RealityBypass

     I’m a big fan of books in a series for some of the same reasons Jena is, I love to see the development of characters over time. One of my favorite series of all time is centered around the character Amelia Peabody, an irrepresible Victorian adventuress, archaeologist and amateur investigator. Elizabeth Peters writes tales of high adventure, campy romance and mystery with an egyptian flare. As a bonus, Peters has a PHD in Egyptology so there’s opportunity to learn true Egyptian lore in a fictional setting.

         The series is written in  journal style, penned by Amelia (with inserts from Peters “the editor”), so the reader hears her irreverant and hysterical commentary and perspectives on life, feminism, men, marriage and archaeology. She’s a biased narrator, of course, but easy to relate to because of Amelia’s dauntless courage and unbreakable loyalty to her family. Peters cast of characters steadily expands throughout the series, as the family grows. 

         The best joy of the series is its scope; which has spanned 19 books and covered the years 1884 to 1920. We first meet Amelia and Radcliffe Emerson as they meet, fall in love, and eventually marry. As the books progress Amelia and Radcliffe’s children are born, grow up and survive adventures alongside their parents. Currently the children are grown, married and the third generation of the Emerson clan has entered the scene. I’ve not seen many books, particularly mystery series, where the adventures continue after the main characters have proverbially “settled down.” I’d love to see some more! It’s sad how many authors of books and movies can’t seem to decide what to do with a character once he’s found his true love! I’d love to see more, so if you know any, send the list my way.

        And check out Ameliapeabody.com, particularly the link From Amelia. Some of Amelia’s best “witticisms” are listed on the page.  
~Kris

I am a big fan of Jim Butcher.  I’ll just state that and get it out of the way now.  In particular I adore his Dresden files series.  This has been a matter of great amusement for several folks that know me.  In one conversation it came up that I was reading, Small Favor, number ten in Butcher’s series.  The friend I was talking to is a Robert Jordan fan and found it odd that I refused to read all 13 volumes of the Wheel of Time series, but yet I’d devoured ten Dresden books and have plans to accquire any others.  (The latest news I read on Butcher’s site (www.jim-butcher.com) was that he was signed through book fourteen.)  This set me to pondering why I was looking forward to more books in one series and running screaming from more in another.

The first difference that comes to mind is genre.  WoT is High Fantasy and Dresden is Urban Fantasy.  UF has a tendency to be a bit lighter in tone and a faster read, so I believe that contributes to my enjoyment of the set.

Next is point of view.  Many high fantasy series use an omnicient point of view where the story switches around between characters allowing the reader to see the story from many eyes and see many aspects of what’s going on.  This is interesting because of the complexity offered, but can again make for a slower read.  I find I tend to have favorite characters and I groan when their thread is abandoned for half of a book and I have to wait to pick it up again.  A first person or limited third doesn’t offer as many viewpoints and therefore fewer threads and complexity, but it tends to be easier to sink into the character point of view and follow through.  If you like the main character this will keep you well and truly hooked, and if you don’t…well, you don’t keep buying more books hoping that the threads for the characters you do like will show up in this one.

 Another issue that I have is character growth.  I like seeing characters change and grow and remember the mistakes that have shaped them.  In some series the character seems to freeze in time and repeat the same mistakes over and over again, never learning or becoming better people.  It’s fine for characters to make mistakes, it’s actually part of what makes a character well rounded and relatable with, but to make the same mistake ad nauseum? That strikes me as being stupid, not funny and not a good character arc or series plot.

I also prefer series where each book is a contained episode.  They all connect together and things that chronologically happened before will be referred to, or make a difference to what follows, but each book has a starting place a plot arc, climax and closing.  The continual quest that just keeps going and going…I have patience for about 5 books and then I’m generally done. 

I can think of other things, but these top my list.   What about you, gentle reader?  What aspects will keep you reading, and what will drive you away?

 ~J

    I’m planning to get my PHD in Spanish poetry, which always stirs stares of shock, dismay and horror from listeners. Poetry is generally described as “emo depressed people” scribbling down angst in esoteric metaphors that don’t really make sense. Or, I regularly hear the complaint, “The author really didn’t mean all that we read into the poem” or, “Poetry is just so… flowery and unreal. No one really feels like that.” Or my favorite, “I just don’t like poetry.” 

