Tag Archives: literature

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

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

December 1, 2013 · 9:34 am

Knights Running Bare

One thing we don’t really think about when we first sit down to tell a tale is the attire our characters will be sporting. (Or not sporting, as the case may be.) But it does eventually come up, and how we get that across to our readers without boring them to tears is important.

Much of the time, my characters wear armor, the men and the women both. I’m an equal opportunity author–I think women deserve to be encased in gleaming tin as often as men, so there you go.

When I am reading a historically based novel, I want to be able to picture the characters in the right style of clothing, but unless I am reading the curtain scene in Gone With The Wind, I don’t want exact details. In most cases, a sentence or two giving us a general description is all that is really necessary.

Some of you may say, “But clothes are an essential aspect of the culture I am trying to describe!” I agree – every culture is rich in the way their clothing is decorated, and in what is considered appropriate for each gender. But again, a sentence or two here and there will do the trick. If you give the reader the general idea they will fill in the blanks with their imagination. Too much detail may cause the reader to lose the momentum of the tale.

As a reader, unless we are talking armor, I want to know what they are wearing, but don’t waste my time giving me more than a few sentences.

However, if we are talking armor, while I, as the reader, don’t need too many details, you as the AUTHOR, do need to keep some details in mind when you are writing the story. Your knights are not running bare–they are fully clothed in steel. That affects HOW they move.

First of all, it’s important to note that ‘fully armored’ means the characters are wearing:

Helmet: a form of protective gear worn to protect the head from injuries
Gorget: a single piece of plate armor hanging from the neck and covering the throat and chest.
Pauldrons (or spaulders): a single large dome-shaped piece to cover the shoulder
Besagews: circular defenses designed to protect the armpits
Couters: the defense for the elbow in a piece of plate armor. Initially just a curved piece of metal, as plate armor progressed the couter became an articulated joint.
Vambraces: forearm guards, defenses for covering the forearm
Gauntlets: several different styles of glove, particularly those with an extended cuff covering part of the forearm
Cuirass: back and breastplate
Fauld: bands of metal surrounding both legs, potentially surrounding the entire hips in a form similar to a skirt.
Tassets:a piece of plate armor designed to protect the upper legs
Culet: a piece of plate armor consisting of small, horizontal ribs that protect the small of the back or the buttocks
Cuisses: to protect the thigh.The word is the plural of the French word cuisse meaning ‘thigh’. While the tassets of a cuirass could protect the upper legs from above, a thrust from below could avoid these defenses. Thus, cuisses were worn on the thighs to protect from such blows.
Poleyns: armor that protected the knee
Greaves: shin armor
Sabatons: covering for the foot. Fourteenth and fifteenth century sabatons typically end in a tapered point well past the actual toes of the wearer’s foot, following fashionable shoe shapes of the fourteenth century. Sabatons of the first half of sixteenth century end at the tip of the toe and may be wider than the actual foot. They were the first piece of armor to be put on.

That’s a hell of a lot of steel and it took some time to put on. The very fullest sets, could be configured for a range of different uses, for fighting on foot or on horse. They were complicated and took a while to get on correctly, and a man needed help with some of the more involved things, like lacing them on.

The reader doesn’t need to know this, and they don’t care. But what the AUTHOR needs to know is how this sort of attire affects what your character can actually do!

Realistically, most medieval soldiers did not wear full sets of armor as their daily attire. In general they wore the minimum amount of metal they could get away with unless they were going into a situation that could result in a battle. When your characters are out riding around, if you have them only partially armored, they will be more able to move around in a logical manner, than if you have encased them in a gleaming sardine can.

Some readers (like me) are quite savvy–they will know you haven’t thought it out well if your fully armored knight is suddenly indulging in a moment of passion with fully dressed Lady Gwen.

Think about the many layers of what your characters are actually wearing–it can’t be done! For that you must undress them, and it is a bit involved, so they must plan ahead for their romantic trysts and leave the armor at home.

When writing historical fiction it is important to remember that people are not really that much different nowadays than they ever were. They get cold, so they wear clothes, in many layers. The warmer the weather, the fewer the layers. Inside a warm building, they may be lightly clad. Keep that in mind as you are writing, and convey the idea of their attire with a minimum of words, and your reader will get more enjoyment from the tale.

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

Tagged as battles, books, characters, humor, knights, literature, medieval armor, medieval warfare, plate armor, romance, writing

November 5, 2013 · 8:44 am

Version Control, or The Name of the Beast

This is the 1^st post in the series “WORD—A Shifty Beast,” focusing on helping authors of both fiction and non-fiction get the most out of using Microsoft Word, if that is your chosen word-processing program.

