Tag Archives: fantasy

March 3, 2013 · 7:52 pm

Parsifal, Wagner, and the Muse

Things are back to normal here at La Casa del Jasperson–at least, as normal as the interior of a spinning blender ever is. I strive to create a zen-like home to compensate for the strange detours life takes us on. The way my creative mind works, I need to have an orderly environment or I can’t focus on my work.

Epilepsy is disorderly in the extreme! Dealing with hospitals and life-changing events takes a toll on one’s creativity. Worrying that the new medicine won’t work, or your loved one won’t be able to tolerate the poison is terribly stressful. Thus, despite the fact that I brought my lap-top and spent the same number of hours staring at the screen this last week, I accomplished very little, other than taking my main characters a few steps closer to their doom. I managed only 3000 words for seven days of writing.

But that changed yesterday when I managed to write 1200 words in one productive hour. The reason my hour was so productive is this—> Three weeks ago, before life took the side-trip, I was suffering from a bout of writer’s block.

I’ve always known what was going to happen with this tale, but I was writing it by the seat of my pants, as usual! SO in desperation, two weeks ago I made a 3000 word outline of where I wanted the story to go, right down to the epilogue. Immediately, I was able to get the story moving again.

I know! It’s genius! I took my own advice!

During this week of worry and stress, I spent a lot of time out on Wikimedia Creative Commons looking at some of the greatest art ever collected. It is humbling to realize that these artists saw no great rewards for their work, in fact they were barely able to eke out a living at it. I came across the picture that graces todays post, Parsifal, by Hermann Hendrich. The castle in the background is exactly the sort of place my characters have found themselves. The fir trees and the remoteness of this picture gave a form to my idea, and I was more easily able to create the story of what happens next.

The interesting thing is, Hendrich got his imagination jump started by having seen the Wagnerian opera, Tannhäuser. (YouTube link here!)

Go figure–an artistic type whose muse is fired up by big, loud, epic music! Of course I was captivated. The creative process that others experience is as interesting to me as is their final, amazing product.

Today, it is 7:28 a.m. on an early spring Sunday. I am listening to loud German opera overtures via YouTube and mentally preparing to get 3000 or more words written today.

So as the world here in Olympia (the navel of the universe) gets back to normal, all will end well for my heroes…or will it…heh heh….

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Tagged as adventure, fantasy, humor, literature, living with epilepsy, romance, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 22, 2013 · 5:36 am

“Spam the Vegan!” shouted the Queen. “No quarter!”

One of the things I’ve noticed on all of my blogs is the number of strangely phrased, oddly ambiguous but pleasant comments from random “people” with email addresses and links referencing pictures of “hot young high-school girls, all of legal age” in compromising situations.

Yeah, right.

Strangely enough, these comments are frequently quite garbled as if they were translated to English by an old version of Google Translator. Another interesting thing is they frequently say, (and I quote,) “I need information of this more. I have search how can I get more.” Well now, that really pertains to the conversation we were having about +Orson Scott Card and character development, doesn’t it…

And these comments are frequently addressed to much older posts, as Johanna Garth, author and blogger from Portland Oregon, has also mentioned, possibly in the hope we wouldn’t notice. (She blogs on the most interesting things, over on Losing Sanity – you should check her out!)

These enterprising hawkers of underage hookers think that if they say something nice and ambiguous I might believe that it pertains to my blog. They think I will post their comment without checking to see what sort of links they have embedded in it! Heh – heh – wrong!!! Grandma wasn’t born yesterday. The internet is my business, and I take business seriously. I’ve learned quite a bit about the wolves in sheep’s’ clothing who lurk in the dingier alleys of the old web since I first began this crazy journey.

Strangely, this barrage of spam has really escalated since I began occasionally mentioning the word “VEGAN”.

I can only assume that their antiquated version of Google Translator has interpreted that word as implying that I am a “VIRGIN” and they are kindly offering me hope that one day I will no longer be afflicted thusly.

