Tag Archives: fantasy

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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Filed under Battles, Books, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, writer, writing

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

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

October 14, 2013 · 8:29 am

Standing Up

I rarely discuss politics. I figure politics and religion are like sex–everyone has them, and no one wants to hear you go on about your version of it. It’s not my desire to judge anyone I disagree with.

I’m not allowed to shoot the TV, which is what I want to do every time I see it nowadays. My poor husband is like a deer in the headlights–he can’t look away. And yet, none of the so called news reporting agencies have the balls to report the truth about Boehner’s coup. For that we must go to the YouTube link and see actual videos of Congressional TV:

The GOP’s little rule change they hoped you wouldn’t notice

Public opinion is overwhelmingly against the minority Tea Party Republicans who have staged this coup and taken control of congress.

Instead of walking away, I choose to stand up and say this is wrong. This is the way Germany fell to to Nazis post WWI. This is the way all democracies become dictatorships.

This is not the way my country works. We cannot allow a minority of radical members of the House of Representatives to put a gag on duly elected representatives who are calling for an end to this stalemate that has been artificially manipulated by disgruntled power-brokers. These are people who would destroy everything America stands for just to see President Obama’s Health Care Reform Act dismantled, out of their hatred of him.

I am reporting this coup, because it needs to be brought out into the open. We won’t solve this if the only way we are allowed to know what is happening in congress is what the news agencies are allowed to report. We have no impartial source of news in this country anymore, so we must turn to social media and try to sift the wheat from the chaff.

It says something terribly important that the only way the American public can hear about this is through YouTube and Facebook. I have sent an email to my elected congressional representative, Jaime Herrera Buetler asking her to force an end to this disgrace. This is the text of my email to her as it appeared in the form on her website:

“The actions taken by the congressional rules committee on Clause 4 of rule 22 are tantamount to a hostile takeover of our congress by a minority group. H res 368 is a travesty, and goes against everything our country stands for. I cannot support any member of congress who is supporting this.

Please, please, work to resolve this. Let your constituents know you are working to resolve this and that you do not support a hostile takeover of our government by a minority of congresspersons.”

I have no idea if the woman supported this move or not. I didn’t vote for her, but I live in a rural and traditionally conservative part of the country. I’ve done the only legal thing I can do, and if everyone does this, perhaps we will get this circus-train back on track. Time will tell.

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Filed under Battles, Government Shutdown, news of the world, Politics, writing

Tagged as battles, fantasy, fiction, government shutdown, hostile takeover of US government, John Boehner, 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 8, 2013 · 1:34 pm

Flung Poo, or the Tao of Fantasy

What the heck is it with this particular thread in my personal time stream?

Last week my stove went mad and tried to burn down my house. The self-cleaning function went berserk and my husband had to shut it off at the breaker as it wouldn’t shut off on its own. That was the last straw for that particular appliance. We decided to bite the bullet and raid the savings to purchase a fancy new one, with a convection oven and everything.

This week my son had another tonic-clonic seizure and ended up in the hospital, but he’s home and doing well again. This time he was taking his meds faithfully, but they need adjusting, so we are working with that. In the meantime I am staying at his house north of Seattle off and on until he’s back to feeling like being on his own again. So no driving for Dan, which is a bit difficult, but not impossible.

The republicans in the United States Congress went off their meds and made decisions that put my husband partially out of work. Heck, no worries, we still had a couple bucks in our savings after the stove, so it’s all good. (Bastards.)

He doesn’t work for them, but his job is federally funded, so there you go. Well of course CONGRESS will still be paid, so no worries, struggling homeowner! This agony must be happening for some good reason…after all, reasonable people would never…oh, right. Never mind.

Between the conservative crack-pots in the US Congress and the twists and turns of fickle fate, I need an escape! Boy, am I grateful to have so many affordable and great indie books to read and a great tale of my own to write!

One of my all-time favorites was re-released this week: Children of the Elementi by UK author Ceri Clark.