I use MS Word as my word-processing program. It is a reasonably priced thing, although if I could afford to buy a different program I would use Corel WordPerfect. It is much easier to find the hinky formatting errors in your manuscript with WP, but that is a blog post for another day.

Microsoft WORD is a versatile program and has many wonderful tricks for writing letters, making awesome presentations and pretty brochures. It is good in a business setting.

However, for the author, Word is a shifty beast at best. One must learn how to make it work, and there is a learning curve. Just like every other product out there, WORD is the creation of many layers. It has had many incarnations, and some were more successful than others, and there are inherent flaws in the design. All that aside, of all the versions of WORD I have used, I like the 2007 – 2010 version best.

Most authors are using some form of WORD, whether it is the free version, or the inexpensive student version I use. I’ve had to do a lot of desktop support for various clients via chat and cell-phone lately, so today we begin a series on using MS WORD as your word-processing program.

When we first begin to write seriously we learn how critical it is to have proper naming of our files to ensure version control. The most recent file will usually be the best edited unless you have accidentally saved an earlier version over it.

Oh, the Agony…. Experience is a hard teacher.

ALWAYS use a separate file-folder for each version, and ALWAYS use consistent file labeling practices to avoid this tragedy!

You would be amazed at how many authors I meet who don’t know how to properly save files, and the reason they don’t know is they have never worked as an office manager using WORD, so they have no concept of how easily something that should have been simple can veer out of control.

I am a structural editor, and as such I deal with a lot of different authors and am responsible for saving their files in a consistent and manageable way. I spent many years as an office manager for a charter-bus company, and here is where my hard-earned knowledge of how to use my word-processing program comes in:

I create a master folder for each individual author in my CJJASP Editing folder. That folder is inside the CJJasperson Writing folder in my dropbox account, which is what I write from at all times.
I never use the documents library on my computer for saving anything important. I use dropbox because my work is always saved into the cloud and I can access it from a computer at the public library if my computer is toast for any reason. My work is also always available on my desktop if the internet is down so I can save it to a thumb drive, and when internet access is reestablished, the files I have changed will be saved automatically. GoogleDocs is also free, and many people use it successfully.

Dropbox is free, gives you as much storage as a thumb drive and is always accessible.

I have an icon on my desktop that takes me directly to a standard library of files (menu) when I click on it. But I can access this menu on the main website from any computer by going to dropbox dot com and entering my email and password. Yes, it is password protected, and a good 6 to 8 combination of letters and numbers is best.

I use a specific sort of naming system. For any new master-folder, the file-name will ALWAYS be: Book_ AuthorName_script.doc . This is the main file folder for this book and this author! every thing pertaining to this book will be in this file in sub-folders.

There will be at least two sub-folders in this file, and there may be up to eight. (One for each step of the editing process.) Version control is critical, so proper naming of the files is absolutely essential.

First: The original raw manuscript in its entirety is saved in this folder. Lets use Joan Hazel’s wonderful book, Burdens of a Saint for example: I will name it this way:

Burdens of a Saint-JHazel-script (It will look like Book_ AuthorName_script.doc)

Word will automatically add the .doc as the extension.

There will be 2 folders for every step of the process this manuscript goes through with me: One folder will contain files from the author’s desk to me, and the other will be from my desk to the author.

Inside of the master file is a folder labeled: 1^st Round Edits JH (Book initials>version>author initials)

I will copy and save each individual chapter to a new document, and I will give them a specific name. Yes, I am separating each chapter out of the whole ms, but we will not lose their order because we have a reliable system for naming files and will ALWAYS use it!

First of all, be sure to save it as an actual Word DOCUMENT and not a Template. If you save it as a template, you will keep getting a warning the document is read only and it won’t let you save it.

I will do each chapter one at a time, saving them and closing them out. Any time I am confused as to what chapter I am supposed to be on, I look at the library of files to see what I have already saved, and go the next chapter. (Libraries are the menus you get when open “Save As” and are where you go to manage your documents, music, pictures, and other files. You can browse your files the same way you would in a folder, or you can view your files arranged by properties like date, type, and author. The picture below is of a Windows Explorer library.)

As I save each chapter, they will automatically sort themselves into the proper order as long as you name them this way:

Book title initials>Chapter # > author initials – it will look like this:

BOAS chapt 1 JH submitted.doc

This tells me: it is chapter 1 of Burdens of a Saint, by author Joan Hazel, and is the raw unedited version. This is important to save it this way, in case we need to refer back to it. This file will remain unaltered.

