Tag Archives: adventure

December 17, 2013 · 8:00 am

Many’s the Fool

I’ve been working full speed on fleshing out the fourth book set in the World of Neveyah. It is the third and final book in the Tower of Bones series.

One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve progressed as a writer is to cut the backstory into manageable chunks. I, as the author, am totally into the backstory, but you as a reader may not be. In my previous work, my readers have to slog through a long lead-in before the real action begins. With each successive book, that lead-in has become shorter.

In order to avoid this tendency, I have been working to an outline. Because I have the final half of the book nearly complete, all I am working on is the first half of the book. I have given myself a strict number of pages to accomplish all of this in, which means it is forced to be all action, with the backstory slipped in incidentally.

The first half of VOS happens concurrently with Forbidden Road, and some of the incidents from that tale are viewed through the eyes of those left at home. This book must detail what happened at home and wrap up Forbidden Road. I want it to be a stand-alone book, and it can’t give away the core of Forbidden Road. Thus, it can only reference what the characters know of the incidents that occurred in Mal Evol as they affect this tale.

Fleshing out this tale is requiring a lot of incidental backstory for me, 90% of which will not make it into the book, but which serves to cement characters and how they act and react in a given situation. Hence, the outline:

First 1/4 chapters must address:

The redemption of John Farmer
The arrival of bad news and Dane Bransson’s descent into depression and anger
The premature delivery and death of the baby.
Marya’s descent into madness
John and Garran journey to Braden

Second ¼ chapters must address:

Building the wall
Zan’s concerns re: setting the truth geas on Christoph
The resettlement of Braden to Aeoven and other areas,
Attack by the Hounds of Tauron
Completing the Wall
Arlen and the road to High Point Camp/ Jaxon
Edwin’s anxieties
Friedr’s worries re: his disfigurement and how Aeolyn will see him
Lourdan’s Remaking

This is the first half of the book and must be complete at the 50% mark. By giving myself this road map, I am not completely nailed down creatively, nor am I completely winging it. I am forcing myself to stick to the meat of the matter and be sparing with the fluff.

I have set an arbitrary length for the book, and the second half was dealt with the same way. I actually wrote the second half first during NaNoWriMo 2012, because it picks up where Forbidden Road Leaves off and I was in the zone.

Writing the character of John Farmer has been fun. I’ve written a kajillion anecdotal stories for him as a novice and a young journeyman that won’t make it into VOS, but which will possibly be used at a later date in a volume of short stories. By virtue of having these tales, I know who John is. I know what makes him tick, and, most importantly, why he is who he is.

Both Agatha Christie and Anne McCaffrey were geniuses at conveying that sense of history with an economy of words. When I think of each character in the compelling books written by these women, the characters I loved and who stuck with me most had a sense of history. The author knew them, even the most minor of characters. HOW they knew their characters, what their style of writing was, I don’t know, but me — I make a little personnel file for each.

In this post I have just been talking about the fourth book, but I hope to publish the third book set in Neveyah, Mountains of the Moon, by summer. It’s hard to say if it will be through the editing process by then. I will never rush to publish anything ever again, knowing what I know now about this business.

Some indies have this idea that they have to get it published NOW, regardless of whether an editor has told them it is not ready, and this is bad. Plot holes, threads to nowhere, these are bad, even if you are intending a second book in that series. Even worse is the nearly overwhelming urge to just add a bit to the tale before you click the publish button. Has anyone else seen what you wrote? How do you know that what you think you wrote is what you really did write? And did you make your revisions by hand, or were you using Dragon? ALWAYS key your revisions by hand if you are physically able.

As an editor, I have seen some interesting manuscripts written using Dragon Naturally Speaking Software. Words that are technically correct but make no sense until the editor realizes the words actually rhyme with the intended word…you see where this is going.

Many’s the fool who rushed to publish and rued it later. I was one of those with my first book, but just like many other firsts, I learned a great deal from that experience. Thus I use the map, the calendar and the editor – the three most important parts of any tale.