The Blurb:

From the ashes of an ancient empire, five must save the future.

Jake: Last in line to the Elementi High King throne, sent through time and space to be brought up in an alien world, he has no knowledge of his past.

Mirim: As the caretaker of the mysterious Citadel which hosts the dying crystal mind of the Matrix, her air power is the only link to the old world.

Kiera: A Romani foundling with growing powers over nature, she is searching for a better life away from her criminal past.

They must find the other two heirs and reunite all their elemental powers over earth, air, fire, and water together with the Matrix to defeat the Empire that conquered their parents.

With a fire demon on his trail, can Jake bring together the last of the Elementi in time?

Oh yeah! Grandma’s all about the magic! I loved it the first time I read it, and I’m reading it again!

There is nothing like the zen of a good book in my kindle, and a cozy corner of the sofa to curl up and escape the chunks of falling sky.

I’ve been around this world for a long while. I know everything will right itself and we’ll all be back on track: the oven, my son, and the US government. Life is amazing and when it’s all good, its awesome, so I’ll just sit here with my glass half full, reading a good book and ignoring the things that are transient in the overall scheme of things.

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Filed under Books, Epilepsy, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as battles, books, Ceri Clark, Children of the Elementi, convection oven, fantasy, fiction, government shutdown, humor, living with epilepsy, vegan lifestyle, 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.

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Filed under Battles, Books, charity, Epilepsy, Fantasy, Food, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, battles, fantasy, fiction, Hippies, humor, mind-porn, NaNoWriMo, Summer of Love, writing

September 26, 2013 · 6:46 am

Crafting the tale

Back-story happens as an author writes the tale. In my early works I left the back-story in, not realizing how it interfered with the flow of the story. Now I am rewriting my first published novel, removing the info dumps and using the skills I have developed in writing my last four novels to tell the story through scenes and dialogue.

Sometimes writing is like pulling a rabbit out of my hat–Voila!!! And there it is, the best scene I’ve ever written. I see it fully formed in my head and it falls out of my fingers as if I were seeing it before me.

The spring thaw was heralded by the hissing of rain on the frozen fir trees. Five men swathed in heavy cloaks rode miserable horses north, braving the eternal damp of a chill April morning, riding through snow heavy with slush, splashing through myriad puddles as the snowy landscape of the northern winter slowly melted under the assault of the spring rains.

Other times, it takes days and hundreds of failed attempts to figure out what it was I really wanted to say, what that one crucial paragraph needs to tell the reader in as few words as is possible.

The older merchant’s face darkened at the mention of the prince’s name and quickly looking over his shoulder at the other guests in the common room, he hushed his sons. “We’ll have no more mention of them at this table. If the wrong person overhears such talk we’ll all end our days in our own beds with our throats slit!”

Getting the back-story into the tale without spewing pages of detail is critical. In order for the reader to understand the action, they must understand the back-story. However, long info-dumps are no longer the fashion–the days of Herman Melville and J.R.R. Tolkien are gone: the modern reader has a leaner taste in literature.

Thus the author must find ways to insert the back-story in such a way the reader is intrigued.

I’ve lately attempted to read several tales where the authors have been humiliated in their writing groups by the snarky guru (you know the one I am talking about) to the point they now put no back-story at all into their tale. The jealous, rudely sarcastic diva has accomplished his mission–once again he’s made a more talented author afraid to write.

Back-story is critical, because action must happen for a reason. When things happen for no reason at all, the story is nothing but random, senseless actions. Without back-story we don’t care about the protagonist, no matter how handsome and witty he is.

An author once told me he put no back-story in because he wanted the reader to find out what was happening at the same time the protagonist discovered it. I found his work to be random, and senseless, which was too bad, because just a little insight into WHY the action was happening would have made it so much more interesting.