Now, we know Grandma has lived long and enjoyed every minute of her life and with four marriages behind her and 11 grandkids she is not a candidate for sainthood. I intend to keep on enjoying life to the fullest until the universe explodes, or whatever, so party on! Play that funky music, and dance the way you feel like dancing, but don’t try to trick me into being a carrier for purveyors of sleaze.

Really, one would think that scouring the internet all day and posting random comments with sleaze-links in unknown blogs would be awfully time-consuming. The return can’t possibly be worth the effort they must put into it. All their work in trying to insinuate links to their sleazy drivel, everything from porn to cold remedies on my blog is barking up the wrong tree, because I use Akismet here on WordPress and verify every comment that slips through so that my blog doesn’t accidentally become a festering boil on society’s rump.

I also do the same on my other blogs. What fun! It’s almost humorous the lengths folks will go to get you to be an unpaid advertiser for them.

Still, at least I’m doing well enough that 6 – 12 spammers a week feel my blog posts are worth wasting their time on. Maybe it’s the same person, who knows, but hey – in this business, attention is attention, even if it’s negative attention!

I’m so happy about the extra attention that I wrote a poem:

Spam, Wonderful Spam – they know I exist, so therefore I am!

Spam, Fabulous Spam – The Nigerian Prince need MY helping hand!

Spam, marvelous spam – the meat I can’t eat as it’s not Ve-gan!

(It rhymes if you say it just right! Honest!)

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Tagged as adventure, fantasy, humor, literature, Spam, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 19, 2013 · 2:57 am

The Crazy Things

My good friend, indie author Stephen Swartz, had a blog post today about creativity, music and productivity. I love his blog, DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire, and find his dry sense of humor to be rather invigorating. He has been extremely prolific lately in getting the work out of his head and onto the paper, and I am quite impressed with his output! I’ve been more easily distracted lately by the shiny things in life.

Anyway, he was talking about the types of music that forms the soundtrack to his writing. As Stephen is also an accomplished musician, music is very important to him, and he is like me in that the right background music can improve the flow of ideas.

Now, everyone knows Grandma loves Heavy Metal, but let’s be real–Rammstein and Rainbow aren’t really conducive to a meditative state, so they are mostly for editing. And while I love John Adorney, I have a problem with some new-age music, in that it puts my brain to sleep. So I have certain playlists I pull out when its time to write. Sibelius, Mozart, Karl Orff – these great composers of classical music provide the soundtrack to Mountains of the Moon, now that we are approaching the end of the story.

In the beginning, when I first started writing Mountains of the Moon, the music that inspired me was Robert Plant’s Band of Joy album, along with Steve Martin’s ‘The Crow”. Butch Baldassari and David Schnaufer’s album, ‘Appalachian Mandolin and Dulcimer’ also figured prominently in my playlist at that time.

I know.

From Banjos and Dulcimers, to Cellos and Violins, to Stratocasters and Korg Keyboards. Throw in the occasional big choral piece like Carmina Burana and there you have the entire repertoire.

I find that at each stage in my work, a different sort of music is required. Once the structure of the story is laid out and the actual writing begins, I need light-hearted fare, sort of like the salad course at a fine restaurant. You can’t get much lighter than Steve Martin’s incredible work. Here is the link to the YouTube video of Steve Martin, Bela Fleck, and Tony Trischka playing The Crow.

During the both the initial imagining of a tale when I am world building, and also in the editing process, I need to keep on my toes. I find that Joe Bonamassa’s channel on You Tube is conducive to that.

So is this lovely YouTube channel I found with 87 (!!!) tracks for Rainbow. (I guess you know now what I listen to quite often when I am in need of inspiration.) I love YouTube!

So often random inspiration comes from my grandchildren, from my friends, and from the world in general. It never emerges out of my head the way it goes in. It always amazes me, how in the long run it’s the crazy things that spark my creativity, but the music always sustains and nurtures it.

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Tagged as fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, Mozart, vegan lifestyle, writing

February 15, 2013 · 11:18 pm

The Sedative Box

Alas, I find that the week spent with my grandson didn’t advance my manuscript any further. I didn’t even get any book reviews done this week, although I did find Nemo.