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Tagged as adventure, Agatha Christie, Anne McCaffrey, Dragon Naturally Speaking, dragons, literature, maps, writing

December 14, 2013 · 8:22 am

Negotiating the SpaceTime Continuum

Keeping it all straight sometimes requires a good calendar. But what if, when first you wrote the first two books, you created a world in which the calendar was a lunar thing? Not only that, but you went all astrological when you named the months, and Norse God when you named the days? And to top it off, a small portion of the third book follows events that took place parallel to events in the second book…and your protagonist must rendezvous with the protagonists of the other book on a certain day so they can complete the … … …. *DOH*

Talk about a walk through the space-time continuum–this would be it. In my current work in progress I realized I would need to keep things organized if I wanted to make sense, and not accidentally contradict myself.

In cosmology, the concept of space-time combines space and time to a single abstract universe. Apparently we all move through this, and time either passes us, or we pass time. It’s all relative (Einstein humor) to how fast you are going and a lot of sub-atomic particle stuff I can’t really take the time to explain here.

But if we make a picture of that abstract concept our tiny human brains can grasp it. We call that picture a ‘calendar,’ which makes it all rather simple. My characters will progress through their space-time continuum at a rate I can comprehend, because I am their appointment secretary, and I am in charge of their calendar.

I am a retired bookkeeper, so I use the spreadsheet program called Excel to do things like that, but anyone can draw a calendar.

Time and Calendar of Neveyah

Each year consist of 365 days, and is divided into four seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Harvest. The last month of the year is Holy Month.

Each season consists of three months, making twelve months that equal 28 days each, plus a Holy Month. Autumn and Winter are separated by the ‘Holy Month” of 29 days. The Holy Month is called Solstice and the actual winter solstice falls on the first day of the month following, or the first day of Caprica. This is a month that is sacred to the Goddess Aeos, Goddess of Harvest, Hearth and Home. It is a time when people travel to visit family, and simply take time off for a small vacation, often taking two weeks to do it. On the last night of the Solstice Month each family holds a ritual feast in their home, a feast of thanks-giving and prayers for the New Year. Every four years an extra day is added to Solstice and that day is a festival day all across Neveyah. That year is called a Long Year though it is really only one day longer.

The months are as follows:

Caprica, Aquas, Piscus, (Winter) Begins on actual day of Winter Solstice

Arese, Taura, Geminis (Spring)

Lunne, Leonid, Virga (Summer)

Libre, Scorpius, Saggitus (Harvest)

Holy Month (Has no season, but would be winter)

Days of the Week:

1. Sunnaday – Minimal business is conducted; each family’s tasks for the Temple as a whole are completed, such as chopping firewood, quilting, making clothes, and preserving food. The members of the temple clergy assemble in work gangs to accomplish these tasks from which they all benefit.

2. Lunaday

3. Tyrsday

4. Odensday

5. Torsday

6. Frosday

7. Restday – no business is conducted, and only minimal work is done on farms and other places where some work must be done seven days a week. This is a day for people to spend with their families or to pursue their personal interests.

I am a good secretary–my calendar is is adjustable. If I find something doesn’t work in the time-span I am writing it for, I can adjust accordingly. Book three is the only book in which the dates are important, but I have to be conscious of the fact that they are important, and try not to screw it up.

Now if I could only keep my own calendar straight…I know I had something planned for today…but what? Apparently I forgot to put it on my Google calendar.

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Tagged as adventure, battles, Calendar, Einstein, fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, particle physics, Space-time Continuum, writing

December 5, 2013 · 8:45 am

Christmas O’clock

It’s December–Christmas is coming! We have found some awesome presents for the grandchildren and two of my short-stories were published in an anthology of children’s stories. I actually had my bout of Christmas spirit in July when I wrote A Christmas Tail!