       ¡Au contraire, mes amies! Some of our most oft-quoted phrases come directly from the world’s poets. And frankly, if you like music… you like poetry. I think some of the ‘fear’ of poetry comes from the stereotyped idea that understanding the art is best left for the literature einsteins of the world, or that it’s for those weird artsy freaks and not for the normal person. Only “smart people” get poetry, I’ve heard. That’s such a shame. There’s so much of our daily lives that can be found in poetry, it just takes letting go of the fear you won’t understand and realizing that there isn’t a correct answer to what poetry means. The only answer is “What does it mean to you?”

Here are some of my favorite lines from poems, and I’d love to hear any more y’all can come up with. There’s so many, I just had to pick a few!:

• Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye. could frame thy fearful symmetry (William Blake)
• Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas)
• Their’s not to make reply, Their’s not to reason why, Their’s but to do and die: Into the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred. (Tennyson)
• A cry of defiance, and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, The people will waken and listen to hear, The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, And the midnight message of Paul Revere. (Longfellow)
• Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky, With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high! Blood-red were his spurs i’ the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat, When they shot him down on the highway, Down like a dog on the highway, And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat. (Noyes)
• Que es mi barco mi tesoro, que es mi dios la libertad,  mi ley, la fuerza y el viento, mi única patria, la mar (Song of the Pirate, Espronceda). (And so my boat is my treasure, my only god liberty, my law, my strength is the wind, and my only allegience the sea)    
• Oh pequeño emperador sin orbe, conquistador sin patria, mínimo tigre de salón, nupcial sultán del cielo  (Neruda, Ode to the cat) (Oh tiny emperor without kingdom, minimal tiger of the parlor, sensual sultan of heaven…)    
• La princesa está triste.. Qué tendrá la princesa? Los suspiros se escapan de su boca de fresa, que ha perdido la risa, que ha perdido el color. La princesa está pálida en su silla de oro; (Dario) (The princess is sad, why is she sad? Her sighs escape from her young lips that have lost their laughter, have lost their color. The princess is pale, sitting on her golden throne)
• Caronte, yo seré un escándolo en tu barco. Mientras las otras sombras recen, giman, o lloren… yo iré como una alondra cantando por el río (Ibarbourou, Rebel) (Charon, I’d be a scandal on your boat. While the other shades plead, moan or cry, I would go singing like a dove along your river).

~Kris

      Why is it that adults cannot use basic grammar? I know that when you get into the nitpicky details of ‘who or whom’ and transitive and intransitive verbs, that’s not the realm of your average adult. But have we completely lost the art of proper writing in this media world? What I don’t understand is the fact that people can speak perfectly well, but when they try to put something on paper it begins to look as if they’ve barely been taught their own language.

        I see this mostly on match.com. I’ve read the profiles of educated people: engineers, doctors, salesmen, lawyers… and the level of grammatical incompetency astounds me. I can forgive the occasional their vs they’re or it’s vs its, but the disregard for typos, capitalization, basic spelling rules and sentence order is amazing. Once upon a time, an educated man or woman was expected to be able to write cohesive, intelligent letters. Is it the speed of e-mail communication that makes us hurry to finish?

     Some examples, so you can weep with me (punctuation errors were intentionally maintained):

• She was gentle, but she let you know when she was’t happy with.
• Could I please request you to say a pray for the food crisis it is really bad.
• A friend of mine on the other side if Houstons wife has a horse
• No worrys about late replys.
• I would like to find a girl that is like me in interests but different in other ways so that we complement each others, no real specific just somone who like to live life to fullest.
• well someone who is hopefully a goth. a female of course.
• im just a simple man who trys to live life to the fullest
• just the same as me and likes to take care of them selves and clean and neat person, who likes kids and likes to explore life and all that is around us.
• I’M A PRETTY COOL GUY TO HANG OUT WITH. (Yes, the entire profile was all in capitals!)

~ Kris

      I’ve learned a lot about the writing process since starting on Whispers from the Grave. A good deal of what I’ve learned is due to my co-author, and for that I thank her a great deal. If you haven’t tried writing with someone else, it’s definitely worth it! You learn your own personal pitfalls and quirks pretty quickly. But I thought I’d list some of the things I’ve learned, that have helped me, I hope, become a better writer.