And Waldo.

And the last shred of patience I ever had.

The Boy is six, and is off-the-chart-smart, requiring no entertaining on my part what-so-ever. He is a real firecracker, and just listening to him as he is playing is a hoot. Batman and Darth Vader teamed up with The Green Lantern to kill Smeagol, thus saving Bilbo from a dreadful death.

I’ve mentioned before that The Boy is a sponge and literally soaks up everything he sees and hears. This child repeats EVERYTHING he hears or even thinks he has heard. He is VERY verbal with a huge vocabulary (of which he knows the meaning and proper use of every word), extremely sassy, and regularly loses his precious, carefully monitored television privileges, which he is deeply remorseful for, but not enough to remember to curb his lip when talking back to Mama (She Who Controls The TV.) Curbing his commentary is both time-consuming and all-important, as it has led to some trouble in social situations.

For the most part, Grandma’s role when babysitting is to gently but firmly remind The Boy that we show respect to everyone when we speak to them, and when he responds with verbal abuse, I respond by parking him in the corner for some quiet time. Grandma sets the timer on the stove for five minutes and we both rest our ears. When the timer goes off, we hug and make up our quarrel, OR he goes back to the corner to reflect on where he miscalculated and went wrong for just a while longer.

Oddly enough, The Boy doesn’t like tofu in his stirfry. Go Figure! And Grandma doesn’t do mac and cheese–what a tragedy! We did find something he would eat, and we agreed to disagree.

I have ten grandchildren and one great-grandchild. The Boy is the only one of my grandchildren that requires special handling, although the others are just as talented and amazing as he is. Unlike the others, this child can’t be left to his own devices, or mayhem WILL ensue. Because he requires more intense handling, I’ve had a lot of individual time with him that I’ve not had with the others.

I can honestly say he is not my favorite grandchild, because they are ALL so awesome and so individual that I could never have a favorite. They range in age from 23 years on down to to 5 months and fall into 3 batches. The great-granddaughter is 4 years old and is amazing to me–we’ve developed a special friendship bonding in Grandma’s kitchen.

In the first batch, the oldest is attending college full-time and raising her child as a single mother and doing exceedingly well at both jobs. She inspires me to do better at my own work. The next oldest is my ‘Fairy Goth-Daughter’, an artist and musician, who hooked me up with Rammstein and Appocalyptica. The third oldest is 20, an actress, and has found work in HBO documentaries and even a straight-to-video movie. She is also managing a fast-food restaurant to pay her bills, since acting pays as well as authoring does! (insert ‘lol’ here.)

The next age group ranges from 14 to 6 and their interests are still varying. Two want to write, one loves to draw and he is awesome at drawing any sort of car you would want. The other three don’t have any particular area of focus yet, but I see glimmers of artistic and musical ability in them all.

The littlest, at 5 months, is really into the cat and his dog. He tries to sing when you sing with him, which I find quite entertaining–it keeps grandma busy and out of trouble for hours.

But what I love about The Boy is his imagination. He let’s his imagination fly freely, and I can see the seeds that, with good direction, will grow into a filmmaker or author or scientist there. The Boy thinks WAY outside the box because it hasn’t occurred to him yet that there is a box!

It ‘s my job, as The Grandma, to see that they ALL realize there are NO BOUNDARIES to what they can do or be. Success isn’t measured in how many toys and possessions you gain. It’s measured in your happiness quotient.

Are you happy? When you get home from earning your daily bread do you look forward to a chance to spend an hour or two at your real work? My happiness quotient is very high, and always has been, even when I was working as a hotel maid. Happiness is a state of mind you must deliberately cultivate.

When you get home, why not simply forget to turn on the TV? (Or as I like to think of it, the sedative-box.) What has it ever done for you besides offering mindnumbingly similar programs interspersed with commercials designed to make you feel you aren’t complete without the product they are hawking. Bored and discontent is not how I want to live, so I find myself reading and pursuing other hobbies in the evening.