This anthology, Christmas O’Clock is available at Amazon for the very reasonable price of $2.99 for ebook OR $9.49 for the paperback. The book also includes hilarious tales by authors like Sean Allan, Allison Deluca, Irene Roth Luvaul, Nicole Antonia Carro and Mary K. Mitchell. It is a collection of holiday-themed stories including magic, space travel, and Rudolph. With two complete chapter books, lots of stories, and plenty of spirit, this anthology is great for kids of all ages.

And best of all, all proceeds go to Water Is Life to help children and families in an international effort. What could be better than being a part of something that helps so many people? Millions daily go without that most fundamental of necessities: clean drinking water. Every time I turn on a tap in my home, I am grateful to have such a wonderful, valuable commodity so easily available to me.

I shudder to think of what it must be like for the countless people in this world who do not have such a miracle in their homes. For millions of people, the wells where they daily draw their water are nearly dry, and are frequently diseased. Clean water is a rare and precious commodity, but we can help to make this gift a reality by making a small donation. Buy a copy of the book and not only will ALL the proceeds go this wonderful charity, but you will have a great book. If you are a Christmas story nut like me, you will read it for yourself, not just for the kids.

SO where was I going with this – oh yes – the fabulous Jaspersons have been dragging decorations out of the garage in an attempt to show the neighborhood some sort of holiday spirit. Unfortunately, we had an incident of…well, lets just say mythical proportions.

From my Facebook post of last evening: “…just went out to the garage to get my genuine artificial Christmas tree. It is in the big zipper bag that has handles for hauling it in and out of said garage. As soon as I picked it up, several somethings went sort of crazy in side the bag.

Sorry kids–mama doesn’t really like mysterious moving somethings in the Christmas tree bag. The bag and the tree are still in the garage where mama dropped it. This looks a job for that super-hero for all seasons—>DAD!!!”

It turned out that it was a “2 beer” mouse – my husband earned his beers and the tree is now in the living room. Unfortunately, the middle section of the tree does not light up, so rather than buy a new tree, today I am going to the local sundries store and getting a string of lights. Tonight, there will be a tree shining in our window!

(edit) We now have a tree up in our living-room (no mice were harmed in the decorating of this tree):

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Tagged as adventure, Art, artificial Christmas tree, battles, charity, Christmas story, Christmas Tail, Christmas tree, Clean Water For Children, humor, Irene Roth Luvaul, literature, Nicole Antonia Carro, Water Is Life, writing

November 26, 2013 · 6:53 am

Phil’s Cosmic Roulette Wheel

Photograph courtesy of RL5 Photography via www.spaceneedle.com

Photograph courtesy of RL5 Photography via http://www.spaceneedle.com

Today I want to discuss Phil’s Cosmic Roulette Wheel. Perhaps it’s fate, perhaps it’s the universe–whatever it is, it steers us down the path to perdition, and throws the almighty wrench in the works just when everything was going so well. In my world of Neveyah where the Tower of Bones series is set, Gods have a direct hand in the action.

The strange part was naming them. I’ve a friend, a Leo, named Phil. Phil is a lion among men and I thought, why not name a god Phil?

It turns out that if you write fantasy you should probably give your gods names that evoke omnipotent power. Apparently Phil is a bit too neighborly for a good ‘god-name,’ go figure. So I have opted for less comfortable names for my gods.

Phil is a longtime friend of mine, a man who will argue the opposite side of any topic you choose, and he will do it with passion and will even have some evidence to back his position. He also enjoys the occasional rant on Facebook, but hey–who doesn’t? I figure he should get a blog and rant to his heart’s content, but what do I know.

Any way, Phil was on a rant about something, and I forget exactly what it was, but the upshot was he is a bit of an atheist.

Well, that takes all the fun out of blaming the gods for everything that’s wrong in your life!

But I’m not here to argue about religion. Religion is like sex and politics–everyone has their own version, and other folks don’t want to hear about how great it is.

Phil got me to thinking about how events seem to occur, driving us to a specific moment in time. There is a sense of destination in the way events occur, as if the only place you could have found yourself, no matter how you tried to avoid it, was at that stop light.