Each consecutive raw chapter will be named in this way and the list will look like this:

Inside BOAS beta 1^st Round Edits JH, I create a second folder, this one labeled: 1^st Round Edits CJJASP complete. It will be at the top of the list and will look like this:

These are the first edits of the individual chapters, with my comments and suggestions in the right-hand column, and are what I send to the author for their consideration. These I will name like this:

BOAS beta chapt 1 cjjasp edit 1.doc Again, each consecutive chapter will be named in this way, and the library will look the same as the one in the image above.

The Author will make the changes or not as they see fit, and will send me each corrected chapter back. When those chapters come back to me, that is the beginning of round 2. The files will be named with the number 2.

BOAS 2^nd Round Edits JH (sub-folder name for files submitted by author)

BOAS chapt 1 JH rnd 2.doc (document name for each document in the folder)

BOAS chapt 2 JH rnd 2.doc (see the pattern here?)

2^nd Round Edits CJJASP complete (folder name for files edited 2^nd round)

BOAS chapt 1 cjjasp 2^nd rnd edit.doc (and so on)

You, as an author, will create many versions of your manuscript. YOU MUST manage your versions with meticulous care, or you will lose files, have to rewrite sections you just wrote (and which were brilliant) or any number of horrible, irritating situations will arise.

These situations were not caused by your word processing program, so don’t blame Bill Gates. They were caused by you not knowing how to prevent them from happening.

But that’s not a problem now, right?

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

Tagged as fantasy, fiction, humor, literature, Microsoft Word, MS Word, Naming Files, The name of the beast, Version Control, word-processing, 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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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

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

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Tagged as adventure, fantasy, humor, injured vetrans, literature, Prosthetic limbs, VA hospitals, vegan lifestyle, Veterans of WWII, writing

September 2, 2013 · 8:49 am

What to do…what to do….

I found out today that the great Japanese artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki is retiring from making movies. His career has spanned over fifty years. Miyazaki attained international acclaim as a maker of anime feature films. He and Isao Takahata co-founded Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio. The success of Miyazaki’s films has been compared to that of Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park and American director Robert Zemeckis. To be honest–I LOVE his work.

I first heard of Miyazaki in 1986, when my ex husband bought a little VHS movie for our daughter, Meg, called Warriors of the Wind. It was a wonderful movie, and we watched it over and over, but it felt incomplete, as if we only had part of the film.

It turns out that was indeed the case: the true name of the movie was Kaze no Tani no Naushika, translated to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds. The movie tells the story of a young princess of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä (Shimamoto), who gets involved in a struggle with Tolmekia, a kingdom that tries to use an ancient weapon to eradicate a jungle of mutant giant insects. Nausicaä must stop the Tolmekians from enraging these creatures.

The underlying story is so powerful and is told so well that I was immediately hooked on Miyazaki’s work. According to Wikipedia, the most prominent themes of that movie are the anti-war and environmental focus of the film. (quote) “Nausicaä, the heroine, believes in the value of life regardless of its form and through her actions stops a war. Loy and Goodhew state there is no evil portrayed in the film, but the Buddhist roots of evil: greed, ill will and delusion. Fear is what drives the conflicts, the fear of the poisoned forest results in the greed and resentment. Nausicaä, besides from being a transformative force, leads people to understand and respect nature which is portrayed as a welcoming, spiritual, and restorative for those who enter it peacefully.^[6]“

Nausicaä’s commitment to love and understanding—even to the point of death—transforms the very nature of the conflict around her and changes the attitudes and the hearts of those whose stubborn adherence to their biased views have brought the conflict to the boiling point.

It is said that Miyazaki’s inspiration for Nausicaä sprang from the works of Ursula Le Guin‘s Earthsea, Brian Aldiss‘s Hothouse, Isaac Asimov‘s Nightfall, and J.R.R Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings.

All I know is his work in this movie is gripping, sweeping and superlative. My Tower of Bones series was originally written to be an anime based RPG, that was proposed but never built. When I began plotting the game, I had the great Final Fantasy style plots in my mind, and Miyazaki’s art and influence is clear to anyone who has played them as obsessively as I have. When the game fell through, I was so in love with the story and the characters that I HAD to make it into a book. In my mind, my characters are much like the ones in the poster to the left. Sadly, I’ve never been able to get a cover designed that reflects this.

Because of Miyazaki I have been a devoted fan of Anime and Manga since the 1980’s. That love of sweeping sagas where good triumphs over evil at the cost of great personal sacrifice drives my own work today.

Mr. Miyazaki, I will miss your brilliant work, but I will continue to to cherish those wonderful movies you have so diligently and carefully crafted for us over the years. I can only wonder what your poor heart is feeling now, with the ever-worsening, mindbogglingly horrific Fukushima disaster. My heart and my prayers are with the people of Japan and indeed with the Pacific Ocean as the same water that washes the shores of Japan also washes the coast of Washington State.