Today, I am also looking up. Two asteroids, one imploding over Russia and one doing a close fly-by is quite enough entertainment for one day! For all my friends in Russia, I hope you were not affected by the event this morning!

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February 8, 2013 · 8:47 pm

Redemption and the Wayward Pen

I started my day today by reading Alison DeLuca’s great blog, Fresh Pot of Tea this morning, and her topic is Redemption. She has written an awesome post on villains and redemption, and I suggest you pay a visit to her blog and read the post.

Redemption in your villains is a topic that interests me, because in the Tower of Bones series I have a nasty villain, Baron Stefyn D’Mal, who is, in many ways modeled on the original Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know man, Lord Byron (if he were wholly devoted to the God of Darkness and was crazy on steroids.)

In the first book, Tower of Bones, we discover some of D’Mal’s history, and there is some reason to feel bad for the child he once was, but he is in no way a good guy.

In Forbidden Road, Stefyn D’Mal interacts with the protagonists somewhat less directly, but his influence is no less profound on the outcome of the tale, and his evil God has him firmly in hand.

Why are we attracted to tales of Redemption? Is it because we are aware of our own frailties and when we are immersed in the redemption of the fictional evil genius, whom we have secretly admired, we are some how redeemed ourselves? I think for me there is a secret relief in the notion that by one selfless act of heroism a person can counter a lifetime of misdeeds.

I’ve had a novel on the back burner since 1998 that will probably never be published, because it is terribly flawed and pretty outdated now. But I love the characters. In this tale there is one character who is not really a central character but her stubbornness causes no end of trouble for her family. But in the end, she jumps between the shooter and her niece because the desire to protect those you love is sometimes stronger than common sense.

I think that having a really great villain makes a story compelling. Great villains are why we read Harry Potter, and the Lord of the Rings. The Wheel of Time has great villains–a LOT of them– which is what drives the plot(s). When I read a book with villains that really frighten me I return to it later and analyze what it is about that character that inspired such an emotional reaction in me. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what Robert Jordan did with the Forsaken. Lanfear and Asmodean were frequently pleasant, engaging people and one could feel a certain sympathy for them despite the knowledge that they were evil. Even Demandred had a certain cachet that one could relate to.

This makes writing your villains complicated. They are bad, or they wouldn’t be villains, they’d be the heroes. But it is a rare person who is completely consumed by evil, and so when we see the softer side of the devil we grudgingly like him.

Who knew Satan was a cat-lady?

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Tagged as adventure, Alison DeLuca, battles, fantasy, humor, literature, Lord Byron, writing

February 4, 2013 · 5:28 am

Vegan and loving it (mostly)

Me at the age of 29

When I set out to write a novel, I approach it from the viewpoint of a storyteller. This creates some problems with having “a passive” voice when the first draft is “eye-balled” for revisions. Of course, I can’t see it unless it is pointed out to me, so I have to allow another person to read it.

Some people will tell you that allowing ANYONE to see a manuscript at that stage of development is just plain suicidal. It’s certainly difficult for me to do, but I’m doing it. If I am to chug these things out with any speed at all, I have to bite the bullet and let Irene have the first look at it. Hopefully, getting rid of the passive voice immediately will be a positive step toward making the ms ready to be edited.

In the past I have finished the entire ms before I allowed anyone to see the first draft. Before I let them see it, I went over it a million times. When I sent it to them, I was sure it was a good as I could get it. Still, the first chapter that was sent back to me was a sea of red.

Sigh.

So, the premise is this–I’m going to have to revise it anyway. If all these strange things I can’t see in my own work are going to still be there after I’ve wasted a year on grooming the story, why bother? Why not just go for it and see what happens? Irene was bored, and needed something to work on. We agreed that this is a true experiment and if I can’t do it, I won’t feel too embarrassed. (edit: Correction – Irene says she was NOT BORED and may never have been bored in her life. Knowing her as I do, that’s most likely true!)