The upshot of all of this is the epiphany I had– the realization that Phil the God (who is an atheist) uses this giant cosmic roulette wheel to determine the fates of each denizen of his universe. There he is, sitting in his heavenly bathrobe, watching movies on netflix and spinning his cosmic roulette wheel.

Now I know why things just seem to happen so randomly. Phil’s Cosmic Roulette Wheel is spinning and where it stops, no one knows….

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Tagged as adventure, battles, fantasy, Fate. Phil's Cosmic Roulette Wheel, fiction, Phil, Predestination, Roulette, Roulette Wheel, writing

November 22, 2013 · 8:47 am

The Dilemma

Romantic love and passion are two things that make up the bulk of many a book I’ve begun to read and then set aside over the past few years. Truthfully, romance novels don’t interest me the way adventure novels do–if they are seasoned well with a bit of romance. Graphic romance with no plot is porn, and I think we should just call it that and be done with it. Adventure with no romance is a travelogue detailing a rough trip, but nothing to write home about.

Dilemma.

In a novel, one without the other just does not work. Words splashed on a page for their shock value have been done and over-done, so for me it’s important to keep myself writing for the quality of the tale. If I do it right, I will intrigue the reader and challenge them, making them want to read more.

Adventure must have some sort of romance to drive the plot forward, some unattainable goal whether it is love or an object. I like to look back at history and see what it was about some tales that have kept the interest of readers, not just for years, but for centuries. What do these tales embody that new works should also have, to make them timeless?

Let’s examine the Arthurian Legend. From the website, www.arthurian-legend.com.

I quote:

“The legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table is the most powerful and enduring in the western world. King Arthur, Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot did not really exist, but their names conjure up a romantic image of gallant knights in shining armour, elegant ladies in medieval castles, heroic quests for the Holy Grail in a world of honour and romance, and the court of Camelot at the centre of a royal and mystical Britain.”

There we have the essence of what constitutes a timeless tale: Powerful people doing heroic deeds, and finding a bit of romance along the way. Set them in intriguing surroundings and dress them in metal or velvet (or both) and voila! Now all you must do is cue the magic–bring on the wise old sorcerer.

Hey, it worked for J.K. Rowling!

I do a lot of reading, and if I am not reading, I am writing. My hope is that at some point in every tale I write, my readers will find themselves completely involved in the tale to the exclusion of the world around them. If that happens, then I have had an impact on my reader, the same way as Anne McCaffrey, Tad Williams, and Mercedes Lackey have each impacted me.

Someday I will have written that tale.

But if I do that, I’ll have to sustain the momentum…keep writing good stuff only and forget writing crap….but crap is so much easier to write.

Unfortunately we’re only as good as our next book.

*Doh*

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Tagged as adventure, battles, dragons, fantasy, fiction, J.K. Rowling, King Arthur, knights, magic, mythology, writing

November 18, 2013 · 6:45 am

Courting the Muse

Music and writing are completely intertwined for me. For each book there is a certain mood I am trying to convey in my writing, and that mood is influenced heavily by the music I am listening to, as well as the art I am creating. My mind is a junk room of ideas–sometimes the best ideas are hidden in the dusty corners.

Lately I have been listening to Eric Whitacre on YouTube a lot, and finding such joy in his love-affair with sound. He finds the most amazing poetry and sets it to incredible music.

Fly to Paradise

Lux Aurumque

Some of my ideas come from nature but the others just randomly pop in there, like visitors from outer-space.

Every writer knows they are only as good as their next book.

We write drivel, and we write magic–often on the same page, in the same paragraph. We can spend 2000 words describing an attic, and we are at a complete loss as to how to describe an emotion or a scent. We use too may ‘ly’ words and we don’t use enough.

Frequently we don’t follow the rules no matter how often the gurus tell us to.