• Stop worrying just write! I used to be a ‘first draft’ perfectionist, and I’d get so caught up worrying about where things are going and whether everything is conjugated correctly that I’d lose the journey. Jena was always reminding me at the beginning to stop worrying about the details, and it’s made me a lot better at writing.
• Get rid of adverbs! I never would have realized this if it hadn’t been for reading Stephen King’s On Writing. And looking at my prose, it’s really funny how unnecesary adverbs are!
• Start “in medias res”, ie… right into the action. Hook people immediately. I learned this from my creative writing teacher in high school, and have been following it ever since. He wasn’t a great teacher, in fact… he was pretty bad, however this was one of the things that stuck with me.
• Use dialogue for characterization. I can’t recall where this came from, but it’s a great thing to know.
• Put your characters into great conflict. I’ve learned to pay attention to which books bore me and which catch my interest, and it all comes from the conflict. It seems obvious, but it does have to be put down here.
• The process of getting published, where to look to do so, and how to find an agent. This sort of thing had never even crossed my mind until Jena taught me about it. I think I probably would have looked at all of the hurdles to jump and freaked out, but she’s showed me how to wade through the process.
• Treat it like a job… I’m the first to admit to being lazy and a little ADD. But making myself treat it like a job has been an amazing awakening in actually completing stories. I love to rush to ‘get to the good parts’ but I’ve learned to slow down and enjoy the process.
• If you are feeling blocked, just sit down and write. The movie Finding Forester taught me this, and once I tried it… it really worked! Sure you may throw out half of what you wrote, but you’ve learned something so it’s never a loss!

       So, I’m sure there’s more to add to the list, but I thought it good to list my own journey. And, of course, to put some kudos out to the authors who have inspired me, the authors I’ve learned from, and to my co-author. I think I would have certainly been just writing stories to my computer, and never really thought being published was possible if it hadn’t been for her.

~Kristen

   I just read Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams. I am currently owned by two cats, so a friend gave me the book and said I’d like it. Williams brilliantly created a believable world and society for the cats, complete with their own language, laws and mythology. I especially liked the idea of having a public name, a heart name and then a tail name. The tail name was the deepest identity every cat seeks, to find his place in the world. The tension between ‘house cats’ and ‘wild cats’ was also believable politically. The stories songs and stories Williams created for the cats were amusing as well, all showing a very unique feline view of the world. (IE they spoke of the innate superiority of the cat, especially in comparison with “growlers”). I think Williams did particularly well using unfamiliar terminology in a way that I never was jarred by an imaginary word. It was easy to figure out what the comparable english word would be.

     My only complaints with the book was the overarching sub-theme that house cats were ‘not really cats’. When Tailchaser finally discovers the object of his quest, the entire lesson he learns is how housecats have lost their identity and purpose. That bothered me a little. I also didn’t like some of the redundancy near the end of the book. Tailchaser and his companions kept ending up back in The Mound and being recaptured. After a while, it started to get old and I wanted to shout “Just go get help!” The end had a strong element of Deux Ex Machina as well, as Tailchaser discovers the identity of a lost God. I would have preferred for the character himself to solve the problem.

    All together, I enjoyed the book and really enjoyed the characterization. The mad cat Eatbugs was by far my favorite character, with his strange ravings and comical nature. I also liked the details in the characterization of Pouncequick, from his squeaking when hunting to his kittenish energy.

~ Kristen

    Well now that Wizard of Oz is almost over, I’m back to having more time to keep up with blogs. Woohoo! I’ve been helping to direct our school’s Spring Musical which has been taking up a lot of time and creative energy (15+ hours a week on top of the 40 hour work day! Yes, I am crazy!). The kids are really learning to own their roles and our Lion, who has been my personal project, is finally learning how to step beyond just what’s written on the page to adding his own unique touch to the role. He had the audience in stiches with his whimpers and shivers. It was a great joy to help the students learn about the acting process.

         What does this have to do with writing? Everything! Watching movies and live theatre shows an entirely new way to use words to create images. In a book, we write so the reader can create a mental image. When you add the visual element of theatre, you can see just what image those words create. It’s a great exercise. The same goes for music and viewing pictoral art. Anything that inspires creativity or stirs emotion is a great place to gain ideas.

           I’ll confess a secret: I’m a frustrated artist! In the genetic dice roll, my sister got all the painting and drawing talent. I started writing in order to express what I had been trying unsuccessfully to paint! My mother has one bedroom full of my sister and brother’s artwork, she had to look for 2 months to find anything of MY painting that she kept! (And it was a pseudo collage, I traced different images from books and put them together, then colored with cray-pas…) Hah. Alas, It’s hard to frame a story, it just doesn’t look the same!

        But the joy of theatre is that you can paint an image… with people! You can tell the talented artists what you want to see, and they create it for you. Then, you bring it to life with color, music and movement. I love that about theatre. And it teaches you how words relate to visual images, which is great for novel writing.