However, the first chapter arrived back in my Gmail this morning. It was a sea of red just like the finely polished apple would have been, and it said basically the same things. SO maybe this is a more streamlined way to get the process done; I hope so! It is helping me to stay focused on the final chapters of the book as I write them, and I am keeping the active voice more clearly in my mind.

It’s a first draft. I’m most likely still letting the ‘thats’ and ‘whichs’ fly where they may, and be aware: commas are landmines in my hands. Hopefully Irene will still like the book when I’ve dragged her all the way to the end.

I’m sure some will remember that on December 31, 2012 I became a vegan. That means I stopped including meat and dairy in my diet, completely. I got off to a good start with a fun dinner party that was split fairly evenly between vegans and carnivores. So now, 34 days into this, I am still vegan, and surprisingly I’ve found it to be easy.

The picture at the top left is of me in 1982, two years after my first thyroid tumor was removed. I’ve lived an active life for the most part, and on the occasions when I did gain weight, I was able to take it off. At the age of 55 I began gaining weight and I was unable to shed it. Now 4 years later I know it was because of two unavoidable things: menopause and the thyroid.

I’ve lost 7 pounds of weight since January 01, 2013. Losing weight is difficult with a thyroid tumor, and since the tumor is benign and isn’t life threatening, we aren’t opting for surgery. Instead I’m making positive changes in my lifestyle and the weight is slowly coming off.

Some of my weight loss can surely be attributed to the energy I’ve burned reading labels. I’ve always avoided GMO products and also corn syrups and corn sugars, but now I’ve a whole new world of things to be on the lookout for! For instance, I have discovered that vitamin D3 is rarely vegan while D2 always is, casein is a milk protein that finds its way into stupid things like soy cheese and honey. I avoid anything with the word lactose although I’ve been told that most other lac- ingredients are fine. I am not well-educated enough yet to know what is what so I just avoid it if it says ‘lac-‘.

I do know that if the product has any cholesterol, even 1 mg, then the product is not vegan, because cholesterol is not found in any plant-based products. So that means there is some sort of animal-derived ingredient. When I found that out, I looked at my cooking oils, products that I thought were vegan by virtue of being olive or safflower oil and I found that they were spiked! The bastards! Even margarine can have animal based products in it!

So now, I am careful to carry a list of no-no words and I try to stay vigilant. After all, either you are a vegan, or you are not–there is no such thing as ‘sort-of -a-vegan’. For me, I think giving up the dairy is what has made the difference in my health. I feel better, I have more energy, and by golly I did lose seven pounds in 34 days.

I guess I’ll keep on keeping on a while longer, and see what happens. Heck, I have all day to read labels and not much else to do in the way of excercise.

Unless you count ranting, tearing my hair out and desperately squeezing out my self imposed word-count goal of NO LESS THAN 1800 words a day.

I get a lot of excercise from that.

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Tagged as fantasy, humor, literature, vegan, vegan lifestyle, writing

January 24, 2013 · 6:47 pm

Imago Chronicles, Lorna Suzuki

Just like every other obsessed, fanatic reader of High Fantasy, I am always on the lookout for that one special book that presages the advent of a new classic series in the genre. In my opinion, Lorna T. Suzuki has written that book in Imago Chronicles Book One: A Warrior’s Tale.

As many of you know, I review my favorite fantasy books on a blog called Best in Fantasy, and that is where I first reviewed Suzuki’s work in 2011. I was blown away by her ability to draw you into her world and keep you there, mesmerized.

Since I began blogging on what I consider to be the best fantasy reads that come across my Kindle, I have read, on average, 4 to 6 fairly good books for every one really good book that made the blog; but ‘fairly good’ is not good enough for me to call a book ‘Best In Fantasy’. Hence, my frequent excursions back to my library of classics. In order for a book to be featured on that blog, I have to LOVE it! In ‘A Warrior’s Tale’, Suzuki has written a book that stands beside the works of my beloved heroes of modern fantasy Jean Auel, Mercedes Lackey, and David Eddings. Imago now ranks as one of my all-time favorite epic fantasy series. And now, joy of all joys! Books 1,2 and 3 have been optioned for a major motion picture trilogy!