Writers struggle to bring people who never lived to life, and struggle to show us worlds that defy the laws of nature. Writers struggle with morality and with gods. We battle the forces of Darkness, and sometimes we are the Darkness. We write short stories, serial novels, and screenplays. We write novellas that we intend to make into novels at some point, but may never get around to.

Every day we write, spending hours alone in dusty offices or struggling to find half-an-hour in a quiet corner of the laundry-room, away from the din.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped making excuses for not writing, and began doing it. At first, maybe I didn’t have a typewriter, but I did have a pencil and paper, so I used them.

We writers are artists, painting with words, and we are unable to sleep until that picture is on the page.

For me, writing is about staying fired-up over an idea, and getting that idea out of my head and into its proper alternate universe.

I love this gig!

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Tagged as adventure, battles, creating with words, creative genius, Eric Whitacre, fantasy, fiction, humor, writing

October 22, 2013 · 6:46 am

Dash it all

I am a product of 1960’s American public school system. The foundation of my knowledge of the English language is that of American English from forty years ago.

When I was a student in elementary school and even in high-school, we “diagrammed sentences,” and in doing so, it was thought that we bored students would learn the proper way to write a compound sentence, and even to combine our sentences into paragraphs. Had I ever paid attention in class, I suppose I would have learned something.

Alas, I spent more time staring out the window, or reading my contraband ‘Lensman Series’ books concealed inside my textbooks than I did studying.

Sentence diagramming is defined as a method of grammar instruction that relies on a standardized framework of lines and branches to reveal the syntactic structure of a sentence.

Example:

Years and years spent diagramming sentences and at the end of it all I had learned little, if anything, about grammar. Even in high-school I had no clue what the diagram meant or why we were doing it. It was like hearing Merlin mumbling a magic spell. I didn’t understand it, but I knew it must mean something.

But I could quote lengthy passages from any of Tolkien’s works.

Many people still swear by this arcane and mysterious craft. There are entire websites devoted to teaching grammar to people blessed with more patience and free time than I. If you are interested, here is one I came across:

Basic Sentence Parts, Phrase Configurations

Over the years, as I’ve become a professional writer, I have learned what I know about my craft by not only experiencing the editing process, but by availing myself of both the Chicago Manual of Style, and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. I have also invested in many books written by editors and famous authors, all in my quest to write as well as I can.

In the last year I have noticed a plague of sorts–a plethora of hyphens and dashes, as annoying as a wall of italics and they show up in both indie and traditionally published works. I don’t really like them, as a reader, but I find myself using them almost habitually. I have resolved to break that habit.

In informal writing, such as notes or Facebook posts, hyphens and dashes are common, and are like the ubiquitous ‘F’ word–one hardly notices it anymore. (See?)

Hyphens and dashes are used in several ways. One is the ‘en dash’, which is the width of an ‘n’. It is written space hyphen space. Another is the ’em dash’, which is the width of an ‘m’. It is written this way: word–word (or word dash dash word) and when using the MS-WORD program for word-processing, it makes a long dash. The en dash seems to be more British, and em dash more American, but they have become interchangeable.

I have read an amazing number of books written by wonderful authors who all seem to use em or en dashes in lieu of proper punctuation when they are trying to emphasize a particular thought. I also tend to do that in blogging and in Facebook posts, but I hate to see it used in a novel. I DON’T like them because some authors rely on them too heavily. It is too distracting to see an em dash in every paragraph or even on every page. If we think about it, it is like any other repetitive word in a manuscript. It is useful to emphasize certain ideas, but needs to be used sparingly and creatively.

Properly, an author should use a comma, a semi colon, or a period to create that dramatic break, because too many em dashes are like too many curse words: they lose their power when used too freely. Lynn Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves: the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, has been quoted as saying “People use the em dash because they know you can’t use it wrongly—which for a punctuation mark, is an uncommon virtue.”

So what are these alternative forms of punctuation to create that dramatic pause?

PERIOD = a full stop. End of Sentence. That’s all folks.

