Scribbles and Ink Stains

Beautiful People - Tip Brighton

2012-01-25T06:08:00.000-08:00

After a hiatus which seemed much longer than it probably was, Georgie and Sky have returned with their Beautiful People series. I have already done Tip, but as he is my main character and The White Sail's Shaking is on the mind (approximately seven more chapters left until the end!), I have decided to put January's list of questions to him. Enjoy!

tip brighton, midshipman

1. If his house burned down and he were left with nothing but the clothes on his back, what would he do? Where would he go?

Tip's first reaction would be total shock, and then he would probably be sick; he tends to be or at least to feel ill in the wake of any sudden news, good or bad. As for where he would go, considering that he considers the Enterprize at least as much his home as the house in Ryton, he would go back to sea and try starting over.

2. Is he happy with where he is in life, or would he like to move on?

He is happier with his position now than he has ever been before; he likes the Enterprize and takes pride in serving under Decatur, and he has purpose in his life for the first time. If he had the ability to go back and keep his family from placing him in the navy, he wouldn't do it. At the same time, however, there are things about his present position that he would change if he could.

3. Is he well-paid?

Tip gets a midshipman's wages - that is to say, not much.

4. Can he read?

Oh, he can read. He is perfectly capable of understanding the words on the page. Does he read is an entirely different matter.

5. What languages does he speak?

English. And...English. Tip was never much good at languages (he was never much good at anything in school), though he can read a smattering of Greek and Latin and speak a few words of French. None of these are of any help to him on the Enterprize.

6. What is his biggest mistake?

Just one? That would be difficult, as Tip seems always to be making mistakes. He has a tendency to stick his nose into other people's business, to land himself in situations where he is not wanted, and to try to correct things and thereby make them worse. And the one time he tried not to do all these things, it resulted in a man's death. I believe Tip would say that that was his biggest mistake.

7. What did he play with most as a child?

Tip has always been most comfortable out-of-doors; inside he is too much of a bull in a china shop, especially as with the amount of fine pieces his mother owns, she could start a china shop. As a child he played mostly with whatever came to hand: sticks, pebbles, mud, water, seed pods, the whole shebang. He often built fortifications in his mother's vegetable garden and played out battles of the Revolutionary War (in which the British always lost, with no regard for historical accuracy). For a while he also played with a very ugly toad who lived near the cucumber patch, whom he simply called "Toad."

This is why he wasn't the one to name Scipio.

8. What are his thoughts on politics?

Tip has never thought much upon the subject of politics. He is fiercely patriotic, and now fiercely pro-Navy, but the inner workings of the government mean little to him unless they impinge upon either of these things.

9. What is his expected life time?

Well, this is a sneaky question! I'll only say that Tip hopes to have a good long life, but that considering how things are going at present, he may very well not get it.

10. If he were falsely accused of murder, what would he do? How would he react?

He has been, actually, and he responded in a typical Tip Brighton manner: flying into a temper. He was, however, clear-headed enough to actually give a defense of his innocence instead of merely getting angry.

Let Us Be Elegant or Die

2012-01-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

The immortal words of Louisa May Alcott (or Amy March, to be precise) ring true for most women - hence bobby pins, curling irons, corsets (!), and high-heels. Most of them look a lot like torture devices to me. But torture or not, fashion has always played an interesting role in society and, of course, in literature as well. It is one of the things that can be used to distinguish the various cultures of a fantasy world, while in historical fiction it creates an authentic atmosphere.

A few days ago Rachel posted about the styles she has been creating for her novel The Scarlet-Gypsy Song, and as it seemed to me like a good idea, I thought I would follow suit. Pun rather intended. So without further ado, here is a glimpse of the fashion in my most recently completed and my in-progress novels.

wordcrafter

Justin isn't exactly a fashionable sort of fellow; he is comfortable in his blue jeans and sweatshirts, and suits are agony for him. In Tera, however, the styles are quite different. Ethan's people are horse-centered and the men tend to spend much of the day on horseback, so their clothing has been adapted to that purpose. The tunics are of light fabric to allow for easy movement, and the sleeves can be bound back if necessary in order to give the wearer fuller use of his hands; sashes are worn around the waist, tied to the left if the wearer is still a boy, to the right if they have reached manhood. Breeches are padded along the inner leg for comfort while riding (the Horsemen use neither saddles nor blankets), and they are tied about halfway down the calf, above the wearer's boots.

As for the women, the only thing about their clothing that really strikes Justin on his arrival in Tera is the veils. Every girl past the age of ten covers the lower half of her face, and only her father and eventually her husband is allowed to see behind it. All colors except white are acceptable for unmarried women; white is worn by the married women alone, setting them apart.

the white sail's shaking

And with this we go from fantasy to historical fiction. I must admit that the fashion here is much simpler than it was in Wordcrafter: all but one of the characters wear uniforms. Even here, though, one can add spice. The distinctions between ranks was reflected in the amount of trim and the number - and position - of epaulets on the uniform. Midshipman, for instance, were fairly plain with blue cloth and gold buttons, although in the American Navy they managed to get gold trim on their hats as well (as far as I can tell, the Royal Navy was much duller and didn't allow their midshipman such frivolities). Lieutenants had a single epaulet on the left shoulder, although if they were commanding a ship, they switched it to the right - this would have been the case with Stephen Decatur during his command of the Enterprize. Captains got the distinction of having two epaulets and a lot more gold banding on their uniforms. (Sailing masters didn't get any gold at all - poor them.)

All this is pretty generic, but I doubt that men would have dressed in exactly the same manner simply because they were peers. Tip Brighton and Charlie Bent are both midshipmen, but Charlie, being by far the more refined of the two, has much more "frill" to his outfit; Tip is just a backwoods young man from a none-too-wealthy family, uncomfortable enough in his uniform itself without adding decorations to it.

So there you have the styles in Wordcrafter and The White Sail's Shaking. Naturally it is possible to overdo in this area; but then, it's possible to overdo in any area. You can always go too far and burden the reader with unnecessary and unwanted details, and you can also show the reader nothing and thereby rob them of the ability to experience that element of the story. A good thing to do, therefore, is to create as you write (or before you write, depending on how you like to plan) and let your imagination run, and then later you can edit the descriptions as you like: move them, space them out, polish them, or even delete them if you find you no longer want or need them.

don't forget to enter the new year contest!

Romance

2012-01-16T10:54:00.001-08:00

Romance. It takes up a large majority of the Christian book market, even those that are placed under a different genre (as you may have noticed if you've glanced at the novels labeled "historical fiction"). For those writers who find such books sappy or simply poor imitations of Jane Austen's classic works, it can be tempting to flee romance altogether and to scoff at the idea of writing it. But the fact of the matter is that most stories, particularly ones with female main characters, will end up having some degree of romance in them, and writers must take this into account.

Over on her blog, authoress Rachel Coker recently talked about her reasons for including romance in her novel Interrupted, due to release in February. And, interestingly enough, they were pretty much the reasons that prompted me to do the same with The Soldier's Cross. Originally I resisted the idea of having there be any romance connected with the main character; I didn't want my story to end up being just another romance under the Christian label. But in the end I did it - and not because I knew readers would want that element and that they would hate me if the book didn't have a happy ending. There was in fact one basic reason behind my decision: a writer cannot leave his or her main character at the same place in the end as they were in the beginning. This is especially true for female protagonists like Fiona, who start out the story alone and vulnerable - "uncovered" in the biblical sense of having no male protection. If you leave your character in this position at the end, you leave questions unanswered.

Perhaps one reason why some writers balk at the thought of bringing romance into their stories is that they think of it in its stereotypical form. The hero meets the heroine, there is immediate attraction but seemingly insurmountable obstacles, lots of tension and angst and butterflies in the stomach, the obstacles suddenly give way, hero marries heroine and they live happily ever after. This is the usual formula for romance novels (there are, after all, only six plots in the world) and it is no wonder that some writers shy away from it. I even read a novel a while ago where a character stated that it is impossible for anyone to be in love if they don't have the usual butterflies. But the fact of the matter is that this is not how romance has to play out, especially in novels where it is not the focus of the plot.

Take, for instance, Rosemary Sutcliff. Many or most of her novels deal primarily with themes of friendship, duty, and honor, and yet she also incorporates romance in a refreshing way. Instead of coming packed with angst and emotion, the romance between the young man and the young woman is often more implicit than explicit. The reader is given to understand that the characters love each other; no great show is needed. In Sutcliff's novel Simon, the protagonist only needs to be with the girl in a few scenes for it to be clear that there is an understanding between them, which Sutcliff then establishes in the end.

There are without a doubt wrong ways of bringing romance into a story - too many to list. But there is no one right way of doing it, as evidenced by Sutcliff's approach; she did not tread the well-worn path of romance, and in the end she produced a much more realistic take on love than is usually found in fiction. Every couple in real life is different, and couples in novels ought to be different as well. At the outset ignore, as best you can, the popular or classics romances of fiction, even such enjoyable ones as Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet or Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre. Consider your hero and your heroine, who they are, how they think, and how they emote. Think about backstory and how it might affect the manner in which they love. Are they the type to love passionately or to love quietly? Does the romance need to be blatant, or can it be a quiet understanding? If you are writing historical fiction, don't dismiss the cultural norms or forget how the people would have acted. If you're writing fantasy, remember that every culture has those norms and try to incorporate them. There are so many variables to take into account, and these are what will make the romance unique.

There was an anxious strain in her voice, though she was evidently trying to conceal it, and it sent a warm, almost lazy contentment through Tip like the sunshine he had been dozing in. She did care, and though the thought did not thrill him as her kiss had, it pleased him—and somehow that was more satisfying.

- the white sail's shaking

Imago Dei

2012-01-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a book (whaddya know?) called Noah's Three Sons. It is the first in The Doorway Papers, a series of essays on theology and anthropology by a Canadian named Arthur C. Custance, who is, I gather, not very well known. Probably the reason is that he thinks so very much outside the box, and that while I have thus far found him very orthodox, he challenges the norms of biblical interpretation. In Noah's Three Sons he traces God's plan of redemption through the lines of Shem, Ham, and Japheth and the impact that those three families (Semitic, Hamitic, and Indo-European) have had throughout the history of Mankind. While I will admit up front that I don't agree with all his theories, his major point is profound and well worth considering.

It is Custance's contention that Man has a threefold nature (not surprising, perhaps, when it is considered that Man was made in the image of a triune God) and lives in three realms: the spiritual, the physical, and the intellectual. He further argues that each son of Noah was entrusted by God with a particular responsibility relating to that - Shem, to Man's spiritual need; Ham, to the physical; and Japheth, to the intellectual. I could hardly do justice in one post to Custance's arguments in support of this, which span about 300 pages, but a cursory look at history tells in favor of it. Consider: the three major religions of the world (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) are all Semitic in origin. It has been discovered that the vast majority of basic (and ingenious) inventions were created by Hamitic people, who, Custance postulates, were the first to spread and subdue the earth. And philosophy was cultivated by races of the Indo-European stock, most notably the Greeks.

Custance does not try to say that individuals of each stock can only focus on that one part of their lives. But he shows the way each race as a whole has carried the responsibility for the part of Man's nature that was entrusted to it, and further shows how the relations between Shem, Ham, and Japheth down the ages have been used as a vehicle for the workings of God. In laying out his arguments, too, Custance bears witness to the glory of God's prime creation, Man, even as he has been corrupted by sin. It is the belief of some that Christianity - or any religion at all - robs Man of his greatness; but while it is true that one of the basic doctrines of Christianity is that we are nothing outside of Christ, yet it is also true that in another way, Christianity exalts Man more than any other religion or "non-religion". He is created in the Image of God. He is a little lower than the angels, but crowned with glory and honor. He is capable of unimaginable things, good and, fallen as he now is, bad. He is a creative genius. His soul was made for God. He lives in time, but God has set eternity in his heart. It was for Man, that creation which God pronounced "Very good," that Christ was slain before the foundations of the world.

Man is all this, and more. Day to day it is difficult to see; one does not easily look at a stranger and remember that the image of God resides in them. Sin has done its corrupting work, and continues to do it. But the difficulty does not lessen the reality of the fact. Sin is not of the essence of Man, and by that I mean that when it has been stripped away, Man does not cease to be Man. Oh, no! In His essence Jesus was Man, but he was not sinful. Man as created is a glorious being, and even now that glory, derived from His Maker, remains.

O LORD, our LORD, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!

- psalm 8

There I am the Expert

2012-01-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

"But people? Their hopes, their aspirations...
There I am the expert."
- Emma (2009)

This weekend my family and I were on a short road trip, and the drive afforded me an opportunity to gather some names. You see, I have a terrible time coming up with surnames for random characters. And I've found that it is necessary to be able to do so for books like The White Sail's Shaking, as extremely minor characters who may or may not need to be named often pop up in one scene or another. Thus, I have started a notebook in which to collect names as I come across them. I found six or seven during this trip, and I thought it would be fun to take them and try to form an idea of what sort of person would have each name.

horne

A teacher or a doctor. Middle-aged and stocky with thick sandy hair (baldness is a long way off) and perhaps sideburns; he has pale blue eyes and his eyesight not being the best in consequence, he wears strong glasses. His suit is usually grey and he sometimes carries a cane with an engraved silver head. He likes to jog and his shoes do not always match his suit; his passion, however, is the study of medicine - its history, development, and practical use. Although of a decidedly no-nonsense turn of character, he is not a bad sort and quite knowledgeable in his field.

winslow

Winslow is a man of about thirty, dark-haired and -eyed, always with a black suit, an impeccable cravat (his manservant is especially good at cravats), and a silver watch that doesn't work but which looks like an antique (don't ask if it is, and don't ask him the time). He comes from a rich family, but their wealth is a new development; his grandfather began to amass it and then his father's successful speculation increased the family's standing still more. Winslow has a head for business, but I daresay the speculation will ruin him.

rhyne

A rough fellow with a strong accent (and a strong smell). Hugely blond, he keeps some of his hair and his beard plaited and on special occasions will grease the braids with some manner of fat. Rhyne falls into the category of "brawn," not brains; his life revolves around being paid and sitting in his favourite tavern until the wee hours of the morning. He works on docks and has all his life. I wouldn't get on his bad side (which is most of him), especially after his first few pints at the aforementioned tavern.

awtrey

Miss Genevieve Awtrey. Miss Awtrey is a small young lady - mouse-like, in fact - but her brunette hair has definite red highlights and so does her character, once you get to know her. Her features are pale (except for her mouth, which is too small and red) and distinctly pointed; she has light freckles and very grey eyes. She is not very pretty at first glance, particularly because of her habit of wearing a shade of grey that makes her look washed-out, but she does have character. She rides well and enjoys hawking with the other ladies, but she also likes reading poetry and Shakespeare aloud, paints landscapes well, and can embroider passably. The piano forte, however, is her Achilles' heel. (Actually, this young lady will probably make her way into one of my stories at some point.)

moreland

Moreland is one of those dark, brooding hero-types - the Count-of-Monte-Cristo-vampire kind. Of course he has black hair and eyes and shows no emotion (except maybe when his eggs are done improperly), but contrary to his staffs' belief, this is not owing to any childhood tragedy; he's always been like that. I think he never got over the annoyance of being born. However, he consoles himself passably by spending his days hunting with his three dogs, in making plans for improvement to his house (which he never puts into action), and in importing wine from the Continent. Tough life, isn't it?

New Year Contest

2011-12-29T06:32:00.000-08:00

So, since the idea of a contest aroused an enthusiastic response, Jenny and I have decided to go ahead and host one! It will run through the month of January, opening January 1 and closing at the end of the month. Here's how it will work:

wordcount

Each entry must be 200 words or less. Hopefully those of you who expressed worry about having time to devote to writing will find this doable. Also, don't panic - you're not expected to tell a whole story in such a few words.

subject

The theme will be first impressions. This can be a character's first impression of another character, of a thing, of an animal... Think of it as you introducing a new subject, whether animate or inanimate, to the reader.

quality

Writing styles differ, so don't try to fit your entry into a specific style. Bethany asked about prose versus poetry; in general we would prefer prose, but if you can write poetry skilfully, go ahead! Make sure to check your spelling and polish your grammar, and all such lovely technical things.

rules and regulations

Entries will be limited to two per person. Obviously, keep it clean; we'll be posting the winning entries (as long as the authors don't mind), so they have to be ones we're comfortable putting up. You may write in any genre.

prizes!

After the contest closes, Jenny and I will choose first place and second place winners. First place winner will receive one copy of each of our novels, The Shadow Things and The Soldier's Cross, as well as a critique of the first chapter of their novel. Second place winner will also received a critique of the first chapter of their novel.

If you have any questions, be sure to ask. And if not - start writing!

Possible Contest

2011-12-27T10:46:00.000-08:00

The sad thing about Christmas is that it's over so soon. There are just four more days left of 2011, and then 2012 will be upon us - shock and horror! But with the approach of the new year, Jenny and I are considering hosting a writing contest here on Scribbles as a farewell to the old, all hail the new. The entries would be short stories of some kind and the prizes would probably be copies of our books (The Shadow Things and The Soldier's Cross) as well as a critique of the first chapter of your novel. The details are still being hashed out, but we wanted to know what you readers think of the idea. Would you like to participate in a writing contest?

let us know!

art from debbiehodge.com via pinterest

The Hound of Heaven

2011-12-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

The funny thing about breaks is that they always seem to be busier than "normal" life. This week my inspiration has been divided pretty evenly between The White Sail's Shaking (the first draft has passed Wordcrafter in length - much excitement) and devising pretty ways of wrapping packages, but I did want to bend my mind toward a Christmas blog post. Being late to get around to it means that I have already seen quite a number of Christmas-themed posts, most of which deal (naturally) with Jesus Christ's birth. Therefore I am going to depart from the usual and post just a small portion of the long, lovely poem The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson.

the hound of heaven

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

... Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught," He said,
"And human love needs human meriting,
How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay rhe dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms.
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for the at home;
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

Halts by me that footfall;
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstreched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

I am not usually a fan of poetry, as I know I've mentioned before. And yet this one captured at least an element of the majesty, the satisfaction, the glory of God in His redemptive work - the power of His grace that pursues unhurriedly and deliberately until it has gained its object. The grace of God is omnipotent, not impotent. Jesus Christ is King, the King of Glory. In this season we remember His incarnation and birth in Bethlehem; but let us not focus on the Child and lose sight of the Man, the righteous Man who has redeemed His people and sat down on the right hand of God in majesty.