And now the story:

In an intriguing twist, A Warrior’s Tale begins with the end. Taking shelter from a freak blizzard, Nayla Treeborn, half elf, half human and not fully either, huddles next to the corpse of a dead soldier; using his body and the now un-needed cloaks of other dead soldiers to shelter her from the killing weather. As she shelters there, she finds herself thinking about her life to that point; going back to a day when she had been a child the mental and physical equivalent of a mortal 12 year old, but was in reality 37 years of age.

Nayla’s father, a high Elf and the Steward of Nagana, Dahlon Treeborn, despises her for reasons which are not made clear in this book. He has punished her for publicly disagreeing with him; nearly beating her to death. Joval Stonecroft discovers her, dreadfully mutilated and bloody and is horrified. Healing her as well as he can, he spirits her out of the elven city of Nagana to the human city of Anshen, home of the legendary Kagai Warriors. Taking the name of Takaro, the young girl embarks upon a lifetime of training, eventually becoming the only female Kagai Warrior ever accepted into the brotherhood. When at long last she reaches womanhood, not only is Takaro fully trained in the manly arts of the warrior, but she is also a woman fully trained in the womanly arts as a spy, a courtesan and an assassin.

In book 1 of the series the main antagonist is Eldred Firestaff, a sorcerer who combines the nicer qualities of Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter) with the personal charm of Ctuchik (The Belgariad), and who is an immortal tool of evil, resurfacing every generation or so. Each time he comes back, he uses the armies of the weak Emperor of East Orien as his power-base in his eternal quest to conquer the world of Imago. However, in this first book of the series, although the battles with this slippery and long-lived villain are colorful and intense, they are almost secondary to Nayla’s personal battle for acceptance and with her own inner demons. This book is concerned with fleshing out Nayla and really whets your appetite for the rest of the tale!

As a half-caste, Takaro/Nayla ages much more slowly than humans, and much more quickly than elves. During the course of the story she outlives three of her Kagai Masters, all of whom live to be very old men. She also outlives their grandsons and their grandson’s grandchildren, yet at the end of the book she appears to be a woman of about twenty-five years of age. Her wisdom and abilities are that of a warrior at the prime of life, and she becomes the most respected of the fierce Kagai Warriors. When her father is maneuvered into asking for the finest Kagai Warrior to train his own warriors, Nayla finds herself back in Nagana, and her father is forced to suffer her presence there; a situation that is bad at best.

The world of Imago is clearly drawn, and is every bit as compelling as that of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Here we have two distinct cultures living side-by-side in peace and harmony for generations; coming to each other’s aid whenever the other is threatened. Loyalty, honor, hard-work, love and family are the central facets of the human society that Nayla/Takaro finds herself adopted into as an abused child, and these values are echoed in the society of the Elves. Within each society, the political and social divisions are clear and the differences between Elves and Men are well drawn and consistently portrayed throughout the drama that unfolds.

Suzuki is herself a master of the martial arts, being a practitioner and instructor of Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu; a system that incorporates 6 traditional Samurai schools and 3 schools of Ninjutsu. As one who was once a mere grasshopper in the obscure art of Shou Shu, I fully appreciate the wisdom and experience that the master crafts into the fabric of this tale. Every element of this story evokes both the martial and the spiritual aspects of the culture of Imago; every element is vivid and believable to the reader.

With each book in this series, I was drawn deeper into this amazing and very real world of Imago. In book 2 of the series, Tales From the West we discover more about the true evil that threatens Imago, and discover who or what is behind the sorcerer Eldred Firestaff.

What I’ve learned from reading the works of indie author Lorna Suzuki is that to really craft a world and build believability you must know what you are writing about. She understands the warrior culture from the point of view of a female warrior becasue she IS a female and a warrior.

Know thy craft! Write what you want to read, know what you are writing about and readers like me will flock to read it!

