to its potential. TLGK was written for NaNoWriMo, and many of it’s flaws can be traced back to that origin – “did not” instead of “didn’t” (for word count) and two rambling sections where I was establishing backstory. No one but the author really cares about backstory, but I didn’t know this at the time.

I’d never taken the time to analyze what I liked about a book. I didn’t know why some books I read captured my imagination, and some didn’t. I was writing for my own eyes, and I wrote what I wanted to read, and I LOVED a good story.

This is the reason why:

TriplanetaryMy parents were a bit eccentric. (Understatement of the year.)

Dad thought we should read what ever we want to read and of course we wanted to read what Dad read, so my sister and I cut our reading teeth on E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman Series.

This presented a problem at times in elementary school when we brought the book we were reading and it was deemed  to be ‘lurid and unsuitable’ by our teachers, frequently with negative consequences. My sister’s teacher went so far as to tell my mother, “A third grader should not be reading such trash!”  My mother’s response was that children should read whatever they wanted if they understood the words.

The series begins with Triplanetary, two billion years before the present time. What a great notion THAT is! The plot devices developed in this series of serialized tales forms the core of what we think of as traditional science fiction.  George Lucas liked it so much he used it in Star Wars.

200px-DocsavageThe other great influence on what I instinctively thought of as a ‘Literature’ was written by Lester Dent — yes folks, my sister and I adored ‘Doc Savage’.  Clark Savage (or “Doc” to his friends), had no special powers, but was raised from birth by his father and other scientists to become one of the most perfect human beings in terms of strength, mental and physical abilities.

So, having spent my formative years fighting with my sister over who got to read dad’s Analog first, and having eagerly shared every crumb of any book, from Tolkien to McCaffrey to Heinlein with her, my notion of what constitutes a good tale was formed.

All these tales were TOLD, using phrases like “there was” and “he felt”.  These are HUGE no-no’s in the current culture of show-don’t-tell, as in the eyes of the modern reviewer there is no greater crime than that of “TELLING” a story.

Tolkien would have never gotten off the ground.

Thus, I need to completely rewrite two sections of TLGK, under the eye of an editor with a cruel red pen. It’s a great story, and I LOVE Julian Lackland. I just need to have modern approach to telling his tale and I think that when  he emerges he will be all that he is now, and more. So for the time being Julian Lackland is in literary limbo.

It’s been a hard decision to make, as I love that book, and the characters in that book have spawned two other stand-alone books and a whole world of tales. Once Huw the Bard is published I will re-release The Last Good Knight in some form or other. In the meantime I feel good about this choice.

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