SEMICOLON:Use a semicolon in place of a period to separate two sentences where the conjunction has been left out. Call me tomorrow; we’ll go dancing then. ( The AND has been left out.)

COLON: Use the colon after a complete sentence to introduce a list of items when introductory words such as namely, for example, or that is do not appear.

Hyphens, en dashes and em dashes are like crack. Authors and editors become addicted to using them. Perhaps this plague of dashes has occurred because they don’t understand the basic rules of the road regarding periods, colons and semi-colons.

I love this quote from a wonderful blog on the website Slate.com. The blog post, called “The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash,” is by the witty Noreen Malone, staff writer for The New Republic:

“What’s the matter with an em dash or two, you ask?—or so I like to imagine. What’s not to like about a sentence that explores in full all the punctuational options—sometimes a dash, sometimes an ellipsis, sometimes a nice semicolon at just the right moment—in order to seem more complex and syntactically interesting, to reach its full potential? Doesn’t a dash—if done right—let the writer maintain an elegant, sinewy flow to her sentences?”

That wonderful paragraph says it all for me. I will have to work harder to develop my writing chops, and find ways to set certain phrases off within the framework of a sentence without resorting to the hyphen, the dash, the em dash or the en dash.

Dash it all.

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Tagged as adventure, American public school system, Art, battles, compound sentence, creative writing, em dash, Facebook, fantasy, fiction, grammar, humor, literature, writing

October 17, 2013 · 11:32 am

Art for the great cover-up

I love great fantasy art. Fantasy art has been around for thousands of years, and examples of it can be found all over the globe. Some of the finest examples of fantasy art are in the heroic paintings from medieval times that were meant to describe the daily lives of people. Like good fantasy, they were based in reality, but with a bit of a fairy-tale quality added, to lend a bit of interest to what they considered ordinary pursuits.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at art, with the intention of buying. I have the notion to redo all my book covers this next year, if I can get the hang of Photoshop. I love good book covers and am always buying books based on them. The graphics on my books are always done by the amazing Ceri Clark, but in my Tower of Bones series I’ve given her less than optimal art to work with. She has worked a miracle with what she has been given. Now I’ve amassed a really large database of affordable art, much of which will speak well to my books.

This has all come about because I have completely rewritten my first published novel and am now designing the new cover for it, based on its new title. This cover is critical, because there are two books currently based in that world, and a third is partially written. The covers for all three must relate to each other.

I think I was successful in getting the right art for Tales from the Dreamtime. Ceri’s graphics are perfect and make it intriguing.

This quest for great cover art is what I must do for my Tower of Bones series too. There are two books currently published in that series, and one more in the editing pipeline at Eagle Eye Editors. (Actually, they currently have three books of mine in their pipeline, and Tower of Bones is one of them.)

The best art for a book tells some of the story but also make the eye go “Oh yeah, baby!” For me, that means it is colorful and mysterious, something that makes me think about the image. I have comps of all the art I’ve ever wanted and now I must go through each image and decide which image will be purchased. It is difficult to find great art for reasonable prices, but not impossible.

Many of my friends go to DeviantArt.com, and many others go to iStock and Dreamstime. I have gone to all of these places, and I’ve found many pieces that will combine well to build my covers. It will not be free, but it will be fun!

All I have to do, is learn how to use Photoshop. I am now an old dog, learning a new trick!

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Tagged as adventure, affordable art, Art, battles, Ceri Clark, fantasy, fantasy art, fiction, humor, literature, magic, writing

October 10, 2013 · 8:23 am

National Pot-pie Month

We’re approaching November once more. November is the month where for 30 days, people all over the world from all walks of life will spend their free moments writing a novel. All over the world, families will dine on microwaved pot-pies as people steal minutes from their day to get 1650 words written, to keep up their word-count.

They will strive to get their word-count of 50,000 words in total, or more, and will hopefully have a novel with a beginning, a middle and an ending by the time November 30th arrives.