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Tagged as adventure, battles, dragons, fantasy, humor, Imago, Lorna Suzuki, magic, writing

January 19, 2013 · 8:53 pm

What I’ve learned from Piers Anthony

The book, A Spell for Chameleon, first published in 1977 was my introduction to Piers Anthony. I was immediately bewitched by his fantastical vision of a truly magical world, and I loved the fact that he placed it in Florida. His world of Xanth was a world where magic is as intrinsic to life as is oxygen, and that notion has intrigued me ever since. The concept of making magic a fundamental requirement for life is one that makes complete sense to me. Not only that, he did it with laugh-out-loud humor using puns and hokey jokes that were transformed into hilarious prose under his pen.

At the beginning of the novel Bink is facing exile from the magical land of Xanth and separation from his fiancée Sabrina for his lack of a magic talent. All human residents of Xanth possess some unique form of magic that ranges from incredibly powerful (such as the current King Aeolus’s ability to summon and control storms) to relatively useless (such as the ability to make a spot appear on a wall). In the hopes of discovering his talent Bink sets out to see the Good Magician Humfrey, a magician whose talent has to do with the gathering of information. Of course, things don’t go the way Bink hopes–it wouldn’t be a good story if they did!

Bink meets three women: Wynne who is pretty but stupid, Dee an average girl and also the sorceress Iris, whose power is the creation of illusions. Wynne and Dee are actually different aspects of the same woman, Chameleon, although Bink does not realize this at the time. Chameleon’s intelligence and beauty vary inversely according to the time of the month and she has been unable to find a man who is willing to be with her through all 3 phases. He also meets the Evil Magician Trent, and discovers that he actually likes him.

This book is one of the better books I had ever read, and I began a lifelong love affair with the works of Piers Anthony. Besides the witty prose and creative plots in this series, the COVERS of his books were AWESOME. I have been well-known as a person who will buy a book for the cover, and that is exactly how I stumbled onto this series. The Xanth series is one long running pun after another.

I bought A Spell for Chameleon for the same reason I purchase any book–I saw it on the rack in my local Albertson’s grocery store and fell in love with the cover.

I learned several things from Piers Anthony and his Xanth series, the first of which is that Great Covers Sell Books. I also saw that a true artist can take the most common, overused puns and turn them into the framework for a really fun adventure. I admit I did lose interest at about book ten, but even so, Piers Anthony still manages to have fun with it, and he still sells books. The Xanth series is incredibly popular, and deservedly so.

The series Anthony wrote that really captured my imagination, and which in my mind still reigns as his best works is the Apprentice Adept series, beginning with Split Infinity, Blue Adept and Juxtaposition.

This man has had one of the most prolific and highly regarded writing careers ever, with more than 150 published works to his credit. His sharp wit and amazing gift for world building are legendary, and he has won numerous awards for his work.

But what reading his incredible body of work and following his career has taught me is that even when things around you have gone to hell (as things are wont to do) the writer has the craft of writing fantasy to provide his mind with an escape from the TRUE weirdness of real life. Anyone who has read his official Wikipedia biography knows that Piers Anthony has had a long life with many personal challenges, through all of which I am sure writing was and is his refuge. This gives me hope and the impetus to just keep on doing what I can, trying to make silk purses from the sows’ ears of my work when I feel a bit discouraged.

Writing is a journey and you never know what lies around the corner.

If a writer is lucky, his works will eventually be beautifully covered and on sale in the racks at the local Albertson’s store, just waiting for a girl like me to pick it up for the art.

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Tagged as adventure, Art, battles, dragons, fantasy, humor, literature, Piers Anthony, writing, Xanth

January 14, 2013 · 7:03 pm

The Terry Pratchett School of Prose

One of the earliest influences on my sometimes smartassed style of writing was Sir Terry Pratchett, O.B.E.‘s watershed fantasy series, Discworld. Sir Terry takes J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft and William Shakespeare, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, and mashes them up in this hilarious series of tales. There are 39 books in this trilogy! Talk about prolific!

Discworld is a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A’Tuin. Oh my goodness – what opportunities for mayhem were locked in that kernel of a plot! The series begins with “The Colour of Magic.”