Dust from the Pages

2011-12-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

As Jenny observed over at The Penslayer, we're halfway through December already. December of 2011. Whoda thunk? On the one hand it feels like this year has whipped by in a crazy blur, but at the same time, 2010 seems very far away. Lord willing, before you know it 2012 will be here (and The Hobbit will be coming out!).

In 2010, The Soldier's Cross was published and I upped my - what do you call it? - "online presence." Part of that involved actually using the splendid site Goodreads instead of just having an account, so 2011 has been one of the few years in which I've kept track of the books I have read. I didn't set a goal, liking to go through books at my own speed or lack thereof, and so the quantity wasn't as great as some of you, but I did wander into the worlds of some excellent books. I read some classics; some brilliant fantasies; a heap of rereads that didn't make it on the Goodreads list (Jane Austen, mostly); and some histories and other nonfiction. I didn't enjoy everything, but it was a nice, eclectic year. Here's a taste.

Away back in January I commenced my education proper in Sherlock Holmes. He makes for easy reading, so I have now read all the novels and most of the short stories (having already seen the Jeremy Brett TV-series, I knew how those ones ended and only read the ones I hadn't watched). I read Mutiny on the Bounty at last and just this month read the second in the trilogy, Men Against the Sea; I also added to my collection of sea novels such books as The Line upon a Wind (lift with your legs!), the 1950s novel The Tall Ships, and about the first hundred pages of Master and Commander...until I determined that it is most distinctly a man's novel. I met Jack Easy some time last year, and Hornblower awaits me after I've completed my own novel.

I took a huge bound out of my comfort zone and read The Killer Angels, perhaps the most not-me book in 2011's collection, and yet one that I enjoyed nonetheless. I read a new novel (gasp!), Liz Patterson's charming debut, The Mark of the Star. Just a couple months ago I also got Anne Elisabeth Stengl's newest novel, Veiled Rose, read it and promptly backtracked to read Heartless as well. They're some of my favorites from this year. (Yes! Abigail does read modern novels! ...Sometimes. Rarely. Alright, moving on.) I succeeded in finishing the Puritan Paperback The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (take a bite, chew ten times, swallow, digest, repeat); grudgingly picked up The Odyssey (even Athena recognized that Odysseus was an idiot!); and dabbled in some light reading with James Herriot. I had to read something light, you see, because at the same time I was reading Little Dorrit (you can't just come in saying you want to KNOW, you know).

In June I read my first G.K. Chesterton work, Four Faultless Felons. I can't decide what I think of Chesterton. I'll get back with you at a later date. Then there was...Team of Rivals. (May I remind you about lifting with your legs?) It involved some trudging, but it was very interesting. Then, Jenny having been on to me to read Beowulf, I picked that up (I like Wiglaf better than Beowulf). I read Rosemary Sutcliff's novel Frontier Wolf, which was like having my heart wrung a couple times (but wait, it's Sutcliff, so we expect that). The Forgotten Spurgeon, by Iain Murray, earned one of my rare five star ratings. It was good, accessible, encouraging, convicting, and did I mention that it was good?

For some light reading and inspiration for Sunshine and Gossamer I picked up the little book Dew on the Grass, a sweet read with some inside-out theology. I reread a couple Agatha Christie novels, Towards Zero (a favourite) and Murder at the Vicarage (not so much). I ventured a little dubiously into my first Robert Louis Stevenson novel, the odd Master of Ballantrae. Last week I finished The Count of Monte Cristo, complete and unabridged in its 1400-page glory. I'm not sure if I would read it again; it had its high points and its low points. Last night I (finally) reached the last page of Harry Blamire's The Christian Mind. I believe the crowning jewel of the year, however, was Howl's Moving Castle. This little book was clever, light and serious at once, and absolutely hilarious; after finishing it I loaned it out to various family members, and have yet to get it back.

The year is not quite finished; I hope to complete Thomas Costain's The Magnificent Century before January rolls around. But I am pleased with the books I've read and I enjoyed just about all of them. Unlike Jenny, many of my books had little (or little that I can pinpoint) to do with The White Sail's Shaking, and yet so many of them were beneficial in expanding my horizons. I read my first Dumas, my first Stevenson, and my first Chesterton this year. I found some new writers whose works I can watch for. I ventured into some very different eras, including the Civil War and the Age of Sail. And then of course there were those wonderful rereads.

what have you read this year?

The Finishing Touch

2011-12-12T06:13:00.000-08:00

The other day Londongirl posted a question on You Haven't Got an Appointment! that concerns writing, editing, and publishing, then expanded on that in an email. She wrote

Can you send queries to publishing houses after you've completed a manuscript? Or should you send them when you are still working on the manuscript?

For first time authors, it's a bad idea to submit an unfinished novel. The agent or publisher who will be looking at your query may be fascinated by the story concept that you're laying out, but once they get down to "SUCH AND SUCH is an uncompleted historical fiction; its estimated size at completion is 100,000 words," they are very likely to balk. And why not? After all, they're going to be investing in you and your work; it's only reasonable that they should want to know that you have the dedication to stick with a story to the end.

While you're writing your story, focus on writing it. This is not to say that if you come across an agency that seems like a fit you shouldn't take note of it, but don't go out of your way to contact agents and editors while you're still in the business of getting your words onto paper. You've got enough to do just shaping your story; don't worry about getting it "out there" to professionals. Allow yourself to relax and enjoy writing for itself, rather than attempting to do everything at once.

How do you know when your manuscript is ready to be shipped off to a potential publisher?

This is a trickier question to answer, because there are so many components that affect a manuscript's readiness. A book is never really finished until it's printed and out in stores; my novel Wordcrafter is in the querying stage, but I still find little things to change. You're not going to reach a stage in the writing of one book where you finally feel that you have arrived, that the story is perfect, that you have written everything you wanted to say and said it in the exact manner you wanted. Even after a book is published, chances are you'll see things that you wish you could edit. Aim for perfection, by all means, but don't think that you can't start querying until you've attained that goal...because if you do, you'll never query at all. At the same time, however, Londongirl is right: there is a stage where the story is polished enough to be submitted to the eyes of agents and publishers. So how do you know you've reached it?

To approach first from the negative side, there is a way to know that the manuscript is not ready to be submitted. It won't be ready the minute you finish your first draft, so it would be very unwise to start sending out queries the day after you type "the end." (You really, really don't want agents and editors to see the rubbish of that first draft.) Give the story space and don't be impatient. Allot yourself plenty of time for editing and editing again. If you have seen the movie "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" you might remember the scene in which Captain Gregg is dictating to Lucy and she corrects his grammar.

Captain Gregg: "To or from, who cares? This isn't a blasted literary epic. It's the unvarnished story of a seaman's life."

Lucy: "It certainly is unvarnished."

Well, editing is the varnish, and even stories of seamen's lives need it (and yes, I am eying The White Sail's Shaking). Don't pass over this in your writing. But, as with most things, it is possible to carry the good principle of editing too far. A writer can become paralyzed with fear at the thought of showing anyone the novel, and so may continue to edit...and edit...and edit...and edit...until the story is worn out and the writer is worn out and it's ten years later and goodness, what happened? There comes a point in time when enough is enough, and you've got to send the baby off. The difficulty is knowing when that point comes.

A good way of telling if you're ready to submit is in the advice of other people. This can be hard if you don't know many people who are supportive of your writing, but chances are there is at least one person whose opinion you trust. Critiquers don't need to be writers themselves; they only need to be readers who know what constitutes good literature and what doesn't. Give them the story and let them critique it for you, and consider what they say. Balance it with your own feelings, but remember that they haven't spent months on the story and aren't worn out and nervous about the whole thing - and consequently, that their minds are clearer than yours.

There is no cut-and-dry answer. It would be nice to say that a story will be ready on the third edit, but the fact of the matter is that some novels will be and some novels won't. My advice is to take the writing process slowly and to enjoy it; write and then edit, then show it to someone and edit again, and then start to think about agents and publishers. At some point in time you will have to venture out and entrust your story to Professionals, but although it is nerve-wracking, don't work yourself into a sweat over it. Writing is a wonderful thing to be able to do, and worrying over every step of the way will only ruin your enjoyment of it.

A Troublesome Child

2011-12-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

Several days ago, Rachel, the Inkpen Authoress, introduced readers to her story The Scarlet-Gypsy Song (and a fascinating introduction it was, too!). Not only that, but she invited several others to join in and give readers a glimpse into their works-in-progress through a number of questions. I'm still puzzling over some of them, but I will do my best to answer and to allow you to shake hands with and say how-do to my novel

the white sail's shaking

"Do you think I would have any bravery," Tip answered, "if I were not a fool?"

1. Who are the main characters?

The main main character is Tip Brighton, an awkward fellow tottering on the line between boyhood and manhood. The other point-of-view character is the headstrong, thoroughly Mediterranean Marta Rais, who finds herself under Tip's protection and isn't pleased about it. Those are the two from whose perspective the story is told, but there are other main characters: Charlie Bent, a proud young Southerner with a secret; quiet, cat-like Josiah Darkwood, whose Indian heritage has made life difficult for him; Lewis, the midshipman whose ambition far outpaces his companions'; and Lieutenant Decatur, debonair commander of the schooner Enterprize.

2. How did you get the idea for this story?

After reading Ian Toll's Six Frigates in 2010, my interest in Stephen Decatur prompted me to write a story set during the First Barbary War. The actual plot developed very slowly from that starting point, and didn't actually take shape until well into the writing of the story - indeed, not until after I introduced Charlie Bent. It's quite amazing how nebulous this whole thing was when I first began.

3. What genre is this story?

The White Sail's Shaking is straight historical fiction. As evidenced by the heaps of history books around the computer desk.

4. Describe your book in three thoughts:

A choice between winning glory and having true honor. A glimpse through the blood-shot, gut-wrenching times in life to the things that matter. Sometimes it takes a storm.

5. The bit that describes an obscure piece of real life best:

He went away, and Tip found himself not only alone, but lonely. He sat in the dim yellow light with his mother’s letter in one hand and the ribbon from Gibraltar in the other, and as he read over the paragraphs and the velvet brushed against his skin, the longing for home intensified until he found his eyes burning with it. There were damp blisters on the paper; he tried to brush them away, but another tear splashed and another watermark formed. He put his head in his hands and rocked himself back and forth, crying softly with homesickness that would not be denied.

Darkwood was right. How easily you despise the things you have, Tip Brighton—until they are lost.

6. The funniest line said by a side-character thus far:

Lawrence gave a rough laugh in answer. “A man after Mr. Decatur’s heart,” he said, and Tip could not decide how much mockery there was in the remark. “Well, then, let the fellow come ashore with the rest, but you’ll be responsible for him, Mr. Brighton—oh, ---,” he added languidly, glancing toward shore, “you aren’t allowed to come, are you? Deuced quarantine. There’s hardly a sick man on that ketch, but merely because it comes from Africa, it has to serve a quarantine. Governor What’s-his-face is a real stick in the mud, boil his guts.”

7. Your favourite piece of description:

For a moment Decatur was silent, and when Tip dared an upward glance, he found the lieutenant plucking at the ship’s rigging again. Did he keep it, Tip wondered briefly, just for times like this when he was irritated? The taut strings thrummed softly, wavering in and out of the shadows each time Decatur loosed them from his finger.

8. Your biggest fear in the writing of this story:

The next session of writer's block. And perhaps that I won't be able to convey the message that I want.

9. Last full sentence you wrote:

Tip had first watch that night, and he was glad of it; it was better than lying in his cot waiting for a sleep that would not come.

10. Favourite character thus far:

I am very fond of most of my characters. Darkwood is enigmatic, which makes him enjoyable to write, while Decatur, who is ever in the background just watching, is just plain fun. But I think I would have to answer "Charlie." This dandy of a Southerner came unbidden into the story, and since then he has managed to become so central to the plot that there would be no story if he were not there. A scene never fails to flow more easily when he appears.

11. What books have been written or have you read that are similar in style and flavour to your novel?

I have purposefully not read many sea novels prior to the writing of The White Sail's Shaking, because I didn't want Tip to be yet another Hornblower or Aubrey or Jack Easy. I do, however, want to read more for research when I am finished with the first draft. I have read The Tall Ships while deep in White Sail's, and it has some similarities.

12. If it was destined to become a book on tape, who would you wish to read it?

I'm afraid I am not much for audio-books - not that I have anything against them, but I don't own many. Therefore, I am afraid I can't answer this.

Thanks so much for the exercise, Rachel! It was splendid fun. I believe that, having finished this, it is my solemn duty to pick others to do the same thing. Therefore, I will choose

Keaghan of Whisper Above the Thunder
and
Gabrielle of The Ink Stained Parchment

After the War

2011-12-01T06:22:00.000-08:00

It's December 1. That apparently simple statement has a world of significance behind it; it means that you NaNoers have survived one whole month of frenzied writing, and that I have survived one whole month of not participating in said frenzied writing. Whatever your wordcount may be, I hope you had a fun time.

The war is over. What now? You've got 50,000 words, maybe more, of a story that may or may not be worthwhile. I know the feeling of getting to December only to look back over those words and think, "Uuuuuugh. I wrote that?" or, if your story isn't complete: "I wrote that much, and I still have this much plot left? You're kidding, right?" Come NaNo's end in both 2009 and 2010, I was terribly burned out; both times, however, I tried to keep going. Bad idea. When the wordcount closed and December rolled around, I was tired and all my inspiration was toasted, while in the back of my mind lurked the knowledge that those 50,000 words would have to be seriously revised. December and January produced a whole lot of groans and whines, and maybe some tears and sweat (no blood), but not many words.

Probably the best thing to do when you reach the end is to take a break, at least from that particular story. Give yourself time to recharge. You might go back and look at the story you were working on before NaNo; if it is completed you can work on editing it, or if it isn't you can return to writing it. Time away might bring to light new inspiration or reveal things you want to tweak. In December 2010 I worked on editing Wordcrafter, getting my mind off the big problem that was The White Sail's Shaking, and didn't spend a whole lot of brain power on straight "writing". This isn't laziness. Editing and marketing are just as important as writing itself is; manuscripts once completed shouldn't just be discarded. So don't feel bad if you need to take a break and spend time on another story.

When I had gone through the initial edit of Wordcrafter, I returned with more vigor to the writing of The White Sail's Shaking. It's now too long ago (a whole year - dear me!) for me to recall exactly what my sensations were, but they were not pleasant. The rubbish that was the first 50,000 words tortured me until at last I gave in and started editing much of what I had written in November. Filling in holes, straightening out characters, and fixing botched details helped get me back in the feel of the novel, and when I had finished with the first few chapters, I was ready to return to actually writing again.

But what if you wrote your story just for fun and don't intend for it to go anywhere? I know some people approach NaNo as a time to just let the rules fly out the window and allow themselves to write whatever occurs to them, not worrying about whether or not the result is any good. I tried this in 2008 and it went splat at about 17,000 words, but hey, it works for some writers. Even if this is your perspective on NaNoWriMo, you can still glean things from those 50,000 words. Let the story sit for a while, then return to it, read over it, and make your assessment. If you find that it's actually not that bad, you might want to spin it out and make a proper novel out of it after all. If you decide that the plot is just as nonsensical as you thought at the end of November, then perhaps you can focus on picking out those bits of your writing that you still like - a description or a turn of phrase, a scrap of dialogue, a character. You may be surprised how many diamonds you find.

what was your wordcount this year? do you hope to make something of the story?

In Thunder, Lightning, or in Rain

2011-11-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

We are having a November day. Everything outside is grey and dreary, with a lazy rain pitterpattering on the gutters and the stark, silver branches dripping - though the Christmas pig our neighbours erected in their yard kind of ruins the effect. (Seriously? A pig? In a Santa hat? You have to be kidding me.) But all in all, it's a day that represents November and makes you want to curl up with tea and a blanket and a good book. Preferably not a Geometry book.

Weather is a poignant thing, and a few good words concerning it can create atmosphere in a scene like magic. It could be rain, or it could be fog, or it could be full sunshine, or it could be a peek-a-boo pattern of light and clouds, but whatever it is, it is important to the life of a scene and should be treated as such. You can't just arbitrarily decide that the day is sunny or the night is dark and stormy; you've got to know that the day is sunny, and it has to be sunny with a purpose. Otherwise the descriptions will turn out bland, unimportant, and perhaps even invasive.

There are two main things to consider about blending atmosphere and purpose. The first is correspondence. To go back to the example of a dark and stormy night, what is the cliche supposed to signify? Drama, of course. You know - "It was a dark and stormy night. A door banged. The maid shrieked. A ship appeared on the horizon." To be more literary, when A Wrinkle in Time starts out with that sentence, you see Meg Murry in her attic room, scared out of her wits as she thinks about the wind and the rain and the tramp who has been stealing things around town. The weather mirrors her emotions; this is correspondence.

I went for correspondence in the title of my story Sunshine and Gossamer. (Actually, the title came before the plot, but still...) The mood of the novel is light; it's a children's story, of sorts, and I wanted it to be in the style of Daddy-Long-Legs or Dew on the Grass. Therefore, I wanted some whimsy in the title. Other forms of correspondence might be rain at a funeral; sun at a wedding; or fog around a haunted house. Put bluntly they sound cliche, but with the right touches they can be pulled off - just like the beginning of A Wrinkle in Time.

The other option is contrast. This is where you take the cliche and turn it inside out and on its head, making the sadness of a funeral clash with a sunny day, or turning a wedding whimsical or ominous by placing it in the rain. The death of a character can be made even more terrible by contrasting it with a gorgeous summer day and by making the protagonist feel the grossness of that contrast. I wanted this in the scene in The Soldier's Cross when Fiona is informed of her brother's death; I wanted two worlds to clash there - the sunlit world she had always known before and the dark chaos of the life in front of her. A rainy day wouldn't have conveyed the message with the same pathos.

Both methods are useful in any story. It is possible to try too hard to use the principle of contrast when having weather correspond with emotion would do just as well; it is also possible to err on the side of the cliche. As with all things, balance is important. Take time to consider the atmosphere as you write each scene; you may not end up using the weather, but it is good to know things outside the immediate sphere of the written word. After all, what you don't write is quite as important as what you do write.