Miyazaki’s great works taught me that we are all just one small living, breathing world, and each one of us is responsible for making it better or worse.

I choose to make it better.

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Tagged as adventure, Anime, arts, fiction, Fukushima, hayao miyazaki, illustration, isao takahata, Japan, literature, Manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, warriors of the wind, writing

August 26, 2013 · 9:55 am

Madcap Moments of Literary Mayhem

This weekend I saw a hilarious post on Facebook, one pointing to an article at NYDaily.com that details the fatal-flaws in the eBook version of George R.R. Martin’s book, A Feast for Crows.

Now, I just want to say at the outset, the only book of his I’ve read was the book, A Game of Thrones. But that was a long time ago, when it first came out as a Science Fiction Book Club book of the month. I was not really that impressed with it. I found the book distinctly hard to follow, and nearly quit reading it several times.

But just because I don’t find his work to my taste does not mean I consider him to be a hack! On the contrary, Mr. Martin deserves every one of his many awards and good for him! This is a rough business, and I love it when people succeed as authors. There are many fine, popular authors out there whose books don’t ring my bells. My own work is certainly not to everyone’s taste, although I am sure it should be. (Insert Shameless Plug Here: buy my books, please.) (The buy-links are to the right, clearly labeled.) (Just sayin’.)

Needless to say, Mr. Martin’s publisher is one of the Big Boys (Bantam Books) and one would think SOMEONE would have caught these wonderful bloopers. The author put his faith in the publisher, and the publisher let him down.

***

There is the remote possibility these moments of literary mayhem could have been caused by a last-minute global change to the manuscript. If so, it is a good example of why we should never click “Replace All” when we discover a particular word we need to change. Instead we should take the time to see each appearance of the word, and determine whether or not to make that change individually.

But in this case, I don’t think that is the problem. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the words the blooper replaces. I think it is an OCR error (see number 5 below.)

***

What these images of the book from the NY Daily tell me is that formatting issues are common and are a hurdle the indie must overcome. If the big boys have problems with this, then formatting is a real skill set that we must develop, because we all compete on the same field, only we indies have fewer advantages.

There are a few simple ways we can avoid some of the more common issues:

1. Do not put extra empty spaces between your paragraphs. If it is a section break, make sure to put something there to indicate it: *** centered in the empty space will do the task of indicating the section break, and will not look ugly.

2. Make sure your page breaks are “hard” i.e. NOT made by repeatedly hitting the “enter” key. You must limit those empty spaces to less than three, preferably only one. Go to the ribbon at the top of your WORD page and use the “Insert” tab. With the cursor next to your chapter heading, click on “Insert Page Break”.

3. Do Not Use Drop Caps to begin your first paragraph, no matter how pretty they look in the print edition. They screw the heck out of eBook formatting, causing all the paragraph indents to go away, making the book nothing but a WALL of words.

4. Stick to standard serif fonts like Times New Roman, and make it a decent size, like 11 pt. Use NOTHING larger than 16 pt. and use that only for chapter headings.

5. Random inexplicable letter changes can be caused by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) errors when the uploader for Kindle or Smashwords converts the manuscript to PDF format. Converting it to PDF yourself first does not help, because the errors are hidden in the PDF. Thus you may find all the “p”s converted to ‘bl’s. (people becomes bleople.) I am not very knowledgeable about the WHY of this, but I have learned how to avoid it:

I always save my eBook ms in Rich Text Format (.rtf) and I NEVER upload a manuscript to eBook format that contains headers or footers. Remove the headers and footer BEFORE you upload to Kindle, Nook or Smashwords. I think this is what happened to A Feast of Crows. Headers and footers use OCR elements and this confuses the uploader program. My theory is: someone at Bantam forgot to remove the header before it was uploaded. But I could be wrong– this whole formatting thing is magic after all, and magic is an iffy science at best.

6. Comb your eBook ms for extra spaces at the end of paragraphs and remove them. I’ve been told this will eliminate the random “Words Spread Across The Page” problem.

7. DO NOT USE THE TAB key to indent your paragraphs!!! DON’T DO IT! Go to the ribbon at the top of the page and use the paragraph formatting option. Set the indent to 3 or 5 pt. But 3 is the optimal for me as a frequent eBook reader.

The bottom line is this: the indie must spend many long hours combing the ms for the random extra spaces, removing all the possible error producing elements before we upload it. THEN you must use the option Kindle and Nook both provide and spend more time seeing what the book actually looks like BEFORE you hit the publish button.

Unlike George R.R. Martin, you won’t be able to blame the big-name publisher if your book looks like the dog’s dinner when your friends buy their downloads. This is our curse. We indies only have ourselves to blame for our less than perfect efforts.