When I read a book, I become involved with the characters if there is a sense of history, if I want to know this person. Having some knowledge of what makes this person tick intrigues me. Why did Maldred order Geoffrey murdered? A snippet here and there, artfully inserted into to the scenery and the dialogue will inform the reader in such a way they don’t realize they are being informed.

Thus the author must craft the tale.

According to Jon Sprunk at Tor.Com: “Most aspects of back-story can be inferred by the reader. For example, if your main character is a cop, most readers will understand that she knows police procedure, the laws of her jurisdiction, and how to handle a firearm. You don’t need to walk us through every day of her academy training to tell us this.”

A good way to dole out the back-story and still leave the reader’s imagination intact is to write in such a way the information is slipped into the story in small chucks to spread it out.

Having characters discuss important events of the past is another effective way to get the information to the reader. However, you must use this tool wisely so as to not to fall into the trap of using dialogue to tell the story.

It’s a balancing act. This is where the craft of writing comes into play. We learn through writing and from getting proper feedback on our work.Writing is like cooking–experience will give you some idea of how much seasoning is too much.

A writing group, whether online or in your community is an excellent place to begin sharing your work and getting feedback. Don’t be afraid of criticism, because even the snarky guru has a point–he just has a bad way of displaying it. Also, don’t expect to ever write to THEIR satisfaction, because it won’t happen. However, you can learn a great deal there if you choose to.

A great book for new writers is Stephen King’s On Writing-A Memoir of the Craft. He tells us of his own life up to his well-known near-death experience, which is gripping in itself. But more importantly he tells us about the craft of writing, and how to develop the tools you will need, and the skills to use those tools.

Back-story is like perfume. A hint is awesome, and makes you curious.

Too much overwhelms the senses and drives away the reader.

Write for yourself, but write as well as you can. And never stop growing as a writer.

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

Tagged as adventure, battles, crafting a story, fantasy, fiction, humor, knights, literature, writing, writing backstory

September 23, 2013 · 8:29 am

Being a part of the Village

As some of you know, besides being an author, I am also a structural editor. One of the books I recently worked on is “Darkness Rising Book 3- Secrets” by UK author Ross M. Kitson.

This is a part of my life that came about accidentally, in the course of beta-reading kajillion manuscripts for an organization called Critters.Org.

I read and review books, often two or more a week, and having been through the editing experience several times myself, it just happened naturally. I found myself helping other authors make their manuscripts submission ready. One day I looked at my calendar and realized my day was completely divided in half—I worked on the manuscripts of other authors, helping them see their work with clarity in the evenings, and I wrote my own work in the mornings.

I am not a ‘grammar queen,’ although I do use the Chicago Manual of Style, and also some AP style. Strunk and White figure largely in my work. Grammar and such is the line-editor’s job, and I work closely with three very fine line-editors. I am charged with helping an author get their manuscript ready to go to the line-editor.

What I actually do is this: I examine the story over all, and point out the rough spots along with the strengths. At this point, I am looking at the narrative, asking questions such as:

How does the story flow?
Do I care about the characters?
Does the story make sense?
What are the story elements
What is the theme?
What impedes the flow?
Does the tense and voice remain consistent? Where does it change?

I look at individual elements of the story, such as plot, characterization, dialogue, and setting. I look at the interaction between them.

These are the questions I ask myself and in turn will comment on, and ask the author:

Would this sequence of events really happen?
Would this character really react the way the author has portrayed?
How else might the character behave?
Why is this character making this decision?
Does this feel authentic? Is it plausible?
Would this character talk like this?
Is each character a good fit for his/her role in this situation?
Is this the most logical sequence of events?
What is missing that might make it believable or logical?

Is there too much dialogue and no action? Not enough dialogue and too much walking in circles? Is dialogue being used to tell the story? Do they even need to be talking?