A Dash of the Literary

2011-11-21T13:28:00.000-08:00

Katie, over on her blog at Whisperings of the Pen, did a fun little post with recently-scribbled snippets from her stories. Then my sister Jenny picked it up and posted clips from her novels Adamantine (completed/being edited) and Plenilune (in progress). So, being unoriginal as I am, I decided to make off with the idea and give you readers a glimpse into what I have written and what I have been writing recently. (By the way, the first draft of The White Sail's Shaking bids fair to pass Wordcrafter in length by the end of the year!)

a sprinkling of words

The sky was cloudless and two large moons were already high in it, so that the garden was turned a faded grey and speckled by darker hollows. It was quiet except for the hum of the breeze running through the slats in the fence, and Justin sighed in relief as the door creaked shut at his back and he was separated from the warmth and turmoil within. But as he skirted the overgrown vines and bushes and drooping, frosty flowers to the rough hewn bench, his eye was caught by a motion on his right and he stiffened.

“Hallo,” said a female voice. She sat on the white fence post with her hands clasped between her knees, balancing precariously as she kicked her heels against the wood. She had no head-covering, so her hair, amber in the moonlight, was tousled and chaotic—part of her charm, Justin thought wryly. He moved nearer and she regarded him serenely.

“You’re getting bolder,” he remarked.

Wordcrafter

Ethan’s fist met the table with a crash that shuddered down its entire length and knocked over several goblets, sending wine and mead flooding across the wood and over the edge in waterfalls. There could not have been a man in the room who did not start, and the Gypsy-lord’s arms unfolded in a moment and he drew himself up; but the Hound had calmed himself with an effort and drew his hand off the table, exhaling slowly. “The Lord of the Cliffs will forgive me,” he said coldly, “if I find it difficult to be amused at what I am sure was not meant to be in earnest.”

Wordcrafter

I was very tired last night - tireder than I think I've ever been - but I was determined to get up early just to show Aiden that I'm not a shallow city girl. I had Miss Gwen get me up in the dark, and though my courage almost failed me as I peeked over the coverlet, I did not back down! I got up in the cold dark and I wrapped myself up in a sweater and wellies, and then I tramped down, had a bit of porridge for breakfast (yuck!), and went out to report for duty.

Sunshine and Gossamer

The glittering of the man’s eyes in his strange face, like the blinking of gems half buried in earth, unnerved Tip, and he took the words and that warning look to heart as he went inside. Unwanted, they said. Unwanted! A sensation of overwhelming friendlessness closed in on him when he shut the door of his own room and stood in the solitude, and he drew in a shuddering breath and brushed the heel of his hand across a cut on his forehead. “Never mind,” he murmured. “It doesn’t matter what they think. You’ll get by, Tip Brighton—you always do.”

The White Sail's Shaking

“Give them a shot across the bow, if you please,” Decatur said to the first lieutenant, with a touch of morbid humor. The order was relayed and a gun run out in Lewis’ division; spark touched vent and a white cloud burst upward as a cannon ball went singing smartly across the ketch’s bowsprit. A breathless silence ensued, and as the air cleared Tip could see the foreigners
heaving to.

The White Sail's Shaking

and a dash of words not my own

You do not make the truth. You reside in the truth. A suitable image for truth would be that of a lighthouse lashed by the elemental fury of undisciplined error. Those who have come to reside in the truth must stay there. It is not their business to go back into error for the purpose of joining their drowning fellows with the pretence that, inside or outside, the conditions are pretty much the same.

The Christian Mind, Harry Blamires

art by wagsomedog on flickr

The Once and Future Queen

2011-11-17T06:39:00.000-08:00

I don't normally write short stories, and short stories of 600 words are things I particularly avoid. However, there was a contest and at the same time a kernel of an idea, so I scribbled down that kernel of an idea and submitted it to that contest. The result was Regina Quondam Reginaque Futura, the Once and Future Queen, a story I hope at some point to turn into a prequel of Tempus Regina.

enjoy.

Merlin was very old the first time Gwenhwyfar laid eyes on him.

She was sitting in the red glow of evening that poured through the windows of the great hall, looking, as she had often looked, at the carvings etched into the rough stone of the table before her. The places around her were empty, seats in shadow, and it was quiet now that her lord and his companions had ridden out; the sound of her hand as she traced the figures was loud.

Then he was there, a man as ancient and blasted as an oak and yet as large and strong as one, too, and Gwenhwyfar found that she was not surprised to see him. “You are Merlin,” she said without rising. “Did I summon you?”

“No one summons me,” said Merlin. “I come when the time is right.” He approached through the slanting light until he stood across from her, and it seemed to Gwenhwyfar that he cast no shadow as he walked. “You are looking at the Table,” he continued. “Tell me, Gwenhwyfar, queen: can you read me the runes?”

Gwenhwyfar cast her gaze downward; her hand still rested on a blood-dark symbol. “I do not understand them.”

“Can you tell me from whence the Table comes?”

Like a child giving the right answer, she said, “It was part of the dowry my father paid my lord. It stood in his halls for as long as I can remember.”

“And before?” This time Merlin did not extract an answer. “The Table has a history older than you or your house. It stood in great halls when Albion herself was not yet born. But it was meant for you, Gwenhwyfar, queen, though it is but a partial gift. Tonight I bring you that which completes it.” He drew his other hand from the shrouds of his robe and held it out, the thing in his palm gleaming fiercely gold and ruby in a shaft of dying sun. Gwenhwyfar could see only those flashes between Merlin’s fingers; she reached for it, then paused and answered his gaze.

“How do you know,” she said, “that it was meant for me?”

“Take it.”

Gwenhwyfar took it, and as its weight tumbled from his palm to hers she shut her eyes, testing it with touch alone. Then she reopened them. Nestled in her palm was the head of a dragon worked in the brightest gold she had ever seen, with eyes like the spark in Artos’ garnet brooch. The dragon mouth opened like a lid; within lay a clear pane, figures etched about the rim, and several long, thin black things in motion across them. It seemed to pulse in her hand, and it gave forth the sound of a heartbeat as the smallest black finger moved.

“Now, Gwenhwyfar, queen,” said Merlin, “can you read me the runes?”

Slowly Gwenhwyfar raised her eyes from the dragon head to the circle of dark stone.

tempus regina

holds the years

tempus regina

dwells in the future

tempus regina

come back to the past

tempus regina

beware

A portion was blurred and she could not discern it. She touched it, almost unaware that Merlin still spoke. “In your hand you hold the ability to move in time. It is a powerful thing; it comes to you as you stand by Artos’ side at the rise of Albion. Gwenhwyfar!”

Gwenhwyfar looked up.

“Heed the warning. Power corrupts; you must remember.”

Her eyes turned again to the table while he was yet speaking, and she saw the rune that was clearest: Beware!

Things That Inspire

2011-11-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

On You Haven't Got an Appointment! Yaasha asked about the things that inspire me most. I've done posts before on the things that have particularly inspired my novels Wordcrafter and The White Sail's Shaking, but I thought I would do a post just on the little things that inspire me in general. So, in no particular order, here goes!

1. books

How could I write without books to inspire me? There's so much beauty and power in the written word - so many emotions they invoke, pictures they paint. I just love books.

2. teaching

The teaching of the elders at my church frequently convicts me and doesn't always give me a warm and fuzzy feeling - I should be alarmed if it did - but it does inspire me as much as anything else. It is such a wonderful thing to see some of God's Word come alive and to understand something a little better, even if only a very little bit better. After all, Christ is the supreme Word through Whom the world was made and by whom all things are held together. It would be rather silly not to be inspired by the revelation of the Word of God.

You and me we use so very many clumsy words.
The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard.
When the Father's Wisdom wanted to communicate His love,
He spoke it in one final perfect Word.

- The Final Word, Michael Card

3. music

Especially dramatic, thrilling music. I don't always write while listening to songs, but I do find them invigorating and sometimes I'll find one particular style that seems to fit a story. For instance, the music from Escala always turns my thoughts to Tempus Regina.

4. autumn

I do believe I write best and most in the fall, whether or not I do NaNo. The cool weather just gets my blood flowing and inspires me to actually sit down and write after the heat and lethargy of summer. It's my favorite month, hands down.

5. history

Sometimes crazy and funny, sometimes not so much. Certain periods I find especially thrilling: the Age of Sail (in case you couldn't tell) but also eras like Roman Britain and the Plantagenet dynasty, to choose two random ones. Currently I have a couple ideas of stories that have almost nothing but a setting, but which will hopefully percolate into worthwhile novels.

6. the random

Or you might say "miscellaneous." Sometimes I can't pinpoint any particular inspiration; I might suddenly have an image in my head of a girl with a cross (The Soldier's Cross), or a man injured in a wolf-hunt (Wordcrafter), and a story may or may not build from there. I'm sure there must have been something to bring about those ideas, but I couldn't tell you what it was and so I take the easy way out and label all such thoughts "random."

7. family

I love my family. I love the Saturday evenings we spend together, the joking and the serious conversations. I love just being with them all. We're not the sort of family that novels are made of, I suppose, and yet I find inspiration and encouragement in our kinship.

and that, dear readers, is a peek into the things that inspire me.

art from flickr

Help Wanted

2011-11-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

Question Number I-Haven't-Been-Counting on You Haven't Got an Appointment! was asked by Carrie. She wrote

Do you have any good how-to books on writing that you could recommend? On how to write well, or create characters, or anything like that?

On this question I fear I will disappoint, because I am one of those rare people who doesn't use how-to books. Probably more than ninety percent of the writers whose blogs I follow use and advocate the use of books on writing, so I recognize that I am in the minority when I say that I do not like the practice. Since being in the minority is a risky business, I will attempt to explain my position and you can decide for yourself what you think of it.

First of all, writing is an art and must be treated as such. Grammar and syntax may be taught and learning how to use the English language is essential; but being able to trap light in your ink, to capture beauty with words, is not something that can be conveyed through rules. I believe that practice is the best way to excel. Filling your brain with what to do and what not to do can be damaging to the life and voice of your writing because it teaches you to concentrate on the mechanics rather than the spirit. I find this with myself: the more worried I am about "getting it right," the more stilted my writing becomes.

Secondly, many people seem to forget that the idea of self-help books is a very modern and American concept. The literary greats like Shakespeare, Dickens, James Fenimore Cooper, and C.S. Lewis did not read how-to books on the craft, nor is that because they were superhuman and didn't need to learn how to hone their words. They progressed through love of good literature and practice. While it is true that we in the 21st Century can't write in the same style as a Dickens or a Cooper because times have changed, it is not true that we as writers and readers cannot learn from them or follow in their footsteps. If you want to have your words withstand the test of time, it is perfectly reasonable to take lessons from those whose words already have.

Thirdly, there is a quote by Neil Gaiman that I have read in various places and think is quite applicable: "You never learn how to write a novel. You merely learn how to write the novel you're on." Every writer is different, every story is different, and to attempt to write a book that will give The Answer on how to properly write a novel is, in my mind, a little arrogant. Ideas and suggestions can be quite helpful, and I would not say that I have the same antipathy for books that give ideas on, say, how to edit as I do for books that attempt to tell people how to write good fiction (or non-fiction, for that matter). After all, most writing blogs, including this one, are full of suggestions for going about various tasks in the novel-crafting business. But there is a fine line - a very fine line - between saying, "Well, this worked for me and it may help you," and pronouncing, "This is the Way to Write."

My final word is not that all how-to books are the spawn of the Devil and should be burned immediately and their ashes spread upon the wind. I simply say that the best teachers are the ones who have come before, and that the best way to learn is to apply oneself and write. Reading and writing cannot be separated. The more you write, the more your voice will develop, the deeper your plots will be, the more your characters will live and breathe from the page; the more you read, the more you will find that others still stand above you. We'll never attain perfection in this life - and it's a sorry place to be in when you think you have - but in striving for it we get a little better...and a little better...and a little better...

art by shutterhacks on flickr

A Different Point of View

2011-11-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

Here I am, returning at last to the questions on You Haven't Got an Appointment! The next one I was going to answer is Yaasha Moriah's first:

As a female, how do you craft your male characters in a way that is true to the male perspective? How do you know if you have their viewpoints right and are not carrying feminine elements into their characters?

Yet another question that I am very excited to answer - you gals have done a grand job coming up with applications for the Circumlocution Office. Yaasha's is particularly applicable, as the protagonists of my last novel and my current one have been men; and in The White Sail's Shaking I have to write from Tip's perspective in some scenes and Marta's perspective in others. And it can be awfully hard.

So, how do I write from a male perspective. First off, I have to say that I find it easier than writing from a female perspective. That may seem odd, and frankly I haven't quite figured it out myself. The best way I can explain it is that men are much more concrete, logical, A-B-C thinkers and so their point-of-view is easier to demonstrate, whereas women tend to be more visceral and (let's face it) illogical. Balancing a woman's emotions with her thought processes is a much more delicate business than threading a man's feelings through his actions, at least for me. Because I do less in the way of character sketches and character "crafting" than some writers, I have difficulty explaining the ins and outs of how I manage a man's perspective, but here is what I have to offer.

Observe. As a female writer, observe the men in your life - brothers, fathers, husbands - and how they interact with the world. Also, observe the male characters in good, solid literature. An excellent example, albeit somewhat hackneyed, is Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice fame: he is a strong, silent type, but he is also shy and uncertain when it comes to his relationship with Elizabeth Bennet. Men do have emotions. In some ways, the very fact that those emotions tend to be steadier than a woman's make them more powerful; if you've ever seen a grown man cry, you know what I mean. Characteristics of men and women are not cut and dry; both are made in the Image of God, and they share elements.

Just write. Write your character as he is, and then sit back and analyze it. Critiquing him before you even write two scenes with him in them will probably not help; writing a character, I find, is the best way to work out their kinks and quirks. Also, the more male characters you write the better you are likely to become at discovering how to do it without either making their point of views too feminine or making them stereotypically masculine. Practice makes almost-but-not-really perfect, after all.

Get others to help. My dad is my best critic. Some people won't show others their novel until they are finished; I like to give my dad chapters as I write. He'll tell you (or maybe he wouldn't, but he tells me) that I tend to make my male characters too pacifistic in the first draft*, and he helps me iron that out in the second. Having him read my stories is extremely helpful and fun, and gives me, well, a different perspective. So if at all possible, I advise getting a father or brother or husband to critique your writing for you. It's extremely embarrassing at first, I will grant, but it pays off in the end and becomes enjoyable as you get used to it.

I don't know how well that answers your question, Yaasha, but I hope it does! I had fun scribbling up some semblance of a reply, and I hope to answer your other one soon.

*but just wait until you get to the duel, Dad.

art by Chris Rawlins, deviantART

A Collection of Beautiful People

2011-10-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the rest of the questions on You Haven't Got an Appointment! I'm looking forward to doing them (I believe Yaasha Moriah's first question is next), but I thought I would take a break and do my monthly Beautiful People post.

This month Georgie and Sky, the organizers of Beautiful People, are doing something a little different in preparation for NaNo. Unfortunately I am not participating in NaNo this year, so I took up the other part of the challenge: answering all of the questions to date for one of my characters. I had planned to do Darkwood from The White Sail's Shaking this month, but doing all the questions would have given too much away about him; so instead I'm focusing on the character who has given me the most trouble in this story, Tip not excepted...

marta rais

What is her full name?

Marta Clara Kilpatrick, but she goes by Mara Rais (her mother’s maiden name) or by Roy Martin.

Does her name have a special meaning?

No.

Does your character have a methodical or disorganized personality?

Marta is very methodical.

Does she think inside herself more than she talks out loud to her friends? (more importantly, does she actually have friends?)

Marta has always lived a secluded life with her mother; she spent her childhood playing with rocks, makeshift dolls, and petals from the rose bushes outside her Syracusan home rather than spending time with children her age. Perhaps as a result of this, she is very private and does not confide easily in others; she also has a tendency toward snobbishness.

Is there something she is afraid of?

Seamen. Rats. Ghosts.

Does she write, dream, dance, sing, or photograph?

None of the above, though her mother was an excellent singer.

What is her favorite book? (or genre of books)

Marta likes to read, but she has not had enough access to books while growing up to have a favorite.

Who is her favorite author and/or someone that inspires her?

See number 7.

Favorite flavor of ice cream?

Marta has never had ice cream. If she did, I think she would like black raspberry (gross!).

What type of laugh does she have?

In her current situation she does not have much reason to be amused, but when is she has a very soft, shy laugh.

Who is her best friend?

The only friend she has at present is Tip Brighton.

What is her family like?

Marta’s mother was an actress, but she left the theater to marry Kilpatrick, a British officer, and to raise Marta. Both mother and father are now deceased and Marta is on her own. Her father’s family lives in England, but she knows nothing of them.

Is she a Christian, or will she eventually find Jesus?

Difficult to say…

Does she believe in fairies?

I think not.

Does she like hedgehogs?

Marta has never met one herself, but she has heard about them and finds them far enough away from rats to be acceptable.

Favorite kind of weather?

She likes stormy days when she is safe inside by a fire. Also springtime. Her impressions of each season is formed by her mother’s rosebushes.

Does she have a good sense of humor? If so, what kind? (Slapstick, wit, sarcasm, etc.?)

She does not have a very well developed sense of humor. Tip’s love of irony and his strange laugh confuse her.

How did she do in school, or any kind of education she might have had?

Marta’s mother taught her the basics—reading, writing, and basic arithmetic—as well as how to keep house. She has a studious personality and did well.

Any strange hobbies?

No.

Favorite season of the year?

Winter, until she goes to sea and finds that winter equals storms.

How old is she?

Eighteen and nineteen over the course of the novel.

What does she do with her spare time?

Plays the spy, a very unlikeable pastime.

Does she see the big picture or live in the moment?

Somewhere in the middle, I believe. She is not one of those people who can take something in with a glance, but neither does she fixate on what is happening now.

Is she a perfectionist?

Not wholly, but she is much more concerned with neatness and accuracy than Tip.

What does her handwriting look like? (round, slanted, curly, skinny, sloppy, neat, decorative, etc.)

Marta prides herself on her neat penmanship.

Favorite animal?

Cats.

Does she have any pets?

No, she has never had a real pet. As a child she used to put out crumbs for the birds to eat, and she liked to pretend they were her pets.

Does she have any siblings? How many? Where does she fit in?

Marta is an only child.

Does she have a 'life verse' and if so what is it?

Psalm 4:8 is the best I can come up with on the spur of the moment: “I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.”

Favorite writing utensil?

A pencil stub, but she rarely manages to procure one.

What kind of music does she like?

Marta doesn’t listen to much music, but she has enjoyed the snatches of operatic pieces she has heard.

Does she like to go outside?

Yes, but she likes to know that she can go home whenever she likes.

Is she naturally curious?

No, but she becomes curious by necessity. She would rather keep herself to herself.

Right or left handed?

Right.

Favorite color?

Dark red.

Where is she from?

Syracuse, Sicily.

Any enemies?

She considers everyone to be a potential enemy. And for the most part that isn’t paranoia: just common sense.