One of my favorite books in the series is “Mort.” It is the 4th book and is the first to give Death the main storyline.

As a teenager, Mort had a personality and temperament that made him rather unsuited to the family farming business. Mort’s father, named Lezek, felt that Mort thought too much, which prevented him from achieving anything practical. Thus, Lezek took him to a local hiring fair, hoping that Mort would land an apprenticeship with some tradesman; not only would this provide a job for his son, but it would also make his son’s propensity towards thinking someone else’s problem.

The conversation between Lezek and his brother Hamish as they discuss Mort’s future in the opening pages is hilarious and quite revealing in its simplicity. In this snippett, Lezek and Hamish are observing Mort as he attempts to frighten some birds away from the crop.

“He’s not stupid, mind” said Hamish. “Not what you’d call stupid.”

“There’s a brain there all right,”Lezek conceded. “Sometimes he starts thinking so hard you has to hit him round the head to get his attention. His granny taught him to read, see? I reckon it overheated his mind.”

At the job fair, Mort at first has no luck attracting the interest of an employer. Then, just before the stroke of midnight, a man concealed in a black cloak arrives on a white horse. He says he is looking for a young man to assist him in his work and selects Mort for the job. The man turns out to be Death, and Mort is given an apprenticeship in ushering souls into the next world (though his father thinks he’s been apprenticed to an undertaker).

I love the snarky way Pratchett takes clichés and runs with them. He grabs the boring, bland, overdone themes of western literature by the tail and swings them. When he sets them down they are SO much more fun to watch!

What I have learned from the Terry Pratchett school of prose is that dialog tells us as much about the speaker himself as it does about the words expressed. In the quoted passage above we see enough of the two men who are speaking to have some idea of who they are. Pratchett gives us the personality and demeanor of the character in those simple lines. We can see them, fully formed in our minds eye as they speak. .

That is the hand of the master, and it is what I someday hope to be able to bring to my own work. The important thing to remember is you must read the works of the masters, because if you have no idea of what good writing really is, you can’t write it. Read the best works in your genre and continue writing your own stories and never let the struggle of getting your work out there take away the joy of writing it. It’s not easy, going indie, but it is so rewarding!

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Filed under Books, Fantasy, Humor, mythology, writer, writing

Tagged as adventure, Discworld, fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, mythology, Terry Pratchett, writing

January 6, 2013 · 5:05 pm

Oh, the Agony

The Aspirin Shop © 2012 Connie J Jasperson All Rights Reserved

Yes, we now find ourselves in the deepest depths of January. The days are short and dark, and my desk is piled high with the visions and revisions of my current works-in-progress. I stare at the mountain of work that demands my attention and my mind is consumed with solving that eternal paradox, “Who gave me this damned cold? Which little germ-factory that I call a grandchild is the culprit?”

Alas, the responsible party is most likely sitting in his kindergarten class having a snack and discussing tactics for beating “Lego Star Wars” with his mates while Grandma suffers the agonies of the damned.

In the meantime, cold or no cold, I must somehow wind up the tale before me. My characters have already been through quite a lot, and they aren’t in tip-top condition. Still, they have a job to do and they are going to do it or die in the process.

At this juncture my characters are lurking high in the branches of fir trees outside the stone walls of a mountain keep, observing the small village surrounding the castle they need to enter. They need to decide how to enter the haunted castle, and they need to make a plan for getting to the rogue-mage and eliminating him. Once he is dead, the spells he’s layered over his guards will be broken and my team should be able to leave safely.

Once inside the keep, they will have to make their way through the halls, killing off the bespelled guards as they come to them until they have finally met the mage they have been sent to kill.

They’ve already fought a dragon and been caught in an avalanche. They’ve fought many other elemental creatures and each other.

Now here they are, poised on the edge of finishing this adventure and Grandma’s too stoned on NyQuil to concentrate long enough to get them to where they can kill the evil bad dude.

This could take a while.

It’s just so much wo-o-o-ork…..

Actually this game looks fun. I think I’ll just rest in the play-room for a moment….