Did the back-story accidentally take over? Back-story happens, but it is important not to be married to it. Back-story can be shown in small strokes, without allowing it to take over and bog the story down. I learned this the hard way with my own first book, which is currently undergoing a full rewrite to remove that very problem. I think back-story begins to take over when an author is developing the story, and as the story grows in the mind of the author so does all the fluff. I now write my back-story as a completely separate document, and then use it to build my story, the same way I do my character bios.

How is this story being told? There are places where a small amount of telling is necessary and doesn’t ruin the experience, but is there too much telling rather than showing? I might make suggestions for alternate, indirect ways of getting the point across.

These are just the beginning—there is also the experience of the environment. Is too much emphasis placed on auditory and visual descriptions? Maybe not enough? What is the emotional experience for the reader? Does the author show the hurt, the anger, the joy in a way the reader immediately identifies with? Do they overwhelm you with heavy descriptions of emotional angst? Maybe not enough description?

In my own work I have committed every one of these ‘sins’.

It is essential that you have more than one set of eyes on your work, and that those eyes are attuned to you as an author. The first editor gets your work as ready as it can be for the second editor, who gets it ready for the beta-readers, who find all the typos, incidents and accidents.

I see the raw manuscript as it fell out of the author’s head, and I help him take that diamond-in-the-rough to the next level.

It takes a village to help an author get a book ready for consumption. Indies don’t have the resources the big publishers have. Helping an indie author realize his dream is an awesome perk of being in this business. Yes I do like to be paid, but no amount of money can compensate for hours and hours spent poring over a manuscript that is a worthless mess and dealing with an author who simply wants his ego stroked. This is why we indie editors don’t accept every manuscript that comes across our desk.

I love being a part of the process because I love to read. Reading is my passion and my life. When I read a published novel to review for my Best in Fantasy blog, I am looking at that novel as a starry-eyed consumer, not as an editor or an author. If I don’t get that feeling of amazement, I feel cheated. Like a child sampling sweets at the Easter buffet, I move on to the next book, hoping to discover the next “Memory Sorrow and Thorn” or “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

When I edit, my goal is to help that author find the magic that lies within himself and to help him have faith in his craft and in his ability to tell a damned good story.

I wouldn’t trade this job for anything!

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Filed under Battles, Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Uncategorized, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, chicago manual of style, fantasy, grammar queen, line editors, literature, magic, Ross M. Kitson, vegan lifestyle, writing

September 20, 2013 · 12:18 pm

What lurks within my mind

Every author is an avid reader. If not, they should be. I began writing because I read so fast the library couldn’t stock new books fast enough to keep up with my habit, and I certainly couldn’t afford to buy them in that quantity. I was limited to one new paperback book a payday in those days.

Now I read up to 6 Kindle downloads a week, and I feel very fortunate to be in such a position to be able to read as much as I want, whenever I want.

It is that yearning for a good tale that fires my imagination, and gets me writing a new tale. Today I am thinking about NaNoWriMo in November, and wondering what I will write.

I have read many books this year, books about elves and dragons, books about vampires, books set in the future, in alternate realities–so many books.

Now I have to find the next book that lurks within my mind.

I ask myself, “What do I want to read today?” What story do I want to have told to me, what will take me to that amazing, wonderful place where my heart and mind belong to the book in my hand?

There is a seed growing in my mind…the kernel of an idea. I know it will be a tale of people striving to overcome forces greater than themselves…perhaps the fate of their world hangs in the balance.

Perhaps they are not always the most well-behaved of people, but here is a hero lurking deep within them, waiting for some catastrophe to bring out that heroic side of them. Perhaps the local slacker is about to save the world…

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Filed under Adventure, Books, Dragons, Fantasy, Final Fantasy, Literature, Vegan, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, alternate realities, Art, battles, dragons, fantasy, growing in my mind, NaNoWriMo, vegan lifestyle, writing

September 17, 2013 · 9:56 am

Dad’s Leg

Words are awesome. I love obscure, weird words. J.K. Rowling uses the word ‘snogging’ in her Harry Potter series, to describe couples who were engaged in prolonged kissing, or as we sometimes say where I come from, ‘canoodling.’ My friend Irene has a new favorite word: ‘kerfuffle,’ a Briticism for a noisy disturbance or commotion. Americans would say a ‘dust-up.’