What are her quirks?

She is bitter because her father loved the sea (and his family’s good opinion) more than he loved his wife and child and thus thinks of all seamen with contempt, yet she is also proud of the British and looks down on the Americans. Above all, she is fiercely Sicilian.

What kinds of things get on her nerves?

Tip’s laugh, although she becomes used to it, and Charlie Bent’s snobbery. Also, half-answers, seamen, and being called British.

Is she independent, or does she need others to help out?

Marta likes to think of herself as independent, but she really isn't.

What is her biggest secret?

She has two: the first is that she is a girl, a fact only Tip knows, and the second I can’t say.

Has she ever been in love?

No, never. She has never had anyone to be in love with.

What is her comfort food?

Anything but hard tack with worms in it.

Does she play a musical instrument? If so, what?

Marta can play the piano forte, although she has not had a chance to practice in some time.

What colour are her eyes? Hair?

Marta has light brown eyes and very dark brown hair.

What is her favorite place to be?

In her home in Syracuse by the fire.

What are some of her dreams or goals?

Her goal is to get to England and find her father’s family; her dream is for them to accept her.

Does she enjoy sports?

No.

What is her favorite flower or plant?

The red rose.

What is her biggest accomplishment?

She does not consider herself to have accomplished anything yet. Making it as far as Gibraltar was something, but that didn’t end well.

What is one of her strongest childhood memories?

Sitting in her mother’s lap in a big rocking chair on Christmas Eve, listening to the rain outside and her mother’s singing. Also, playing dress-up with trunk-loads of her mother’s old dresses.

Does she believe in love at first sight?

No. Marta regards the idea with scorn.

What kind of home does she live in?

Currently she is living on board the schooner Enterprize, but she has no permanent home.

What does she like to wear?

Playing the part of a seaman means that she is forced to wear uncomfortable, baggy, ugly clothes; her only article that she likes at all is her black cap which she wears all day every day (which gets a little old for her). She likes to think about all the beautiful dresses and hats she will buy in England, and all of her mother’s jewelry and clothing that she might have owned.

What would she do if she discovered she was dying?

She would break down in tears and want someone to hold her as if she were a child again.

What kind of holidays or traditions does she celebrate?

Christmas.

What do your other characters have to say about her?

Lewis would say she is a nuisance, with a few other words thrown in. Charlie says she is pretty much worthless as a seaman and distrusts her instinctively. Tip alternately thinks that she is horribly Mediterranean, a redhead at her core, and rather pretty in her own way.

If she could change one thing in her world, what would it be?

Beneath her bitterness, Marta has too much faith in Providence to truly desire to change anything; but she does sometimes wish that her mother were still alive.

Does she have any habits, annoying or otherwise?

She tends to pull her cap down over her eyebrows, which Tip, who likes to look people in the face while he talks to them (and thinks Marta’s eyes are lovely), finds irksome.

What is her backstory and how does it affect her now?

Marta has always been very close to her mother, a Syracusan beauty, and though she did not inherit Clara’s looks, she does have her Mediterranean blood and her love of Sicily. Her mother’s death has left her withdrawn, for she no longer has anyone with whom to talk freely. Her father’s neglect bred in her a distrust of seamen; she is convinced that when a man falls in love with the sea, it becomes his one obsession.

How does she show love?

Marta’s love is difficult to win, but once it is won she will stand by that person until the day she dies. She isn’t shy or stand-offish, so she doesn’t mind giving or receiving kisses.

How competitive is she?

Marta is quite competitive, somewhat irrationally so at times.

What does she think about when nothing else is going on?

The “ghost” that haunts the Enterprize. What she will do when she is discharged and how her father’s family will receive her. How very irritating Tip Brighton’s laugh can be. And what kind of a name is “Tip,” anyway?

Does she have an accent?

Marta has a very smooth voice and her English is impeccable. If it weren’t for her looks (and her temper) you might not know she was Mediterranean.

What is her station in life?

Neither she nor her family has any pretensions to greatness, although her father’s side is wealthy. She is nothing more than a common seaman on the Enterprize.

What do others expect from her?

Her superiors expect her to do her work and not to desert. Tip expects her to be unexpected, although what he hopes about her is another matter. Lewis expects her to keep her mouth shut, and Charlie expects nothing from her because he rarely thinks about her.

Where was she born and when?

Syracuse, Sicily, October 23, 1785.

How does she feel about people in general?

She considers Americans to be arrogant and crude; she thinks the British are arrogant and refined. Otherwise, she deals with people as they come into her sphere and not in generalizations.

She Thought Her Heart Would Break

2011-10-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Question number four (-ish) on You Haven't Got an Appointment! was put by Londongirl, who asked

How do you write a sad, emotional scene without making it seem sappy or forced?

First of all, I'm flattered that you thought the scenes in The Soldier's Cross met this difficult hurtle! Emotion can be a very hard thing to capture, but, when done right, it also provides some of the best dramatic scenes; done incorrectly, the scene becomes melodramatic instead. So how does one manage to convey emotions, whether it be fear or anger, tension or sorrow, without falling into the trap of being ridiculous and cliche?

Probably the most important element of writing emotion is knowing your character. I won't go so far as to say that the whole issue boils down to that one thing, but I will say that if it boils down to anything, that's what I would expect to find left in the pot. Individual characters will react differently to traumatic events, just as individual people in real life will; there is no cut-and-dry solution which allows you to say, "If the event is a death, the main character will feel this way," and, "If the protagonist is insulted, he will react like that." In every story you write, you should find the protagonist a little different from the one in the novel you wrote previously. Get to know your character; this may mean filling out pages upon pages of interview questions, or it may mean simply continuing to write and learning by trial and error. When you begin to understand what makes that person tick, you'll be better able to write those dramatic scenes.

As to the nuts and bolts of writing an emotion-packed scene, these are a little more difficult. I wouldn't venture to give a dogmatic answer, but I can give some suggestions that you may or may not find helpful - hopefully you will! First off, recognize that in the early scenes of a story, you probably won't get the character's reaction quite right on the first try. I wrote a good 40,000 words of The White Sail's Shaking before I had a handle on Tip's character, and I had to go back and rewrite the early chapters. Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you won't have to edit, and you'll begin to realize that there is no point in being too hard on yourself the first time through. Relax.

Second, as you write (or before you write, if you like to warm up before you start in on a scene), put yourself in the place of the character to the best of your ability. What would you feel like if someone were coming at you with a knife? Or, to use the example that Londongirl did from my own story, how would you react if someone told you your brother was dead? Try - again, to the best of your ability - to see things with the eyes of your character. K.M Weiland on her blog Wordplay frequently emphasizes the importance of using all five senses in description (not all at the same time) - smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling as well as seeing. It might help to consider each of these as you write out a scene, then hone in on the ones you feel are most important.

Third, don't forget the little things. I mentioned in a post some months ago how marvelously Rosemary Sutcliff conveys emotion through small things. You may be inclined to think that in the midst of something traumatic a character wouldn't notice details, but this isn't always the case; the mind often fixates on strange details like an odd smell or a particular color. Incorporating something like that to a highly emotional scene helps to set off the character's emotions without forcing the author to relate his or her feelings point by point.

And then, of course, look beyond the cliche! Think about how you can describe reactions and emotions in a fresh manner. Give the old phrases a new twist or look at an emotion from a different angle, and see what you come up with when you do. After all, isn't that part of the fun of writing?

Tempus Regina

2011-10-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

I was very pleased to get a couple questions on You Haven't Got an Appointment! dealing with my planned novel Tempus Regina. Melody Joy got the first one in:

What is the plot idea of Tempus Regina? I tried looking around here the other day when you posted The Dragon's Eyes but I couldn't find much about it.

As I said, I was very pleased. But at the same time, Tempus Regina is at that stage where it is difficult to talk about coherently, which is why I have not yet written a plot summary for My Books page; it is still developing, and right now it has just a little more than bare bones. However, I will attempt to formulate a synopsis.

First off, Tempus Regina involves time-traveling, so it does not have a set time period. It begins in London during the Victorian Era, probably in the 1840s or early 1850s. The main character, Regina, is nineteen; she and her little brother Tommy have been on their own since the death of their mother some five or six years before the novel begins. Regina's life revolves around taking care of her brother and earning enough money to keep them both alive in the London slums. A job as a temporary maid at the house of an eccentric gentleman is one of the less grueling tasks she has had to undertake, and she looks forward to it with relief.

When she arrives at the house on her first morning, the housekeeper informs her that she is to begin by cleaning out the garret - a very eerie, untouched part of the building, full of dust and curiosities. One of the latter is a wooden trunk inscribed with strange markings, and inside it Regina finds a beautiful gold pocket watch in the shape of a dragon's head and inlaid with garnets for eyes. Opening it, she finds it has stopped; she tries to set it to the proper time, but when she presses the dragon's eyes she finds herself thrown into the middle of London, circa 400 B.C. And the watch won't turn forward to let her go back.

Without the missing piece of the dragon watch Regina cannot return to her own time, and she made a promise to her dying mother never to abandon Tommy. The secret of the watch and the symbols inscribed both on it and on the old trunk in the garret lie in a place that exists only in legend, and to find them Regina is forced to seek the help of an assassin who knows more than simply how to kill.

Lilly asked what I could tell about the Assassin, who kindly featured in the excerpt "The Dragon's Eyes." Unfortunately, the answer is, "Not much." The Assassin is an enigma, and is meant to be so. Regina herself knows little about him, only that he is a hired killer and that he is disturbingly well-versed in lore and, she suspects, alchemy. Beyond that...well, the story will tell!

Advice and Other Wise Things

2011-10-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

...that is, we hope they're wise things. Today I'll be answering one of Carrie's questions on You Haven't Got an Appointment:

Is there any general advice you can give to young author-wanna-be's, who may be on the brink of setting out on the adventure of publication?

People are usually pretty shocked that I've gotten a book published by the age of fifteen, and fellow writers out there of my own age often ask me how I would suggest they go about doing the same thing. But there are a few things that must be kept in mind as you consider submitting your stories for publication, and I admit that they aren't all particularly cheering.

First off, don't be too inspired by the fact that other people have done it. By this I mean that you shouldn't be so excited that you forget to consider, as objectively as possible, what stage your own writing is at. It's easy to fall into the trap of obsessing over publication until you think that as soon as you finish a novel, you should start submitting it to agents or publishers. This isn't a good idea. As a young writer, your focus should probably be just on writing and reading, practicing and learning from example. It's a process that will last all through a writer's life and it is to be hoped that you won't ever reach a stage where you feel like you have arrived, but as a young writer it is particularly important. Never put the cart in front of the horse.

Second, when you do start wondering if you're ready to start sending off query letters, get someone else to read your writing and to give their honest opinion. Don't choose someone who you expect to be crushing, but also don't give chapters to your eight-year-old sister who thinks everything you do is fantastic (although I suppose an eight-year-old sister could be pretty crushing, too). It does not, however, have to be a non-family member, just so long as you can trust them to give you a good critique. It is a bad idea to try to be the judge of your own writing one hundred percent of the time, and especially when you're trying to decide whether to attempt getting it published; you will either be too hard on yourself or too lenient.

Third, don't be too sanguine and don't be too depressed. It is hard to get published - no two ways about it. If you go in thinking you'll be accepted by the first, second, or even third publisher you query, you will likely be disappointed. Expect to have to work hard before your book is published, while you're trying to get it published, and after it is published. On the other hand, don't lose heart; starting young means that you have a greater chance of being accepted and getting your works out there than you would if you started in middle-age. Keep plugging away, writing stories and getting a little better with each one. You're never guaranteed success, but at least you're doing something you enjoy. Through the ups and downs, I wouldn't trade being a writer for anything.

Well, Why Not?

2011-10-18T08:26:00.001-07:00

For those not in the know, I am doing a series of question-and-answer posts: you ask the question, I (hopefully) invent the answer. If you have one to ask, you can just drop a comment on this post or on You Haven't Got an Appointment. Rachel got the first comment in with a couple of inquiries, but I'm going to take her last one first:

Do you disagree with Sarah Stanley from The Story Girl [L.M. Montgomery] in the thought that if you're going to the trouble to make up a character, why not make them good-looking?

What a fun question! First off, I will say that so far none of my characters have been either very good-looking or horribly ugly. In fact, I rarely describe his or her appearance in detail; the pictures that the reader gathers are based on other characters' comments and the main character's actions. In The Soldier's Cross there are only a few comments made about Fiona's lack of any striking beauty; in Wordcrafter it is not much that Justin is ugly, but rather that he pales in comparison to Ethan. Nor is it so much that Ethan is handsome, but that he is so full of life that one forgets he isn't handsome. Tip of The White Sail's Shaking is a very awkward, clumsy fellow, not hideous, but plain and stiff and not exactly a lady-killer.

[Charlie] lowered his drink again and swished it, replying with a clever sidelong look at Tip, “Aye, and it’s not as if you have any looks to recommend you. Anyhow,” he continued, “at least you scared those women away. There is some advantage to your clumsiness.”

That being said, my main characters' looks were not intentional. They just showed up that way. Personally I think that, in moderation, Sarah's remark is true: if you're going to create a character, I see no reason why he or she shouldn't be handsome. One can either go too far to one side and have the character be ridiculously beautiful, or too far to the other and have them constantly bemoaning the fact that they're so hideous. I like a mix of both pretty and plain, and I think the best way to go about it is not to spend too much time fretting about the character's looks. The more you say "his grave and handsome face..." or "her beautiful sad eyes," the more the reader will be annoyed and dislike the person.

I remember reading several of Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence novels and absolutely loving the characters, and then noticing a phrase like "Tommy's homely face..." My first thought was that Christie had gotten it wrong, because I always thought of Tommy as very good-looking. She had never described either him or Tuppence before, but I created a very pleasant picture of each in my head from their actions and attitudes. So less is more, as the saying goes.

You Haven't Got an Appointment!

2011-10-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

'I say. Look here. You stick to us in a devil of a manner,' said Barnacle Junior, looking over his shoulder.

'I want to know--'

'Look here. Upon my soul you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know,' remonstrated Barnacle Junior, turning about and putting up the eye-glass.

'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam, who had made up his mind to persistence in one short form of words, 'the precise nature of the claim of the Crown against a prisoner for debt, named Dorrit.'

'I say. Look here. You really are going it at a great pace, you know. Egad, you haven't got an appointment,' said Barnacle junior, as if the thing were growing serious.

'I want to know,' said Arthur, and repeated his case.

- Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

Some days I feel about like Barnacle Junior with my heaps of books and papers, but I like to think I'm not quite as scattered and brainless as the people of Dickens' Circumlocution Office. And unlike Barnacle junior, I like to be asked questions and to have people wanting to know, you know (so long as they have an appointment). Therefore, I thought I would follow Jenny's example and gather ideas for posts by asking you lovely readers to post your questions about my stories and writing. Naturally questions like "Does the main character of Wordcrafter die?" are taboo and I shall reserve the right to not answer any questions that would give away spoilers and other such nasty things, but anything else is quite open; you can ask about

the soldier's cross
wordcrafter
the white sail's shaking
tempus regina

or

sunshine and gossamer

So feel free to come into the place saying you want to know - just post a comment with whatever you would like me to answer. And have fun!

Glimpses of Greatness

2011-10-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

I just did a post a couple weeks ago on first impressions and some of the opening lines of my favorite stories, the kinds of opening lines that grab you and enchant you into the story. But there is something that creates an impression even before the prospective reader gets to the first page, and it doesn't get nearly the emphasis that "hooks" do: the title. (The cover, also, but writers don't have much say in that department.)

The title, I would venture to say, isn't quite as important as the opening chapter - people tend to be attracted to the cover first, then the first line - but if it is something catchy it will help to grab the interest of the reader. Take, for instance, a few of these:

roll of thunder, hear my cry

gone with the wind

out of the silent planet

towards zero

pride and prejudice

a wrinkle in time

the mark of the horse lord

I don't remember particularly liking Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry when I read it, but that title is one of my favorites. It sums up the feel of the story, but it also has perfect cadence; it (pardon the pun) rolls off the tongue. It's a stirring title.

Then there's Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, one of those books that readers either love or hate. I haven't read it yet - it's sitting on my shelf, waiting for the day I feel like I can stomach Scarlett O'Hara - but I've always liked the title. It doesn't have the same cadence of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, but it does capture the melancholy of the novel and sums up the disappearance of the Old South after the Civil War in a classic way.

Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis) flows, and it also gives me a thrill and a sensation of mystery every time I see the cover on my shelf. One wants to know what the Silent Planet is, and what it means to come out of it. Towards Zero is one of my favorite Agatha Christie novels and I am currently rereading it, which is perhaps why it made its way onto the list; Agatha Christie has so many good titles that it is hard to pick just one. Towards Zero is a great one, however, because it ties in with the way the story is written to "count down" to the murder, at zero hour.

Pride and Prejudice uses alliteration to great effect, as Jane Austen also did with Sense and Sensibility. Alliteration is a tricky business, though, and often comes off sounding like a children's board book, so it has to be handled with care. Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is another favorite (there's so much to love about this book); it has rhythm, starts with an article other than 'the', and makes the reader want to know how time can be wrinkled. And then there is The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff, yet another one that gives me a shiver. Apparently I tend to like titles that have "of the" in them.

A lot of people have difficulty coming up with good titles, though perhaps that's because they try too hard. It's amazing how many obstacles you make for yourself when you try too hard. Titles are usually the kinds of things that have to come to you, but if you are still struggling for something to call your story, a few things to keep in mind are cadence (does it sound good?), applicability (does it fit the story?), and subtlety versus the obvious (do you want to use an underlying theme in the story, or something more blatant?). For instance, my novel Wordcrafter was originally going to be "The Wordcrafter," but I chopped out the article because simply calling it "Wordcrafter" was more powerful. I briefly toyed with the idea of calling it The Thousandth Man, but I kept Wordcrafter because I liked the single word title and because I felt that it embodied the story better.

Try to come up with something different that will stick in people's memory, and also preferably not too long - the longer it is, the more likely it will be forgotten. Of course The White Sail's Shaking is fairly long, but I have been debating whether or not to change the title due to the fact that it is a little hard to say. We shall see.

what's the title of your work in progress?

November

2011-10-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have done or are planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year will have already observed, probably with an impending sense of doom, that there is less than a month left until November. (Actually, even those of you who are not doing NaNo will have noticed that there is less than a month until November...) And if your mind is as obsessed with the fact as I daresay it is, you may have noticed that there has not yet been a single mention of the 2011 NaNoWriMo on this blog. The reason being that

I won't be doing NaNo this year.