~Kris

      

I’ve been working on a science fiction short story which brought an interesting question in our writer’s group. I decided to go with a male protagonist who is a submarine pilot. I chose to make the submarine’s captain a woman. Her name is Naomi and I haven’t gotten very far with her characterization, save that I wanted a softer edge to her personality. I wanted a woman who smiles, laughs, jokes with her crew and also can be a tough disciplinarian if needed.

One of the women in the group asked me, “Well… she seems too flirty and happy, I mean wouldn’t the crew mutiny?” What that translates to is… if she’s not this hard-as-nails ice queen would men actually listen to her?

That’s a scary question! Essentially it’s bringing up a subtle belief that if a woman doesn’t act like a man, she’s not a good leader. But if you examine leadership in the real world and literature, men don’t act ‘no nonsense’ and ‘emotionless’. You look at George Bush whose sense of humor is one of the most memorable traits of his leadership. Bush is a man who can laugh at his own mistakes, joke with his cabinet at the same time as directing the nation in one of the most difficult times in our history. Do we complain that Bush is too ‘flirty’ and he should be more serious? No. (Okay so we complain about his unintentional comical errors… but we never actually complain when he laughs about them with us!)

What about in literature or movies? You look at the series Firefly (oh so short lived…) and you see a Captain who can joke with his crew, tease them and relate to them, while still keeping a clear control of his ship. But then with Kathryn Janeway of Star Trek Voyager, whenever she ‘lets her hair down’ figuratively in the series, fans begin to criticize how friendly she gets with her crew? Excuse me?

So why is it that we believe that men can lead with humor and familiarity, but women have to be austere and aloof? Why is Bush allowed to joke when Margaret Thatcher is expected to be severe and humorless? That’s a question I certainly am not sure how to answer, but I intend to explore the idea of a female leader who leads a coed crew without sacrificing warmth and femininity. Maybe it’ll fall on it’s face, but I hope not.

~Kris

Well Whispers is now completed and making the rounds of agents and/or publishers in turn. We’re hoping to beat the rejection odds! I read that most books go through at least 12, if not more before publication! I have been enjoying the feedback I’ve been getting from friends and students who have been reading the book.

But now that Whispers from the Grave is finished, just what will I do with my time? Laze out by the pool catching some rays? Play some more City of Heroes so I can finally hit level 50? Dance, cheer and do a jig that it’s finished?

My, those sound nice… free evenings? But no, Jana and I are already 30 pages into our next book Shaman’s Call. One of us should be posting excerpts here soon. What’s the moral of this post? Take some time off for fun, a couple weeks to unwind after finishing a project but then it’s time to start on the next one. After all, your odds of breaking into publishing are a lot better if you have several different books out for consideration! Shaman’s is already a lot of fun, a more lighthearted and adventurous tone than the politically charged and dramatic world of the vampires in Whispers.

So stay tuned!

~ Kris

A flare is coming… A time when the magic will take over for a space of days instead of hours. For Kate Daniels a flare is a thrill and a terror as it extends her abilities but also those of the populace around her. But when a witch coven goes missing, a homeless girl ends up Kate’s temporary ward, gods walk the earth and the Beast Lord feeds her chicken soup it’s a bit much even for a kick butt mercenary like Kate to handle.

I adore how Kate is written as she’s a good balance that makes her feel very real. She has needs and wants and sometimes completely goofs up, despite everything. Sometimes she looks at all the facts and gets it wrong and then works as hard as she can to fix it. She’s loyal to her friends, even if that mouth of hers is going to be the death of her.

Magic Burns is the second of the Kate Daniels books and picks up where the first left off with Kate serving as a liaison between the Merc Guild and the local Order and doing her best to cover two mortgages and keep herself fed. In Kate’s world technology and magic hang in a balance that shifts pretty much on a whim, but every seven years there is a flare when the magic is high and stays that way. Strange things tend to happen during flares and this one is no different as a Celtic god tries to cross over into this world and Kate allies with the the necromancers and the Beast Lord, with whom she already has a strange relationship, part friend, part romantic interest and part chew toy. In this book we also start learning more about Kate’s past and just what makes her so potent. It’s enough information to both satisfy and start the search for more answers.

The Magic books are well written, though I feel like Burns is stronger, the writing team of Andrews having learned from the first book and tightened up the few stylistic issues that I had. I’m thrilled over the result and look forward to the third book due out sometime next year…I hate waiting!

~J