This year is really special for me. My oldest daughter, Leah, is participating for the first time, and she will be writing in the area of contemporary women’s fiction. As you can see from her picture she is lovely and glamorous–nothing like her frumpy old mama. Leah is passionate about her characters and is fully committed to developing the story that has been rolling around her head for years. It’s a fun and hilarious story, one that so many young women will identify with.

What Leah really wants to do is write a screenplay, and once she has the story written, she will be able to turn her book into a screenplay with no problems. After all, great movies begin with great stories.

I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of having a child who wants to follow in your footsteps, who wants to work at the craft you love so much. It is a mixture of pride, amazement and mystification–and by that I do mean mystification.

It’s a lonely job, one others find interesting in theory, but rather useless. It pays little or nothing for years, usually. On vacations she will be as determined as I am to get those precious writing moments in and others will think she is being selfish and ignoring them. Her chosen path is not an easy one, but Leah has the backbone and the balls to do this crazy thing, and to make it work.

I have begun writing my story descriptions, and have created the basic synopsis for my NaNoWriMo novel this year. The working title for the book is “UNDERGROUNDERS”.

It is a hard science fiction novel and grew out of a short-story I wrote called “Alpharse Run.” That tale is an old-fashioned Gene Roddenberry type of “Space-Opera.” I began researching the physics for this project in 2010 for Alpharse Run. My science is all based on current theories, and all my technology is physically possible according to current physics.

We humans could do all this now–we just haven’t got the hardware or the funding to do this monumental an undertaking at this time in our history. Getting the hardware right is the most critical thing, for people living in an alien environment. I’ve spent a great deal of time designing the technology that will make or break my tale.

Short Synopsis for UNDERGROUNDERS:

A retired fighter pilot and leading researcher in the field of terraforming and adapting earth-type plants to alien environments, Professor Elena Brend has been invited to continue her work at the University on the distant colony-world of Alpharse.

But all is not as serene as she had been told–the ecology of Alpharse is both fragile and dangerous. Handsome shuttle-pilot, Braden Langley wants more of Elena’s life than she is willing to give and she will have to make a decision that could break two hearts.

Two factions within the community now fight for dominance as Alpharse is cut off from the rest of the human worlds.

Can Elena survive in this new world of power, politics and brinkmanship?

One of the first things I found myself doing this time was creating a possible book cover for the book, before it is even written. I’ve never done that sort of thing before, and, of course, I messed up on the word “Dream.” But there is something about having made a cover (bad though it may be) that forces you make the interior.

This is not the final cover, but is a mock-up pointing in the general direction of what I envision the completed book to look like, something to keep my mind on the right path.

I’ve been creating bios and descriptions for all the characters, and building the world. I’ve a great story in my mind, and it takes place in a completely alien environment so I have been asking myself questions.

1. What is their new world really like? What is the composition, the atmosphere, the indigenous life, microbial and complex? Can the colonists live on the surface or must they live in special habitats?

2. What have they had to do to adapt to this new world? What sort of monumental task was it to get to the point where they have a university at all? How far out of the pioneering phase is their society?

3. Who is Elena Brend and what made her that person?

4. Who is Braden Langley and what makes him tick?

5. How does my protagonist fit into her new society? Who are her friends, and who feels threatened by her? Who resents her intrusion into their closed community, and why?

6. What is the problem? Why is this a problem?

7. Who profits from the situation as it currently exists?

8. Who stands to lose if this problem is resolved, and what will they lose? To what lengths are they willing to go to ensure they don’t lose this battle?