Horrifying, I know. I feel a bit like a traitor even mentioning it. For those of you who don't know what on earth I'm talking about, National Novel Writing Month is an online organization where participants attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. That is, from 1:00 am on November 1 to 12:00 pm on November 30, when you cannot submit anymore wordcount updates to your account. You are not allowed to start the novel before November 1, although you can do outlines, character sketches, and the like, and the goal is quantity, not necessarily quality.

It sounds painful, but in reality it works out to 1,667 words a day, which is not as huge a number as it might appear. I've done it two years in a row (three, actually, but the first year was a failure, so we'll just forget about that), in 2009 with The Soldier's Cross and in 2010 with The White Sail's Shaking. I enjoyed both immensely, even though the results from last year were mostly horrendous and I barely squeaked by with 52,000 words on November 30. In fact, I'm so used to getting ready for NaNo that now that the weather is cooling down, the leaves are turning, and I'm pulling out my autumn clothes, I'm starting to get that expectant thrill as the countdown to November begins.

But I won't be doing NaNo this year. There are a number of reasons, none of which would likely be accepted by the organizers of NaNo but all of which I consider to be very good. The first is that I'm still labouring to complete the first draft of White Sail's, the trouble child that I have been attempting to get into shape since last November (although considering what bare scraps of plot I began with, I have to say that this story is in surprisingly good form). I am not one of those people who can juggle several stories at once; though I may write bits and pieces of a Tempus Regina or a Sunshine and Gossamer as I approach the end of my main work in progress, I have to give at least 98% of my energy to one novel at a time.

True, some writers do participate in the NaNo Rebellion and work on stories that they have already begun or that do not fit into the broad guidelines of the normal NaNo, so I could do that with White Sail's. But I'm near enough to the end of the story that I don't think I have 50,000 words left in it, and at any rate, last November taught me that this novel is not the sort that can be written quickly in a single month. The characters are all pig-headed to one degree or another, the history takes almost daily in-depth research, and my inspiration likes to up and desert me without warning. It's just not a good sport where NaNo is concerned. This is not an excuse acknowledged by the founders of National Novel Writing Month, but I think it is a valid one; some stories won't be rushed. They are the ones that are more like poetry:

"Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you.
And all you can do is go where they can find you."
(a. a. milne, winnie-the-pooh)

I learned this after thirty days and 52,000 words, and I intend to learn from my mistakes and never ever do that again. There are novels that can be NaNo'ed, and there are novels that can't. And that is the way things are.

The second, not so grand or philosophical reason is that I just don't have the time this year. Of course the whole point of NaNo is to get people to stop saying that, but in this case I am going to stick my tongue out at the wisdom of NaNo and declare again that I haven't got the time. It's a combination of Geometry and...Geometry.

And the third reason is that after doing NaNo about three years in a row, I think that, little as I might be inclined to do so, it would be good for me to take a break. All things in moderation, after all.

But for those of you who are doing NaNoWriMo this year, whether for the first time or the fifth, I hope that the month will go splendidly and that you won't imbibe too much caffeine. If you are getting geared up for the fight, how are the battle plans coming along? Do tell!

...And I'll try not to be jealous.

The Dragon's Eyes

2011-10-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

The White Sail's Shaking having decided to hit a minor snag, I decided to turn my nose up at it and write some of my novel Tempus Regina, which I have not yet properly "begun." Depending on its cooperation, this story may be the one next on my list after White Sail's is complete.

enjoy!

She could only guess at how long the house had been abandoned, and as she struggled toward it at the Assassin’s side it seemed too decayed to still be standing. In the moonlight it crouched half-lit and ghostly, eaves sunk like an old man’s brows, door hanging ajar to reveal a black grinning mouth, and Regina would have frozen on the step if her hand had not been so tightly grasped in the Assassin’s. As it was she pulled back with a burst of panic, crying out, “I cannot go in there!”

“Nonsense,” he returned flatly, drawing her on. “It’s perfectly safe.” He set the door open one-handed and led Regina into the blackness on the other side; there he let go for just a moment, leaving her horribly alone with no sight, no idea where she stood or what might be around her, no assurance of having a living companion. Behind her the door groaned—like an opening skull, she thought—and the dark was complete, but then something scratched twice on her right and five small flames burst upward to light a circle around them. Regina turned gratefully toward the fire, ready almost to catch it up and cradle it, but as she saw the flames she shrieked and the sound echoed shrill through the room.

The Assassin caught her mouth in his left hand, flashing the fingers of his right, and the red tongues that danced on them, before her eyes. “Hush!” he snapped. “I said the house was safe; don’t put it to the test.” He waited a moment longer, then withdrew his palm and straightened slowly.

Regina could not pull her eyes from his burning fingertips, but with difficulty she managed, “You—you are a sorcerer.”

“Maybe. Now come along.” He took her by the elbow and, holding up his hand to light their way, brought her across the chipped and broken tiles of the atrium to a fountain long since dried up. At its base he crouched, dug his left fingers into a jagged cut between one tile and another, and wrenched one up to reveal a huge, rectangular hole; a pungent smell rolled up and choked Regina, but when she backed away, the Assassin caught her hand once more and made her stand still. “Well,” he said, curling a weird, firelit smile, “after you.”

She was too dazed and frightened to hazard a verbal protest, but she shook her head mutely.

The smile dropped off the Assassin’s face. “If you want me to help you, you must do as I say. If you don’t want me to help you, you can leave—by yourself. I don’t have time to waste carting you about. Move along.”

Regina caught her breath and struggled to keep back the scream that was mounting in her chest. It was a nightmare, she thought, a horrid nightmare made more awful by the knowledge that it was real and that she could not wake up from it. One step, then another, and she was on the edge of the hole with all that darkness at her feet and the light only dancing on its surface. She sank one foot into the shadows and felt stairs, froze again, then forced herself to go on. Down, down, down, her fear struggling with her pride as the light grew farther and farther away and the emptiness surrounded her. The stairs seemed to go on forever, never turning, always descending straight as though into a tomb.

Suddenly light flared up behind her and she turned round on the steps, half expecting to see some further sorcery; but the Assassin had merely put his fingers together and lit a torch that hung by the opening, brightening the tunnel in a warm flash of yellow on marble. Then he help up his hand and blew out the fire on his fingers, took down the torch, and nodded to Regina to go on. She did not like turning her back on him, but she shivered and continued as she was ordered.

There were three more steps left before she came down onto smooth tiles whose chilliness swept up through her body and seemed to invade her soul. It was so cold, so cold and empty, and miserable like a huge, unlit grate, and when the firelight danced down the stairs and through the chamber, Regina was too glad for it to care where it came from. She glanced over her shoulder at the Assassin and the torch he held, then turned her gaze back to the room.

It was not large; the blaze of light filled it easily, glimmering on the mosaic pattern of the floor and on the close dirt walls, and she thought it looked as though the man who had paved the chamber had grown bored and left the rest as it was. That awful smell was thicker than ever, and as she looked a persuasive sound nudged at her consciousness—a bubbling, chortling sound, unnervingly low, underlying both the stench and the other sounds of the room. She followed it and in the corner behind the steps she saw a rude wooden table and a steaming flask, and on the ground beside it, a place where the tiles had been torn up to create a fire pit.

“What is this place?” Regina whispered, and her breath seemed to thread its way through the room.

“I live here,” the Assassin replied bluntly, driving the shaft of his torch into a bracket on the wall; a chunk of dirt fell from it and spattered at his feet. He grabbed a rough chair and shoved it toward Regina, adding, “Sit.”

Regina put her hand on the object’s splintered back, but she did not sit, only stood watching the Assassin’s movements uneasily while he tossed off his cloak and went to the table. He removed the flask from it, which did not lessen the stench, and kicked back the ashes in the pit until Regina could see twin red glows like dragon eyes—like the dragon eyes on the watch. Impatient, she raised her voice and demanded, “Why have you brought me here?”

He put the flask on the little spark of a fire and tucked it in before turning to her again, and his coolness made her angry. “For privacy,” he repeated. “You carry an odd thing there; you’re a fool to wear it so openly. Why do you not sit?”

Regina gripped the chair harder. “I do not trust you,” she said distinctly.

“Why not?”

“You are an assassin; you kill for money. Why should I trust you?”

He quirked a little smile and for the first time she saw humour in his eyes as he replied, “There is no money in the case. And it would have been easier to kill you in the street; I would hate to bloody the tiles. Bring the thing here to the table.”

Regina did not trust him a jot more than she had before, but she obeyed because she had to, drawing the chain over her head and shaking back her hair as, fingers still on the metal, she showed the dragon to him. This time his face did not change as he put out his hand to it, but she saw that he was tense, almost to the breaking point, and his breath came a little heavily; he touched it, caressed it, then said, not unpleasantly, “May I?”

She let him take the watch, but she kept a finger on the long chain and watched his movements jealously. The Assassin explored the crevices of the dragon-head, not seeming to fear, as Regina feared, the garnet eyes or the snarling mouth, and then he clicked open the lid. His eyelids jerked and the dark eyes beneath them glinted and darted more quickly over the face of the watch, so that Regina tightened her hand on the metal. But he merely looked up at her. “Why,” he said, “have you brought me this?”

He was not resisting her death-grip on the watch, but Regina felt as though they were playing a stupid, childish game of tug-of-war with it. She thrust her jaw out and replied, “I was told you might be able to help me.”

“With?”

“This. I come from the future—” Regina’s head swam as she said it “—and I must get back, but the watch—the watch won’t let me.”

For a long time the Assassin regarded her without expression, and she found his gaze as hypnotizing, in its own way, as the dragon’s. At last, though, he broke the spell with the remark, “I see. You say the watch will not let you; do you know why?”

“No. The hand won’t turn forward, I’ve tried. But I must get back!” she burst out, beginning to tremble. “I have a brother—I must take care of him. I can’t stay here.”

Her words rang in the silence, striking the marble tiles with slap after slap of desperation. The Assassin did not seem to care: foolish, Regina thought dully, to think that he would. He was considering the watch again, running his forefinger over the markings, and presently he said, “This is an old language, and a very curious one...” Then, eyeing her: “Who told you to seek the Assassin?”

“A woman.” He crooked an eyebrow at her, and she ground her teeth and added, “I don’t know her name.”

“You shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

“And what are you?” Regina lashed back, losing the frayed remnants of her temper. “Don’t tell me who I can talk to. It’s my business, isn’t it? Mine! I must go home—I must! I’ll do what it takes to get there; you can’t stop me. If you kill me I’ll haunt you—I’ll haunt your conscience, I’ll haunt your dreams! I won’t let go, not till you mind is broken and you can’t remember your own name. You’re the only man who can help me—please! For pity’s sake!”

Her voice had risen to a wail and then a scream, and she felt empty and dry and old as the words died away. She had nothing left; the room blurred and danced before her, all darkness and fire. Then it cleared and she saw the Assassin’s face and his hands toying with the watch. He felt again the symbols in the gold, then looked up under his brows and fixed his eyes on hers.

“I will help you.”

First Impressions, Scribbles Edition

2011-09-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

I don't like beginnings. That is to say, I don't like writing them; I would rather write anything - even a death scene - than a beginning, whether it be of a whole novel or just of a chapter. I have quite a horror of them, perhaps from hearing the constant refrain, "Create a good hook! You must hook the reader! Create a good hook!" After a while it begins to eat into your soul, and when you open that blank document all you can do is stare as the word pounds over and over in your head, "Hooooooooook!"

However, I do like to admire the work of other writers in this area and pretend that they had as difficult a time producing theirs as I do with mine. Jenny did a post a few days ago on the first sentence of each of some of her favorite books, and although naturally she took some of mine, I wanted to follow her example. So without further ado, and in no particular order...

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."
jane austen, emma

"It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet."
james fenimore cooper, the last of the mohicans

"As I left the railway station at Worchester and set out on the three-mile walk to Ransom's cottage, I reflected that no one on that platform could possibly guess the truth about the man I was going to visit."
c.s. lewis, perelandra

"The Jubel es Zubleh is a mountain fifty miles and more in length, and so narrow that its tracery on the map gives it a likeness to a caterpillar crawling from the south to the north."
lew wallace, ben-hur

"Hill House, though abandoned, had remained unscathed during the years of the Dragon's occupation."
anne elisabeth stengl, veiled rose

"Sing, O goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans."
homer, the iliad

"It was a dark and stormy night."
madeleine l'engle, a wrinkle in time

"In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army."
arthur conan doyle, a study in scarlet

"There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself - not just sometimes, but always."
norton juster, the phantom tollbooth

"It is impossible to estimate the significance of the life of C. H. Spurgeon without knowing something of the religious condition of the land at the time when his ministry commenced in the middle of the last century."
iain murray, the forgotten spurgeon

"When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?"
william shakespeare, macbeth

"The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day - a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with haste."
jean webster, daddy-long-legs

Most of these are simply spectacular beginnings, each in its own way. The opening line of Emma sets the tone for a light, witty read that seems to indicate that the authoress had her tongue in her cheek the whole time she was writing it; The Phantom Tollbooth introduces you to poor Milo, who doesn't know how to spell 'February' and doesn't much care; A Study in Scarlet introduces you to good old John Watson and then gradually slides the reader into the shock of meeting Sherlock Holmes, who first enters the scene flailing a test tube and crying, "I FOUND IT!"

I'm not sure who doesn't love the first line of Daddy-Long-Legs and decide right away that it is the perfect book for a rainy day. And the person who doesn't know the chilling pronouncement of the First Witch in Macbeth obviously never acted the play out with stuffed animals as a child. And then there's The Iliad. One wonders if the person who first wrote down the poem realized how chillingly epic that first line is - wonders if he stopped, sat back, peered at the introduction and remarked, "Hey, that's pretty good!"

I can never decide whether Madeleine L'Engle's beginning for A Wrinkle in Time was frank or tongue-in-cheek, but it certainly is catchy. Veiled Rose begins with a prologue that is actually the almost-end of the book, introducing the reader to the Dragon, then moving back in time to the summer when everything began to happen at Hill House. Even The Forgotten Spurgeon, a biography, grabs the interested reader by the collar; what was the religious condition of Britain at that time?

Granted, at least two of these are not hooks. As much as I love The Last of the Mohicans, I did not remember that opening line and frankly I think I skipped it; and with Ben-Hur, a caterpillar mountain is not the most exciting way of introducing such an epic novel. But these are exceptions, and they work because the rest of the book is splendid and by the time readers are in the middle of the forest with Uncas, Hawkeye, and the rest or escaping a naval battle with Judah Ben-Hur, they don't really care what the first sentence of the book was. For the rest of us mere mortals, hooks are important and we have to muddle through as best we can. But who knows? Maybe some day people will go around quoting the first line of Wordcrafter like they do with Macbeth.

...Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.

Tales of Goldstone Wood Giveaway

2011-09-23T09:55:00.001-07:00

Today was the close of the giveaway of Anne Elisabeth Stengl's two published works in her series Tales of Goldstone Wood. Out of the entrants, these two won an autographed copy of either Heartless or Veiled Rose:

Galadriel (veritas...)
won Heartless

Shadowlight (setonmom...)
won Veiled Rose

Congratulations! You can expect an email from Anne Elisabeth, and then your copies will be in the mail. Be sure to drop by her blog if you haven't already; it's as entertaining as her books.

Beautiful People - Charlie Bent

2011-09-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

“She’s a little thing, isn’t she?”

Tip turned and found the alcove occupied by another man, who was also observing the progress on the Argus. He was dressed smartly—much more smartly than Tip—in a dark blue uniform and off-white gloves, with ruffled blond hair pulled back in the classic queue that had begun to go out of style in America. His voice was lazy with confidence, but on second glance Tip saw that he was no more than a boy, and a boy who barely passed his shoulder in height. Tip raised an eyebrow, half in distaste, half in amusement, and faced the ship again. “Know a lot about ships, do you?” he asked, mocking the boy’s sage way of talking.

“More than you, I imagine,” the boy replied easily, eyelids partially drooped. “You think she’s pretty big, don’t you?”

Georgie and Sky have written up the September edition of their Beautiful People series - something I look forward to every month, in case you couldn't tell. If ignorant as to how this works, you can take a look at the basics here. Last month I did Ethan Prince from my novel Wordcrafter and the month before that I did Justin King, also from Wordcrafter, so now I feel it my duty (or something) to return to the characters of my work-in-progress, The White Sail's Shaking. September's beautiful person will therefore be

charlie bent

1. Does he have any habits, annoying or otherwise?

Charlie is quick to notice deficiencies in others and rarely bites his tongue; he also has a rather colorful vocabulary and, though he tries to curb it, it bursts out when he is particularly angry. When agitated he pulls his cuff or shirt buttons.

2. What is his backstory and how does it affect him now?

Telling his backstory would give away a great deal of the novel, but as for how it affects him, for the most part Charlie tries to ignore it. When it is forced upon him, he tends to sink into depression.

3. How does he show love?

Charlie is neither good at loving nor good at showing it when he does. He does stand by the people he cares about, and though he will abuse them himself, he would gladly tear apart anyone else who speaks ill of them.

4. How competitive is he?

Extremely. Despite his cool exterior Charlie has the hot blood of Southern aristocracy in his veins, and he is jealous in all aspects of his life.

5. What does he think about when nothing else is going on?

Sometimes his past, sometimes complex trigonometry problems, sometimes how to cook a Barbary macaque. It depends.

6. Does he have an accent?

Charlie has a Southern drawl, but he is capable of turning it down, if not completely off.

7. What is his station in life?

This is a difficult question. Charlie has been at sea for four years, two of them as a midshipman; as such he is at the low end of the totem pole, but you would not guess it from his attitude.

8. What do others expect from him?

Another difficult question! I don’t know whether this question refers to daily labor or what, so I’ll try to answer as best I can. Not much is expected of Charlie as a midshipman; his duties vary, and the most that is asked of him is to obey without question, keep out of fights, learn (preferably), and eventually pass for lieutenant (hopefully). His relationship with his family is tenuous at best, so little pressure comes from that quarter. Darkwood is the one who expects most from him, encouraging him to progress and to both recognize and battle his faults. Tip is never quite sure what to expect of him.

9. Where was he born, and when?

A plantation in South Carolina, 18 January, 1789. At the start of the novel in 1802, he is fourteen.

10. How does he feel about people in general?

"How can anyone love a pebble in their shoe?" Ahem, sorry. Charlie is a firm believer in total depravity; he is also a believer in the Imago Dei, but unfortunately he has a more difficult time making that show in his relationships. He says himself that he is not good at thinking the best of people, and he tends to need proof. His hates are quite as fierce as his loves, but in between there is a cold region of simply not caring, into which most of humanity falls.