Words are the color palette an author uses to paint his image of the world. In English, which is a mash-up language, we have so many wonderful, wild words it is impossible to use them all in one book.

Heck–William Shakespeare loved words so much that when he ran out of words to fit a particular sentence, he invented them!

To say my father was an interesting man would be an understatement. Born September 22, 1923, he was a product of depression-era America. A farm-boy and big for his age, he enlisted in the US Army in 1938 at the age of 15. He thought he’d found his career, but he was injured in a motorcycle accident while riding dispatch in 1945, near the end of WWII. Nearly every bone in his body was broken, and in the hurry to save his life, his left leg was set crooked. A year later, they went in and re-broke it in order to reset it straight, but he developed osteomyelitis.

Dad spent the next 7 years after the war in and out of VA hospitals. For 7 years, the army surgeons tried to save his leg but in 1954 he lost his left leg,.The US Army officially forced him to retire, at the age of 30. Unfortunately, Dad was never able to wear the artificial leg the VA provided him with, although we children did find some creative uses for it. It stood in the hall closet in our house in Ballard, and we charged the neighbor kids 25 cents to look at it. In Olympia it was good for scaring our cousins. When I first married and left home, it stood in the corner of my living room holding plastic flowers, a conversation piece like no other.

There he was in 1952, a single guy with rather visible disability, wearing a heavy leg-brace, living in a world that hid the disabled under a rug and pretended everything was perfect. It was 1952, after all.

For some people, that would have been the end of everything. But not my Dad. When things began going bad with his leg, he knew he would be forced in to early retirement. He was aware that dropping out of school in the 10th grade to join the army had limited his employment choices to logging or farming, all manual labor. Dad used that time he’d spent on extended medical leave getting his high-school diploma, and then going to college. He met my mother and the rest was history.

So what does Dad’s leg (or lack thereof) have to do with weird words? Stick with me and you will see.

Dad was a voracious reader. He read everything from Tolkien to Tolstoy, and he remembered what he had read. Dad was a draftsman, and cartooning was his hobby. He played the guitar, played in a rockabilly band and partied with Les Paul and Mary Ford. Dad bought the Encyclopedia Britannica, the entire collection of Great Books of the Western World, Grolier’s Book of Knowledge, and a wonderful little collection of books called “Lands and Peoples.”

Dad was larger than life. He was loud, boisterous, opinionated, wide-open, a generous host, and he was always the center of attention. He made his own wine and brewed beer. He was a ham radio operator (his call number was W7NEY) and had a First Class Radiotelephone Operator License. Every year his vegetable garden grew more food than we could possibly eat, no matter how much we canned.

Dad was Fred Flintstone on Steroids.

Dad Loved Words. Big words, small words, short words, long words–Dad loved them all. He spun hilarious yarns about the ‘Kamaloozi Indians’, a non-existent tribe whose beloved Chief, Rolling Rock had gone missing, The tribe was so distraught they posted signs in every mountain pass that read “Watch for Rolling Rock.”

Everything in his toolbox had a name that was his own invention: Screwdrivers were ‘Skeejabbers.‘

Dad loved words so much he mangled them just because he loved the way they sounded. Sometimes he became so frustrated he lost his words and resorted to creative cursing.

Dad’s birthday is coming up, September 22. He died in 1991 at the age of 66, from complications of Osteomyelitis. He would have been 90 years old this next Sunday. He is gone, but definitely he will never be forgotten. His love of words and of reading, art and music had an impact on me and my siblings we will never live long enough to outgrow.

What better environment for a future bender-of-words like me to grow up in than a home where any book was fair game, and reading was not only encouraged, it was required?

The word for the day is ‘querl’–which means to twist or curl. And that is what my family all loves to do with words!