I will have everything ready to go by November 1st so I can pound out this new tale, of wonder and new worlds. The great thing about this for me is the knowledge my daughter Leah is doing the same thing, preparing and educating herself about the people and their environment, the problems and the triumphs they will go through. Her book takes place in a truly alien environment–Las Vegas. I’m excited about her story. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

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Filed under Adventure, Battles, Books, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, battles, Braden Langley, Elena Brend, fantasy, fiction, Gene Roddenberry, humor, NaNoWriMo, Star Trek, Star Wars, writing

October 1, 2013 · 9:11 am

Dinosaurs Among the Birds

We go through life and things happen. Friends drift apart and then we drift back together. When we meet again, we are all so curious about each other’s lives and where the road has taken us, curious about the visible changes and not-so-visible ones. Forty-odd years ago we were young and wild, determined to carve our path in the world and desperate to get on with living. We were tired of the war, tired of politics, and tired of being told what to think by media controlled by pin-headed men in suits. We were tired of congress selling us out.

We were going to change the world.

We did change the world, but not exactly the way we naively believed we would. Even though we were unable to solve all the problems we wanted to, we did manage to make some positive changes. Unfortunately, we were too few, voices shouting in the wind.

And now we are somewhat jaded. The country is still divided, big money still buys votes. Congress is still selling out, and the media is still owned by pin-headed men in suits. There is always a war somewhere, and it is never done with.

We cling to our belief that we will see positive changes, but we don’t believe we will live long enough to enjoy them. But change is inevitable, and it will happen, even if, like Moses and the promised land, we stand on the opposite shore and see only what yet may be.

My old friends and I are not exactly who we were in those wild days. Now we are an amalgamation of everything we once believed would happen and everything that really happened. We are people who survived Reaganomics, who survived raising children through the MTV years. We held down three part-time jobs because trickle-down economics didn’t really trickle down the social ladder to our rung, and we had kids to feed. We survived the Bush years with some of our dignity intact, and didn’t fold under the “you’re with us or you’re against us” propaganda designed to shut us up.

We are jaded, but we have hope, we old hippies; we old women and men who are dinosaurs among the birds of the modern, hyper-connected world. We still believe the world can be a better place for everyone. The difference is now we know we can change the world…just not in the way we thought we would.

Now we put our money where our mouth is, donating to charities and spending our retirement years volunteering in schools and hospitals. We do it in small ways, chipping away, and little by little we have a positive effect.

We lost the battle to make the world a simpler, kinder place. Our parents won the war with their firm, 20th century belief that only through technology would mankind benefit, and that somewhere was a miracle drug just waiting to cure every disease known to man. It just hadn’t been discovered yet.

We were conquered, despite the struggle to keep it simple. We old hippies now embrace the technology and make it ours, because we must either adapt or die, and I am not ready to die. We are a wired society, and we old people have the luxury of a little free time and occasionally, extra money.

Writing is my opportunity to live in the world as I would like it to be, and it is my chance to get away from the war, from politics, and from crazy family issues. Adult children with complicated epilepsy issues, grandchildren having babies too young (did they learn nothing from my trials and errors?) –writing is my escape. And when I am not reinventing the world, I donate my time and money to advancing humanity. My husband and I give to charities, both locally and internationally.

I support creativity and free-thinking on a local level. I volunteer as municipal liaison for NaNoWriMo. I encourage people from all walks of life, and from every point of view to write. It doesn’t matter to me if we agree politically or not. Everyone has a story to tell. Some stories are real and incredibly moving, and all they need is the skill to tell that story the way it should be told.

They can gain that skill through participating in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Children and schools benefit year round from writing programs sponsored by this organization. November is coming, and for me November is the busiest month of the year. I will be meeting and getting to know many new people, and I will be writing the framework for a new novel. For one month, thousands of people will be too busy writing to spend their evening in front of the electronic altar, being fed mindless pap in the form of ‘entertainment.’ Instead, they will entertain themselves and find they are so much more than they ever thought they could be.

With every new story that is told, the world opens its eyes a bit more, seeing more possibilities. There is more awareness that we are not islands disconnected from society, cocooned in our dark living-rooms unable to look away from the poorly crafted mind-porn we are force-fed to fill the void.

I am an old hippy, I admit it. But I am water, wearing away at society’s monument to ignorance, helping the world learn how to tell its story one person at a time.