Charlie nodded, keeping a hand against his nostril. He held out the handkerchief and Tip pulled back in revulsion, exclaiming, “I don’t want it! I’m certainly not going to wash it for you now that you’ve bled all over it.”

Bent twitched a mirthless smile. “You’re such a girl,” he said faintly, balling the handkerchief in his fist.

Oh, and I Hate Your Book

2011-09-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of talk nowadays about whether the Internet is making us stupid. I don't know that I agree with that; I incline to the belief that rather than making people less intelligent, the Internet provides those people who didn't have much intelligence to start with to put that stupidity up where everyone else can see it. You can find examples of this anywhere on the Internet and one comes to expect it in places like Facebook and the comments on YouTube videos. Unfortunately, however, it also shows up in places where one would think people might show a little more tact and wisdom, like the reviews on Amazon. It has become such a simple business to put one's opinions out there that most people no longer think about it, and it really, truly, absolutely shows.

How do you write reviews that are both honest and tactful? Obviously this is not such a big deal if you liked the book, but what if you didn't? In some cases the nursery rule "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" ought to be referred to; I think this every time my eye happens to catch a YouTube comment about how awful this or that song is. Really, if you don't like it, you don't have to listen to or read it and you certainly don't have to tell the whole world about it. However, now most publishers send out copies of new releases to bloggers and owners of websites in return for honest reviews, so readers are obliged to give their opinion. What to do if you disliked the book?

determine why you disliked it

Whatever you do, don't go post an Amazon review that says, "This book was so stupid and I just hated it. I couldn't get past page 67." The whole point of reviews is to show prospective buyers what they will be getting, so avoid spoilers, but try to give the basic pros and cons of the book. If you disliked it, there is no call for venting your spleen in a public place. And while the publishing house does say that reviewers are not obligated to give positive feedback, do recall that you have received a free book and try to be respectful and appreciative.

opinions or truths

If you are going to review books, keep in mind objectivity versus subjectivity. It may be your opinion that the book was too slow in getting started, but recall that others are fond of novels that start off slowly and build over a longer space of time. If a book offends due to immoral content, on the other hand, this is more than a matter of opinion; it is a matter of conscience, especially if the publisher and the author profess to be Christians and to publish and write books grounded in Scripture. However, in both cases reviewers should maintain tact. Don't figuratively burn the book in your review (you may literally burn it if you want) and certainly do not attack the author. Amazon is not primarily a forum for your views; it is a marketplace and your thoughts on books should be presented in a helpful manner. Sites like Goodreads are geared more toward your own views and preferences, but even here common courtesy should be maintained.

remember that authors read reviews

Anne Elisabeth Stengl posted the other day about an author's reaction to feedback, and she made the point that the negative is much more memorable than the positive. Granted, authors should have tough skins; granted, if they can't take people not caring for their books, they shouldn't read reviews. I certainly don't think authors should ever respond to a negative review in order to tell the reviewer what an idiot they are for not loving the author's baby. However, on the part of the reviewer, they should always be as courteous as possible and not cause unnecessary offense. Don't end a review by warning readers away from other books by the author, especially if you have not read them, and be extremely wary of referring to the author directly. (For instance, don't say that the book was so bad that the author must be going senile.)

find the silver lining

Yes, I'll admit that some books don't have a silver lining. Sometimes the best you can say is, "Well... It has a nice cover!" But if there is something good to say, say it; don't be too stingy with compliments. Maybe the characters were all as flat as day-old pancakes and you have to remark on this (not in so many words, please), but if the author did an admirable job with research, mention that as well. Try to keep in mind that, even if appearances are to the contrary, the author probably did labor a great deal over their book. This doesn't mean that you should never say anything negative about anyone's book, but it does mean that you should be careful how you say it. Be honest, but be tactful. The traits can be combined.

choose the books carefully

When I started getting books to review for the site I help run, I didn't know much about modern novels and so I failed to be picky enough. I've since learned that, being more accustomed to old books than newer ones, I have to choose carefully which ones I want to review in order to avoid giving out single-star reviews. If you don't like fantasy, don't request a review copy of a fairy tale. It's amazing how many one-star Amazon reviews start out with, "I don't actually like [insert particular genre] but I thought I'd give this book a try," progress to, "I hated it," and end with, "Free review copy provided by [name of publisher]." Remember that the publishing house is spending money in order to send "free" books to you; don't be selfish or rude. Only request a book if you honestly think it might be good.

respect opinions

...especially if those "opinions" are on moral issues that the reviewer saw in the book. Amazon has a function to comment on reviews, but I think this should be reserved for comments on reviews that are rude or otherwise uncalled for (and even then, commenting is usually a waste of time). If someone dislikes a book, you won't convince them to like it by commenting on their review to tell them all the wonderful things about the novel that they missed. If another person has given their honest, respectful opinion, don't get in a tizzy over it if that opinion happens to be negative.

What do you think? If a reviewer, do you find it harder to be honest or to be tactful about a book you disliked? If a writer, how do you respond to negative feedback?

Tomes and White Phosphorus

2011-09-14T05:40:00.000-07:00

First off, I would like to remark that The Soldier's Cross has recently been reviewed on two blogs - Eva's The Watered Garden Letters and Ashley's The Epic Reader. If you would like to see their thoughts on the book, just trot over and take a peek!

And now on to the subject of this post. A few days ago the rough draft of The White Sail's Shaking passed 100,000 words (I do realize that the sidebar doesn't say as much, because I haven't added the current chapter to the main document, but thankfully even my math skills can handle adding 5,000 into 97,000). It's a little sad that since November 2010 I've only added 50,000 words to the total, but I like to think they have been good words...and anyways, milestones are nice. I am now about three-fourths of the way through the novel's first draft, which is quite exciting when I don't allow myself to look at what I still have to do, so I thought I would write a kind of celebratory post.

This week I've been doing some research - research on phosphorus, to be precise - and jotting down notes for chemicals to be used in a future story, so my brain is in search-mode. In general I have to admit that I would rather be writing than researching, but there are times when I find something quite fascinating and I can hardly drag myself away from it, like the ingredients in match heads or Naval Documents related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers. This is the mood I am currently in, and so in honor of white phosphorus and having reached 100,000 words in White Sail's, I thought I would shine some light on my favorite resources for my work in progress.

naval documents of the barbary wars

I only discovered this fairly recently. It would be a massive tome if it were in book-form and costs about $500, but fortunately the whole thing is available online. It has letters, journal entries, and legal forms from the time period of the two Barbary Wars and is helpful for finding the movements of ships on specific dates, as well as for checking the information in the books I have. Searching by subject gets a wee bit tiresome, so I don't usually go to this resource first, but when I do the results are almost always worth it.

edward preble: a naval biography [by christopher mckee]

Edward Preble was the Commodore of the American squadron in the Mediterranean during the time in which The White Sail's Shaking takes place, and I had originally planned for Tip to be on Preble's flagship, the Constitution. That was subsequently changed, but I still read this biography from cover to cover to learn more about Preble. And I wouldn't do it again just for fun. Nothing much happened to Preble prior to the First Barbary War, except for a few events during the American Revolution, and so all and all the first half of the biography made for pretty dull reading. The chapters dealing with the Barbary War, however, are wonderfully thorough - and they have diagrams and maps! (Yes, I am still inordinately fond of pictures in books.)

six frigates [by ian toll]

I can't forget about this one, since it inspired White Sail's to start with. This book isn't as in depth as Edward Preble, but then, it makes for a much lighter and more enjoyable read. I use this for looking up the major movements of the squadron and the Americans' relationship with the British, then look up the details in Preble. This book also has some good information on Stephen Decatur, which is very nice.

the barbary wars [by frank lambert]

Despite the fact that this is a whole book on the two Barbary Wars, it is not in-depth and deals with the events in fairly cursory detail. It's easy to search things in because of its small size, so I use it first to see if I can find what I need before turning to the larger books. Although not really applicable to my novel, it does have some interesting information on life in Tripoli itself.

biography of stephen decatur

I have yet to find a biography of Stephen Decatur that I like; they all tend to be oozing with hero-worship until I'm pretty sure even he would be ashamed to read them. I am inclined to think him an amazing man, but the triteness of the biographies makes him seem trivial. The number of mistakes in this particular book is also a downer. On the other hand, like The Barbary Wars, this is easy to glance through and when I find an interesting "fact" I can check it off some other, more reliable work.

I have other books as well, not to mention a random website here and there, but these are the ones that get carted around the house from one computer to the other (and which always seem to be at the wrong one when needed). I researched prior to 2010 NaNo, but there were so many facts that had to be crammed into my brain that naturally a lot of them fell out again and I have to keep restocking. It's a fascinating business, though - almost as fascinating as white phosphorus.

Interview with Anne Elisabeth Stengl

2011-09-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

As senior editor over at Squeaky Clean Reviews, I sometimes get free copies from publishing companies like Bethany House to read and review. I don't frequently find books by contemporary authors that I really, truly, positively like, however, so when I received Veiled Rose I was hopeful but pessimistic. To make a long story short, I was more than pleasantly surprised; I was captivated. Anne Elisabeth Stengl writes in the timeless style of the classics, creating an intricate, intense fairy tale full of equally flawed and loveable characters, and the last page left me with admiration for her deftness.

Anne Elisabeth has published two novels in her series Tales of Goldstone Wood - Heartless and Veiled Rose - and more are to come (the third, Moonblood, releases April 2012). She has kindly agreed to an interview here at Scribbles to give readers a peek at her inspiration and writing process, and she is also offering a giveaway to two winners, one to receive an autographed copy of Heartless and the other an autographed copy of Veiled Rose. If you would like to enter (and I highly recommend that you do), all you have to do is leave a comment on this post with your email address. The giveaway will end next Friday, September 23.

the interview

1. Would you mind telling us a little about yourself? Hobbies, personality, tea or coffee?

I think the primary definition of me as both a personality and a writer is my love of all things Fairy Tale. I spent my childhood living in England right next to a great, wild, beautiful Common full of ancient oaks, wild rabbits, a stone church (complete with scary graveyard), and all the magic a 3-to-10 year old and her brothers could possibly hope to find. From this early age, I sought out stories of fairies and knights and heroes.

Today, not much has changed. I met my handsome husband at fencing class, where I was researching for my first novel, Heartless. In a whirlwind romance of Fairy Tale proportions, I “stabbed” him at a tournament, we fell in love, and were married seven months later! How's that for fairy tale?

I am a devoted tea drinker. I tell my Rohan this is the real reason I married him. He comes from Sri Lanka and introduced me to fine, black Ceylon teas. Hmmmm. And I had thought I was a tea snob from years of living in England! What did I know? My family, also avid tea drinkers, are very pleased to have Rohan added to their number.

I am a consummate Crazy Cat Lady (My name is Anne Elisabeth, and I am a cataholic). My current count is four: Molly Boots (my blonde), Minerva Louise (aka The Evil One), Lord Marmaduke Chuffnell (yes, we are posh!) and Mr. Fluffy Monster Boots (he prefers Monster at home). I spent a significant portion of my time this last summer fostering a litter of feral kittens and finding them homes as well.

And I'm allergic to cats.

*shrugs*

Writing is my primary love, but I used to give art classes and paint portraits for a living. I also love to play classical piano, can handle myself in a table-tennis or badminton match, quilt (in cool weather), cook, bake, and a variety of such things. Enough to keep me busy, anyway!

2. Have you “always” been a writer, or was there something that specifically prompted you to start writing?

I started writing my first story when I was seven. It was about three pages long, an epic saga of a wild golden stallion who became a famous race horse, dedicated to my favorite Breyer horse figurine, and complete with illustrations. My second story was a little longer, a romantic tale about a baby flying horse named Purity. By age nine, however, my Crazy Cat Lady side was emerging. I wrote two short novels about an Abyssinian kitten named Berry and his various adventures. At thirteen, I wrote my first epic fantasy, a dreadful catastrophe of literary hodge-podge (but I liked it!) about a wish-granting cat and all the various baddies who wanted to control him.

All this to say, yes, I have always wanted to be a writer. My mother, Jill Stengl, has sixteen published historical romances to her name, and I grew up watching her write, so it was natural for me to pick up a pen myself. I write very different work, however. After about age 13, I knew that fairy tales were my real love . . . well, those and cats!

3. Without giving spoilers, can you tell us what inspired Veiled Rose?

Veiled Rose is actually the second book in my Tales of Goldstone Wood, though chronologically, it takes place mostly before Heartless. It was inspired quite simply out of my desire to take a character from Heartless, Leonard the jester, and learn more about him. This is unusual for me. Most of my stories begin with a plot concept, and I discover the characters as I pursue the plot. But with Veiled Rose, the entire plot emerged from wanting to know Leo better.

Of course, it didn't really take shape until Rose Red stepped into the picture as Leo's foil. I knew I wanted her to be his opposite in every way. Not just being a humble peasant girl . . . she needed to be a complete outcast. Thus was born the mysterious child covered in veils from head to foot, rejected by her community. Once she introduced herself to me, the story took flight!

4. Did you find the writing process of your two published books to be similar or very different? I know the first draft of Veiled Rose was a colossal undertaking; did the deadline make it a harder or easier book to write than Heartless?

Each book is an entirely different project. Deadlines do make a difference for sure, but that isn't the number one factor in the level of intensity. Every time I begin a new manuscript, it is something more complicated and more interesting than the one before. Every time I begin a new manuscript, I learn all over again how to write a book.

I like how Neil Gaiman paraphrases this quote by Gene Wolfe: "You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing."

In some ways writing Veiled Rose was easier than Heartless. I was a better novelist when I wrote it, so Veiled Rose went through fewer rough drafts. That being said, Heartless was more fun to draft from the get-go because I was just having fun with it, not doing it for a job. Each one of my stories is a labor of love . . . but the love never diminishes the labor!

5. Can you pick a favorite character from the Tales of Goldstone Wood?

My favorite character is probably Sir Eanrin, Bard of Iubdan Rudiobus, Knight of Farthestshore. If you have read only Veiled Rose, you have only gotten tiny glimpses of him. He gets a much more dominant role in Heartless, a still greater role in Moonblood, and is the lead player in Starflower [the fourth book in the series]. I kind of adore him.

That being said, I also really love writing about Prince Lionheart because he is so real to me. Rose Red and Una also have tender places in my heart. The Prince of Farthestshore is more difficult to write, especially because he is so significant in every novel, but must not remain static. But when I succeed in writing him well, he is the most satisfactory character of all.

6. The Tales of Goldstone Wood are fantasies. Do you see yourself continuing to write fantasy alone, or do you think you’ll try your hand at other genres?

I have dabbled in comedic fantasy, strict fairy tale retelling fantasy, historical fantasy, etc. But it always comes back to being fantasy. Once or twice I have toyed around with thoughts of writing a historical and even a contemporary or two. But my mind doesn't tend to work that way. I can enjoy reading just about any genre, but the tales that take shape in my mind always morph into the fantastic. I wouldn't necessarily be against writing another genre . . . it would just have to be a dominant enough idea to shoulder aside all the fairy tales currently taking precedence!

7. What inspires you most: books, movies, your cats, your family…dish-washing?

Great writing. If I have hit a wall in my own work, the best solution I have found is to back up and read the greats. Whether rereading favorites or discovering brilliance for the first time, I am always inspired by the beauty of well-written plots and compelling characters. A novel I am reading (or poem, depends on my mood) can have absolutely NOTHING to do with anything I am currently writing . . . but it might still be exactly what I need to spark my interest again. For instance, I just finished Joseph Conrad's heart-breaking Lord Jim. I will never even consider writing like Conrad (he uses stream-of-consciousness), but the gorgeous depth of his prose and the power with which he communicates his message in the context of a vivid story is a huge inspiration.

Good writers are my best encouragers. The more great writing we read, the more motivation we have to excel.

I also spend large chunks of time brainstorming with my long-suffering mother. I think with my mouth (I am a girl, after all), so sometimes just talking through ideas and conundrums is all I need to get me started in the right direction. My dear Rohan has, in this first year of our marriage, proven himself a willing and insightful brainstorming partner as well.

Cats are great for purr-therapy. Never underestimate the importance or power of purr-therapy. Or a cup of tea. Dish-washing, however . . . meh. Not my favorite. I get VERY inspired by a handsome husband who does the dishes for me, though!

8. What are your favorite and least favorite parts of the writing process?

Favorite: Finishing!

This isn't to say there aren't significant moments of joy throughout the process. Writing my fifth professional novel, however, I am discovering that those moments of joy are fewer and farther between than they used to be. What I once did purely for pleasure is now my profession. It's work. And it is hard, hard work, even while it is what I enjoy most and do best in this life. I used to get to the end of a scene that went really well - all the plot threads twining together, all the thematic elements shining, all the characters as real as real can be - and sit back with a sigh, content. Now, I might still have those fantastic scenes, but there isn't as much satisfied sighing. I'm a better writer now. The work can always be better still with rewrites. I'm always looking for that one trick necessary to improve what I have done. It's good work, even glorious work . . . but it's still work.

Least Favorite: Starting!

I really have come to hate beginnings. Used to be that they were the easiest part for me, back when my stories were simpler. Now, each of my manuscripts goes through at least five very different opening scenes. I believe in an organic development of plot and character, which means each scene needs to build naturally on top of the one that came before. Which means that the opening scene needs to be right before it leads to chapter two. Not that it needs to be perfect, by any means. But it needs to be solid.

So, yes, openings are my big hang-up these days. I can sometimes write 50,000 words’ worth of manuscript before realizing that I have the wrong opening! Once I hit on the right one, though, I can write a novel in two to four months. It's just getting the right one!

Beginnings are killers for me, too. (Can't we just skip that bit and go straight to the middle?)

9. If you were forced to pick a single favorite author, who would it be?

Such a cruel question!

Well, I suppose if I'm being forced, I must say C.S. Lewis. His beautiful Chronicles of Narnia alone earn him that place! But on top of those, he wrote such gems as Till We Have Faces, The Great Divorce, Perelandra, not to mention his fascinating non-fiction. He amazes me with his extreme versatility, and yet his voice is always truly and distinctly his own. He knew that fiction was meant to be fun and wonderful . . . he also knew that it was not meant to be the Poor Man's Television. He knew fiction was to challenge and inspire and invigorate. Entertainment need not be mindless.

Yes, I adore him and his work.

10. What is your primary goal in your writing? What ideals and beliefs dictate how and what you write?

My primary goal is to bring glory to God by writing to the very best of my ability. I believe the whole purpose of mankind is worship, and I believe each of us best worships God when doing what we do best to our very best. Writing is my great skill, a gift from God and a talent for which I know he has plans. So it is to his honor when I study and strive and work and learn to better my craft. And I hope and pray that my desire to communicate truth through these simple fairy tales becomes ever-more evident to those who read them.

I also long to bring a sense of classicism back to the CBA market. There is a sad tendency in Christian publishing to simply follow the modern trends, to focus entirely on entertainment and not on true beauty and true art. A lot of lazy writing is being called "great," and knowledge of the classics is fading swiftly from both our readers’ and writers’ memories. I hope that stories like the Tales of Goldstone Wood, written in a classic omniscient narrative, will motivate people to go back and read the much better stories that influenced and inspired them—the works of Lewis and MacDonald, Coleridge and Milton, Spenser and Shakespeare, and so many more!

11. I know Moonblood is the next book due out. Which book in the series are you actively writing now?

I am currently drafting Book 5 in the Tales of Goldstone Wood, which is under the working title Dragonwitch. I suspect that title will change, however. Most of the time, my publisher likes the titles I pick, but I'm not even sure I like that title, and I don't know what they'll think of it. We'll see what happens. I just finished drafting Book 4, Starflower, which will come out October 2012. It is in a polish-up stage and about to be sent out to my editors for their perusal. I can hardly wait to share it with all of you! It is my personal favorite. But then, my newest piece is always my personal favorite! It will probably be supplanted by Book 5 in another month or two . . .

I am eagerly awaiting Moonblood and its sequels. Thanks so much for sharing!

Anne Elisabeth Stengl's blog is over at Tales of Goldstone Wood, where you can read more about her writing and an author's life (and her cats - life isn't complete without a few cats). She is currently doing a series of answers to questions readers have, so if you are curious about something regarding her books or about writing in general, be sure to drop her a comment or an email.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway!

In Defense of Nonfiction

2011-09-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

I don't write nonfiction. At least, I haven't written any yet and I didn't see it in the near future when I looked at my scrying mirror; I have too many novels to write. Yet a defense of the genre seems to be needed in this day and age, both to writers and readers alike, for people are much more eager to read fiction now than to pick up a biography or even a "religious" book. The reverse used to be true, of course. There was a time when the novel was considered to be a frivolity and the primary books read by literate men and women were works of philosophy, science, history, and religion. Now the tables have turned.

This is not, of course, to say that I dislike fiction or that I read as many nonfiction works as I would like. I agree with Jane Austen's tongue-in-cheek comment in Northanger Abbey: "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." Novels can have many truths in them, and stimulating the imagination is a good thing. I would rather see a person reading a decent novel than flipping through the comics section of a newspaper. The classics, especially, are classics for a reason and (generally speaking) ought to be read and enjoyed.

But what about nonfiction? This genre seems usually to be reserved for the middle-aged and elderly, while younger readers prefer novels. Many read widely - classics, fantasy, historical fiction, what-have-you - but don't read nonfiction, not realizing how much they are missing by never reading a biography longer than a hundred pages or delving into a Puritan Paperback. Few people take note that if fiction is an ode to man's imagination and creativity, the real world is an ode to God's. And fact, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

There are numerous reasons why the reading of nonfiction is an almost lost art, not least of which is the argument that biographies, histories, etc. are dull and tedious. I think, however, that this is more a holdover from textbooks than a truth about the majority of nonfiction; after all, writing something like a biography is still classified as "creative" writing, which implies that the author puts imagination into the crafting of his or her book. Writers like David McCullough and Robert K. Massie are so skilled at writing that their books read with the ease of a novel while still presenting the facts in all their fascinating detail. Nonfiction certainly is a different style than fiction and one that takes getting used to, but it is no more unusual or difficult than the style of classic authors like Jane Austen is today.

"Religious" works (the term seems rather loose and open-minded, but I don't really know what else they might be called) are just as important as histories, if not more so, for they feed the soul. Yet if anything, they are less read than biographies - or, if readers do pick up a book on some aspect of the Christian life, it is usually a modern, insipid work about what religion can do for you. Granted, these are easier to read than Jonathan Edwards, but they are, as a whole, neither well-grounded in Scripture nor lastingly worthwhile. Books by the Puritans or such men as John Piper and Charles Spurgeon are a little harder to read, but provide meat for the soul rather than what my sister-in-law calls "candy-reading."

As a caveat to all that, I will say that I don't advocate that someone who only reads novels run out and buy Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or Jonathan Edwards' Treatise on the Will. The best way to slide into a habit of reading nonfiction is to start with something relatively small on a subject that interests you. My first adult nonfiction read was Robert K. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra... but it's over 600 pages and was a long, hard slog to get through. That was, by the way, not because of any deficiency in Massie's writing, but because I wasn't used to such big books. I made it to the end through a combination of sheer determination (also known as stubbornness), interest in the Romanov family, and love for Massie's writing. On the other hand, the excellent book Amazing Grace, a biography of William Wilberforce by Eric Metaxas, is only about 300 pages and makes for a much lighter read.

As for books on the Christian life, there are plenty of good ones for laymen and laywomen; they are not all as overwhelming as Karl Barth's Dogmatics or John Owen's works. (Which I haven't read. Just in case you thought I was actually smart or something shocking like that.) Some good authors are John Piper, J.I. Packer, and A.W. Tozer, and the series of books called "Puritan Paperbacks," put out by the Banner of Truth Press, are well-worth getting as well. Once you've dipped your toe into the water, you may find that the pool isn't as terrifying as you first thought.

I Think He Knows Which End to Hold

2011-08-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

"So killing things mends a broken heart?"
"No, but it's good fun."

When I began to write "Take One Lump or Two?" I was simply going to do a basic getting-to-know-your-character post, but instead it turned into a more specific post on the subject of tea or coffee. There are many good posts out there about interviewing your character, so instead of doing that (since it doesn't work for me anyway), I wanted to do something more in depth and out of the ordinary. Something in the line of Jenny's recent clothing post. The other day I used the personalities of tea-drinkers versus coffee-drinkers; today the subject is

weaponry

A fun subject for those of us who enjoy a bit of violence in our stories. Indeed, there are very few stories that can get away with not having any violence in them at all; the world is hardly a peaceful place, after all. In many cases your main character will have to fight at some point or another (because a novel without bloodshed is incomplete), and when they do it is likely that they will have a weapon. Rather like clothing, weaponry is one of those things that authors tend to hand their characters on the spur of the moment, not giving much thought to it or seeing much need to do so. But, like clothing again, the kind of weapon that suits your character can say a great deal about him. Is he a bull-in-the-china-shop kind of person? Then it is doubtful that he will be comfortable with a rapier. Is she a well-bred city girl who grows queasy at the sight of blood? Then she will probably not rush into battle with a hatchet.

Before starting on the barroom brawl or the climactic battle, stop to consider what weapon your character would use if given the choice. Naturally he or she will not always be able to pick and may end up with a weapon with which they are uncomfortable, but knowing what their ideal choice would be will help you as a writer know how they fight with what they have.

bare hand clobbering

Tip Brighton is a bare-hand-clobbering type of character: hot-headed, plain, and with the ability to pack a punch. In general this would be the more savage kind of person, the sort who enjoys a good fight and gets into them frequently. On the other hand, even a generally laid-back individual, if bred in the backwoods of a nation or the outskirts of an empire, is likely to prefer the use of either his fists or some heavy weapon to something light like a bow. It also implies that, when it comes to appearance, the character is at least moderately well built; a very slight person is unlikely to make a good boxer. A character who loses his temper frequently will probably be passable in the use of his fists, unless of course he always travels with a knife or a dueling pistol.

two inches in the right place

What is the weapon of the stereotypical villain? The dagger, hidden in the boot and withdrawn at the most inconvenient moments. There is something sly and underhanded about a dagger, making it a good weapon for conniving females and deceptive men. If your character is a plotter, the kind who can spend hours sitting and thinking, the kind who rarely loses their temper but hates with a cold hatred, a knife would be a suitable weapon. This is also a good weapon of necessity, as it can be carried and hidden easily. For a dash of pizzazz, throwing knives are always good.

I don't want a knife, I want a bow and arrow!

The longbow is a graceful weapon, which is probably why Elves always seem to use them in fantasy novels. This is a good weapon for a woman who must take part in a fight but does not wish to get in the thick of things; it takes a cool mind, however, since the character's hands have to be steady for him or her to hit anything. A man who isn't heavily built enough to wield a broadsword or wear full armor might also use a bow and arrows. Though the bow seems to take no effort at all, however, keep in mind that it takes a strong arm to draw the string. The longbow isn't a weakling's or a child's weapon.

ready...aim...fire

The gun is a little like a modern-day bow, only a lot bloodier and less of a woman's weapon. All right, so the only similarity is that it allows the character to keep the opponent at arm's length at least, allowing them to stay fairly clean. A pistol is a good weapon for someone too slight for anything heavier, but still clear-headed and of a cool disposition. This would be Charlie Bent's choice; he does not have the build to fight with only his hands, and the pistol is a gentleman's weapon: sophisticated, pretentious, but deadly as well.

This list is not exhaustive, but it covers some of the more common weapons that characters might use. Again, keep in mind that they will not necessarily be able to get their preferred weapon and that this can be used to illustrate their characters; going back to Tip and Charlie again, Tip is forced at one point to fight a duel - something that is totally opposed to his nature - and Charlie gets into several brawls. Determine what the character would like to use, then decide whether or not to give them what they want.

The Wager

2011-08-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

When I posted Ethan's Beautiful People interview, several people expressed an interest in seeing the part where Ethan wins his name "the Hound." So to gratify you, I scribbled up the section. Although it makes more sense if the reader has a fuller knowledge of the story, I think that this will be fairly self-explanatory.

the wager

Cub held his hand to his mouth and exhaled into it, adjusting the other on Marah’s ice-caked mane and flexing his shoulders experimentally. The tension in the small of his back was almost unbearable; he had slept little the night before and there had been a crick in his neck when he struggled from bed in the moonlight that morning, though his excitement had masked it. There had been a great deal of jesting and leg-pulling as the boys scarfed their cold meal, many bets placed and boasts made, but Cub was too preoccupied to take part. Thunder-son had laughed at him in his careless, goodhumored way and attempted to draw him into a wager, saying, “I have an hour on you, Cub; I’ll take my quarry first.”

And Cub, on his way to the stables to wait for the others, had thrown an indulgent grin over his shoulder and returned, “We’ll see.”

The first trembling excitement had sunk by now into a core of desire for the hunt, a hound’s longing for the scent and the chase and—finally—the kill. His body was relaxed and his heartbeat steady, but every nerve was straining and he knew that Marah’s were as well. He moved his fingers over her damp shoulders, counting the red freckles from memory while his gaze darted from thicket to thicket.

“Spears,” came Lord Peregrine’s voice at last, as akin to the forest as the drip of the icicles. Through the boys’ dogpack went a stifled sound of movement like a snake over the ground; it was good, Cub found, to have the weapon in hand and the feel of its carvings beneath his palms. It was encouraging.

On and on they went, the silvering light and birdsong beginning to hint at dawn, and still they saw nothing and smelled nothing. The silence among the boys grew tense as each thought the same horrible thought: what if there was no hunt that day? With an effort Cub turned his mind to other things, while one hand felt the grooves on his spear and the other ran nervously through Marah’s mane. He thought of Kit, wondering where she might be today and what she might be doing. He thought, with the cooler mind of a hunter, that it was a good day for his first hunt: a wind from the west to blow their quarries’ scent to them and their own scent away, and pervading cold to make the wolves’ bellies growl…

Aow-oooo-ooooo!

The horses flung up their heads and danced at the sudden closeness of the howl and the boys, throwing off all of Peregrine’s restraint, gave tongue like dogs. Cub’s voice rose above the others until his spine thrilled with it, and before he knew clearly what he was doing, his knees were hard in Marah’s ribs and they were lunging forward as one. His body warmed against the winter air as the hunter’s pleasure swept tingling through his veins and Marah, narrow and agile as an arrow, was alive in every muscle as she plunged over limbs and tumbling bushes toward the howl.

AAAOW—oOoooO—ooo—!

Only one, Cub thought briefly, and it was hungry.

Marah was gathering herself up and Cub’s legs tightened instinctively around her barrel as she made the last lunge to meet the wolf—a massive brindled creature, red-eyed and gape-jawed, streaked with frost across its fine head. It whirled with another short cry as Marah and Cub attacked, too hungry and furious with the starved world to run, and as they danced the hunt-dance with it Cub howled back. This, he thought as his spear glimmered quick as a kingfisher, was bliss: the heat of his own blood in his temples and the drum of Marah’s dancing hooves, and all the while the danger and fear of losing flirting at the back of his mind.

They fought on every inch of that small clearing, the three of them. Marah and the wolf were all that existed to Cub, and the mare was so much a part of him that even she began at last to fade from his brain; only the blazing eyes in the ash-coloured face were important. He and his quarry locked gazes and never broke them all the time that they fought—save once, when a panting breath clouded the air around the wolf’s muzzle and Cub lost sight of the two red gleams. In that brief moment he lost his control over the fight, and behind the screen the wolf gathered itself up and leapt.

He saw a flurry of grey and black, felt the damp heat of breathing on his skin, and then the huge body hit him across the breast and he was falling, falling with an unbearable weight on him. The breath exploded from his lungs as he hit the ground and rolled through the morning frost; the wolf was hard on him, scarlet tongue lolling, and Marah was dancing at the corner of Cub’s vision as she tried to find a moment to attack. Claws like ivory scrabbled at him and the cold air stabbed into his chest as they ripped his tunic wide. And Cub, his mind briefly clearing, was furious. With a shout he caught the animal by the throat, braced his own body against the ground, and sank his teeth into the shaggy warmth of the wolf’s neck until his jaw seemed ready to break. The skin broke and blood filled his mouth; the beast clawed and bit at him in a flurry of pain and still Cub held on, his body pulsing with the will to succeed.

He did not know how long he kept his teeth in the wolf’s throat or how long he lay with the cold ground at his back and hot fur on his chest, but at last he became aware of a horse’s whickering nearby. The wolf was unmoving and unbreathing. Cub loosed his stiff fingers from its skin and opened his mouth, spitting blood, and the motion brought him to an unpleasant awareness of pain all over; he lay still again.

Then hands were taking hold of the wolf and dragging its carcass from him, bringing the winter air down on his wounds. He gasped, blood trickling from his lips, and someone cried out, “Ai, he’s alive after all!”

Cub blinked up at the boys who surrounded him and struggled, still hissing and spitting, to gain his feet. Peregrine stooped and helped him with a dozen others hands trying to assist as well. “That was a fight royal!” the lord said, casting an eye over Cub’s bites and scratches. “A fight for a wordcrafter to tell of, if we had one. You’ve earned yourself a name with that, lad.”

Cub, dizzy with adrenaline and bloodloss, managed a reply that his own ears did not hear and then caught at another boy’s shoulder to steady himself on. It was Thunder-son, and with a panting laugh Cub said, “I won the wager—eh?”

“You won the wager,” the red-haired boy agreed, not drawing his eyes from the blood on Cub’s teeth. “I’ll not contest that.”

“And that,” Justin concluded, leaning back, “was how Ethan won his name and his first wolf pelt. Did I tell it well for not having been there?”

The men howled their pleasure like wolves themselves, though Ash objected, “I wasn’t as ridiculous as that. I don’t care for your rendering of me; you make me sound a brat.”

“That’s because you were,” Ethan returned, lounging on one elbow with a spark of laughter in his Gypsy-eyes.

“I was not,” Ash repeated, and over the men’s mockery Justin cried,

“All right, Ash, next time I’ll tell the story of how you won your name. Will that appease you?”

Ash raised his mead in acknowledgement and the fire played tricks on his wild hair as he jerked his head at Tawny, saying, “So, and make Tawny look the fool this time.”

“You can make me look the fool,” Tawny interposed, “but I’m going to bed. Good-night.”

He rose and one by one the others followed until only Justin and Ethan were left by the dying campfire. The Wordcrafter, beginning to cool down from the sweaty warmth of story-telling, put his arms around his knees and rocked; Ethan picked a glowing twig out of the embers and held it up for inspection, remarking slowly after a moment, “You know…you made a great deal of that up.”

Justin crooked a smile and shrugged. “I know. But they don’t.”

Beautiful People - Ethan Prince

2011-08-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

It's time for the August edition of Georgie and Sky's Beautiful People! Everyone ought to be on the bandwagon by now, but in case a few people are still jogging along in the dust behind it, here is the point:

Once a month Sky and Georgie post a collection of ten questions for writers to answer about their characters. This can either be for you to get to know the character better, or for others to get a glimpse into the personality of said character. You can answer one question, or a few questions, or all of them; the rules are not strict.

Last month after doing Justin I promised to do Ethan Prince next, since it seems rather unfair to do one but not the other. So here is a little peek into the personality of the other main character of Wordcrafter,

the Hound

1. What is your character's full name?

Ethan Prince, Hound of Tera.

2. Does his name have a special meaning?

Ethan stole his “Christian” name from a little boy in Edinburgh who mistook him for a homeless man and gave him chocolate. He earned the name “Hound” when he brought down a wolf on his first hunt and killed it with his teeth. (Lovely, I know.)

3. What is his biggest accomplishment?

Ethan may be prince of Tera, but Tera is a small world: there isn’t much to accomplish. He does not dream of doing anything particularly grand, and considers his biggest accomplishments to come when he defeats himself.

4. What is his strongest childhood memories?

Ethan has many childhood memories, some better than others. His worst are of his father after an evening of drink. His best are of sitting with his mother in the garden on autumn afternoons, when the flowers were still blooming but the leaves had turned red and golden, and of her voice.

5. What is his favorite food?

I don’t think he really has a favorite food, but if he does I can bet it isn’t Justin’s spaghetti.

6. Does he believe in love at first sight?

No. Ethan is far too clear-minded to believe in something like that, which is perhaps why he took such a violent dislike to Jamie.

7. What kind of home does he live in?

Ethan lives in the Horsemen’s Palace. His room was once his mother’s, and after her death he moved into it; it is one of the upper rooms looking down on the courtyard through a wide stretch of windows, very bright, but not cozily furnished.

8. What does he like to wear?

Ethan wears the traditional clothing of the Horsemen—tunic and breeches—designed for long days on horseback. He also frequently wears a long, sleeveless red overcoat.

9. What would he do if he discovered he was dying?

He would probably withdraw into himself, and there I can’t pry into his thoughts.

10. What kind of holidays or traditions does he celebrate?

The Horsemen celebrate the coming of autumn with their harvest fires and the dance they call the Harvest Knot, which Ethan has taken part in since he came of age. Weddings usually come with a week’s worth of celebration.

11. What do your other characters have to say about him?

Have to say, or have to think? Those are very different things. Jamie calls him “strange” and “different.” Justin stands a little in awe of him, half-terrified at times of his wildness and vivacious personality. Copper, in her grave way, calls him a good man.

12. If he could change one thing in hisworld, what would it be?

He would have Jamie killed, or make her never to have existed. Ethan is not a very patient or forgiving individual, and if there is one person in either world whom he hates, it’s Jamie Fairbairn.

Day Six {Genre} and Day Seven {Project}

2011-08-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

As you will no doubt realize if you've seen the list of the Fifteen Day Challenge writing questions, I am taking liberties and skipping a couple of them. Day Six has to do with one's "bucket list," but I don't have one and therefore can't answer that; Day Eight is supposed to be a video about books or writing, but the only one I know of is Julian Smith's "I'm Reading a Book" and I can't stand rap. So I'm going with the questions I can answer.

day six: your favorite genre to write in

Earlier this month I wrote a post on diversity in which I pointed out the advantages of both reading and writing in many different genres to stretch the imagination. I am currently reading my father's dissertation on biblical economics, and in learning a little about the basics of Capitalism, it occurred to me that the Division of Labor encouraged by Adam Smith is today as pervasive a concept in the field of arts as it is in the field of physical labor. Authors are expected to hone their skills in one genre - something which, no doubt, earns them prestige and money. I contend, however, that although it might bring financial success and get the writer into the New York Bestseller List, it is damaging to the mind and will eventually doom the author's writing to tedious repetition.

All that to say, I like to write in several different genres. Currently I have two historical fictions and a fantasy; two of my planned novels are a time-traveling novel (science-fantasy) and a light "historical fiction" composed entirely of letters. I also have a historical fiction and a romance bumping around in my head. If forced to choose I would probably say that my favorite genre to write in is historical fiction, since in that one field there are a thousand different possibilities of time, setting, and characters. I like the research that goes into making the past come alive; I like the feeling of having created a story within history and made it authentic. And - well, I just love history and writing is the closest I can get to being there.

day seven: your current writing project

This question is an easy one for me to answer because I have a one-track mind - in this area, at least. Although I will occasionally scribble down a section in my writing notebook for another story, in general when I begin one novel I concentrate my energy on finishing it. I can't write two novels at the same time. Right now I am writing The White Sail's Shaking, my first "sea novel," set during the United States' first war with the Barbary states of North Africa. I always like a good intrigue, and that is what White Sail's is - an inner war among four midshipmen set against the backdrop of their nation's war with Tripoli.

At any level an officer's single goal is to get to the next highest, and Tip Brighton is as eager as his messmates to succeed when he first joins the Enterprize. He has always been a failure - in society as well as in his own family; that's how he ended up being dumped into the navy in the first place. But now that he is there, he means to prove himself...until he finds that the cost of success is higher than he is willing to pay.

I am roughly 90,000 words in to The White Sail's Shaking, placing me at about the two-thirds mark. The writing has been rather slow (I started this novel as my 2010 NaNo) but I am heartily enjoying this novel through all of its chaotic ups and downs and I hope it won't be the last naval fiction that I write.

Take One Lump or Two?

2011-08-19T05:38:00.000-07:00

Day five of Lerowen's challenge was on the least favorite of your own characters, and I gave the award to Marta because of how difficult I find her to write. However, since she is a necessary part of the plot, I am forced to overcome that and make myself acquainted with her lest she become flat and annoying. Every character who is mildly important to the plot must be just that - a character, an individual person with a life that readers can tell stretches before and beyond the scope of the novel itself. Sometimes this develops of its own accord. Sometimes (to twist Jack London's quote) we must go after it with a stick.

tea or coffee?

Difficult characters plague just about every writer, and there are a dozen ways to beat or coax them into submission; they do not, however, all work universally, so this is trial-and-error. The very first thing to do if you wish to get to know the character is to ask them an important question as soon as they drop by to visit: "Tea or coffee?" My tongue is not wholly in my cheek; it's amazing what such a small and seemingly inconsequential choice can say about a character. Tea and coffee illustrate two ends of a personality spectrum as surely as do the terms "introvert" and "extrovert," and they turn up more often in real life. I frequently hear people lovingly discussing the merits of particular coffee grounds and crying out in horror at the idea of drinking decaffeinated coffee, while others shrug and say, "Coffee's all very well, but tea is such a homey thing. I must have my tea." An illustration that comes very easily to me would be the two main characters of Wordcrafter, who are opposites on this point as on so many others.

Justin: Justin is the embodiment of tea, really. He is withdrawn, shy, and generally sedate, finding comfort within himself rather than from the people around him. He's the sort of steady chap who will gladly sit by you through a rainy day and need nothing for himself, the sort who can comfort and encourage in any situation.

Ethan: Ethan's coffee. He tried this whole "tea" thing and thought it a very strange, watery concoction, but the smooth, bitter strength of coffee had him from the first. Ethan is more brilliant and assertive than Justin, confident and easy and perhaps a little proud. He is more striking, or, for lack of a better term, more flavorful. When you want someone to wake you up and dazzle you, you head for Ethan.

These are extremes, but they serve to make the point of the powerful indicator a choice between tea and coffee can be. So invite your character in, put him or her at the kitchen table, and ask the first question: "Tea or coffee?"

take one lump or two?

The kettle's whistling or the coffee is percolating, and you've brought out the sugar cubes and the cream. But there are half-a-dozen ways a person can take their tea or coffee, and depending on taste buds and personality, a character could take theirs black or with cream, with one lump of sugar or two (or three!), with honey mixed in or with a sprig of mint on top. Jenny's character Rhodri, for instance, takes his tea black and could not be induced to take it any other way. If forced to take tea my character Tip would likely also have it black, but he would prefer straight, strong, black-as-a-bat's-wing coffee. That's the way he is: plain and blunt, lacking any frills or tact. Charlie Bent would have tea with two sugar lumps...and, maybe, if you turned your back long enough (but watched him in the side of a tea pot), he would take another and eat it plain. And that's the way he is: smooth and easy, the perfect gentleman while you watch him, but with his own quirks that he can't quite resist when your back is to him.

How a person drinks his coffee or tea is as significant as which he drinks. It makes a world of difference whether he asks for tea or whether he chooses coffee, and then the cream and sugar provide some details for his personality. To say that Ethan is a coffee-person is not quite enough; does he take it black? No, he takes it with cream to make it go down easier. Justin likes his tea without milk so that it stays clear and amber, but he puts in just a little sugar after it has cooled so that he can watch the beads in the bottom of the cup. These are the little things, not necessarily important if you take them by themselves, but offering further glimpses into the personality of the character if you look hard enough.

Careful observation, my dear Watson, is everything.

Day Five {Least Favorite}

2011-08-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

day five: the least favorite character you've written

(This is a bit like the Razzie Award, isn't it? I don't know that I would want the distinction of Worst Character.)

When on day one I struggled to produce a favorite character, I was looking over a cast of characters whom I dearly love and trying to pick out one - at most two - who I could tentatively call my "favorite." Like most writers, I even take pleasure in my villains. Christopher of The Soldier's Cross was indeed less fun to write than Jamie of Wordcrafter or Lewis of The White Sail's Shaking, but still I know him and he belongs to me, so I can be pleased with him. No, none of my villains can step in to fill this role.

I have had difficult characters in all my works so far, with the possible exception of Wordcrafter. In fact, I've discovered that I have the most trouble with female characters. Jamie and Copper, the two women of Wordcrafter, came with surprising ease to me, however, and so I would have to turn to either Fiona (The Soldier's Cross) or Marta Rais (The White Sail's Shaking). But I don't even remember writing Fiona (ah, the bliss of forgetfulness), so I would have to say that currently my least favorite character is

Marta Rais

Marta is the other main character of White Sail's. The daughter of a Syracusan actress and a British seaman, Marta is orphaned at seventeen when her mother dies of an illness and her father is reportedly killed in an engagement with a French corvette. Her survival depends on either reaching England and, hopefully, her father's relatives, or remaining in Syracuse and going to work in a theatre. She refuses to do the latter and turns all her energies toward getting to Britain, but by a twist of Providence she finds herself on an American schooner heading to a war with the Barbary states instead of a British merchant bound for England.

Marta is a hard character to write because she is a woman in a man's world, which means I have to show her vulnerability while still trying to convey her strength of character. I had the same trouble with Fiona. Women weren't meant to be running here and there without anyone to protect them, and so it is difficult to feel and write the emotions of a girl who finds herself in a situation such as this. She can't be crying all the time (Tip would go crazy, poor fellow) but neither can I pretend that she would be as cool and collected as a man when she has just been dumped into a world entirely foreign to her. There has to be a balance, and it's a difficult one to find.

Although I am 90,000 words into my novel, most of the sections that are to be from Marta's perspective have yet to be written because she is still largely an unknown. I suspect, however, that by the time I reach the final page of White Sail's I will be as fond of Marta as of the other characters, and once again I'll have no reply when someone asks me who my least favorite character is. Which is fine with me.

Day Four {Inspiration}

2011-08-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." (Jack London)

day four: an author or novel that has inspired your writing style

These are all difficult questions, primarily because they seem to imply that there should be a single answer. But unfortunately, there isn't. I read and enjoy a number of authors and I daresay that they have all influenced my writing in one way or another, but there is no particular one who I can point to and say, "That person inspires me. That is what I want my writing to be like." If I had to pick one, however, it would have to be my sister

Jennifer Freitag

Jenny inspired me to start writing. For as long as I can remember she has been creating stories. Whenever we would play outside, she was the one who made up the stories we would act out (sometimes under duress; she often tried to foist it off on someone else, but that never worked). Then she got her awful hulk of a computer and would spend hours writing stories that I thought were works of genius. I would always contrive to read them, and I always adored them - with the exception of the time she killed off my favorite character and wouldn't bring him back to life no matter how hard I pleaded. I think I'm scarred for life.

Eventually I decided that I wanted to write, too. I wanted to have the same magical hold on words that she does. I wanted to be a creator, an artist, to be able to hold something up and say, "This is mine." It took me some time to be certain that I really was a writer, but I think that despite the wonderful books I have read since that time, it is still Jenny who inspires me most.

When I sat down to write this post I wasn't sure what answer I would give to the question, but there it is. The prize goes to Jenny.

Day Three {First Time}

2011-08-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

Today is the third day of Lerowen's writing challenge (for me), but it is also the end of the giveaway for The Soldier's Cross. Using the highly sophisticated Random Number Generator, the winners are...

Eyebright (of Defective Compositions) and Katy (of Inlets and Harbors). If you two could scoot your addresses into my inbox (jeanne [at] squeakycleanreviews [dot] com), I will get your copies of The Soldier's Cross shipped out very soon. If you enjoy the book, I would love to read your thoughts in an Amazon review. Congratulations!

day three: first attempt at writing

My very first attempt at writing was little more than a kind of fanfiction of one of Jenny's early works. It stemmed from the fact that she killed off my favourite character - that happens to me a lot - and would not repent and bring him back to life though I wept piteously. Really, I was broken up. The sun was dark in my eyes. So naturally I took her story and created my own character, who just so happened to be a rather flimsy reconstruction of the character she had killed. The story was ridiculous and riddled with Mary Sues and Gary Stus; it has since been fully deleted.

But that was years ago, and we prefer not to dwell on that. Then there was another story, a kind of mystery, that flowed out of the fanfiction attempt. I suppose it was a little better, but that has also been deleted and I really don't want to compare the two. They were both early attempts. That is to say, they were both silly.

But then there was Stonehenge. Stonehenge predates The Soldier's Cross by a while, but it came trickling into my head at a time when I greatly needed it. It was something original. It was something not entirely rubbish. It was just something different from the ridiculous stories I had hitherto been trying to beat into shape - which was a bit like trying to construct something with jelly. Stonehenge did not exactly have a cohesive plot, but it was set just as the Romans were overrunning Britain and dealt with a man, a somewhat Saint Patrick-like character, who had come to bring the young Christian faith to the remote land. The main character was a young woman of one of the tribes who met the man of God and who was the only one to listen to his words. To her the stranger had no name but "the man of God"; he was an enigma, appearing at times when he was most needed and seeming more otherworldly than human.

Stonehenge is an aching kind of story, which is perhaps why I have not pursued it further. But it convinced me that I could write after all, and that if I persevered, I might be able to write something good. It was a milestone, so I doubt I will ever delete it.

Standing Stones

“A dark time is coming to this land.”

His words sounded strange, coming on such a beautiful day. The sky was clear and blue as a precious stone, the moors grey and purple with heather, the birds chirruping in the thicket. The broad-bladed grass stirred lazily in the breeze, showing silver underbellies and deep green backs as they moved; like a chieftain’s golden torc, the sun hung low in the vastness, reaching down toward the west. I thought it odd, for I had just been thinking how a day like this brought one in sight—almost in reach—of the Paradise of yore, with the gem-bright colours and the shivering expectancy that I felt pulsing in the earth beneath me. But I had learned to heed the man of God’s words, and I turned my head on the grass and looked up at him with a frown on my forehead.

He was not looking at me; as he did so often, he was staring before him intently. He held a piece of reed between his fingers and he played with it, stretching it taut and then strumming it to produce a hollow sound. Then he began to roll it, still not even affording it a glance, until he held a tapering kind of tube; at first I thought he was not even paying attention to what his hands were doing, but presently he raised one end to his lips and I saw his chest expand and heard the breath moving out from his mouth, and a deep, quivering noise, rich and wild like a voice, came from the little instrument. I lay as though paralyzed, listening to the notes falling until I recognized the melody of a psalm he liked to sing. I should have liked to pick up the words, but I did not know them well enough.

Suddenly he stopped. He looked long and hard at the reed, then laid it away and rested his arms on his knees, meshing his fingers together. “A dark time,” he continued as though there had been no pause. “The Red Crests are hungry for power, and soon they will march on Britannia. Blood will be spilled; the land will be darkened; Albion has had her time for laughter and mirth: she faces sorrow and destruction now.”

I sat up, looking about me at the warm, living stones that encircled us. “Is it because we do not worship the One true God?” I asked tentatively.

He jerked his head briefly. “It is not for me to say. Perhaps: perhaps not. I do not know the mind of God—who does?—and it is not my duty to pass judgment on this land. I only know that the dark is coming, but not why.”

“How is it that you know?”

He turned his head toward me, tipping a smile and unlacing his fingers to lay a hand against my face. “I have not always been here,” he reminded me. “Those distant lands have been my home for long years, and I have seen the ever-growing power of the Empire. God has chosen to grant her dominion for a time; many tears and much blood will be brought because of the Red Crests, but His word will also spread, and that is a far greater thing.

“As for how I know that the time will be soon,” he continued, drawing away again, “traders have passed through here, and I have spoken with them. They tell me of a new emperor—a new king—who looks to expand the borders of the Empire yet further, and they say his troops are moving across Gaul.”

“But we have always stood against the Red Crests,” I objected. “Why should now be any different?”

“Their armies are stronger now, and Britannia is weaker. Their legions have doubled; you have no battalions. No, the Red Crests will swarm over Albion like ants over their hill, and no one will be able to fruitfully stand against them.”

I was quiet. I wondered just how much would be destroyed when they came marching across the chalk: would this place, my sweetest refuge, be destroyed? Would the farm be burned? Would my father and mother and the people of the village all be killed? The day did not seem so bright anymore, and I could not hear the birds singing. “Why do you tell me of all this?” I asked quietly.

“I would have you be warned,” he returned. “I would not have you be taken off your guard. And there is always prayer.”

“Prayer for what? War seems inevitable.”

He shook his head. “None of the shadows we glimpse in the future are inevitable, bairn. What God wills, He will do, but He has in the past willed miracles. Pray for grace and strength and the courage to stand by your faith.” He paused a moment, and then added in a softer voice, “You are still very young: I would not see you uprooted.”

I stared out across the downs, but my eyes were blind to the beauty now and I saw only scarlet plumes and sandaled feet and bright, gleaming metal in the sunlight. I shuddered and realized with a pang that, whatever I had thought before, I was not brave, and the future loomed before me like a veiled monster waiting to devour me. From the merchants that passed through I had heard tales of the Red Crests’ cruelties, and as I looked down at my own slight body I wondered how I could stand them. As the fear rose to an overwhelming pitch, I did something that I had never done before: I reached across the distance between us and slipped my hand into the man of God’s. “I am afraid,” I whispered.

He tightened his grip on my hand. “I know. But courage: there is hope.”

I shook my head, hunkering down into a little miserable ball. “I cannot see any.”

“While God lives,” he said firmly, shifting his cloak over my shoulders, “there is hope. Courage.”

Day Two {Male Author}

2011-08-13T05:55:00.001-07:00

Day two on Lerowen's Fifteen Day Challenge list deals with your favorite male author. I peered at the question and pondered the question and formulated tentative answers to the question without success. I might say C.S. Lewis, but Jenny already said Lewis and I hate to be redundant. I might say James Fenimore Cooper because his The Last of the Mohicans is one of my all-time favorite books, but currently that is the only book of his that I have read, so that might sound silly. I might say Charles Dickens, but one has to be in the right mood to enjoy Dickens. So the result?

I have no favorite male author. My favorite books are my comfort books, and they are all, I believe, written by female authors; most of the other books on my shelves are ones that I very much enjoy, but not ones that I would call "favorites." Or perhaps I have so many favorites that I can't dig through the heap to find one that I could call my really, really favorite. What I read depends on my mood, so I thought I would give my favorite male authors based on that.

for a cheerful, sunny day

Dickens. He isn't the sort of fellow you read on a gloomy winter day when you're in a gloomy winter mood, unless you like that feeling of depression and cheerlessness; but when I am feeling particularly "up," he is at least one of my favorite authors to read. He is quite verbose, which annoys some people, but I love his caustic wit and his sparkling casts of characters. The reader must trek through a great deal of darkness to reach the end, but I like that in most of his works, there's light when you come out of the tunnel.

what I have read

A Christmas Carol
The Pickwick Papers
Martin Chuzzlewit
Little Dorrit

for a rainy autumn day

C.S. Lewis. Despite my desire not to copy Jenny, I can't give a list of favorite authors without including Lewis. Again, I have to be in the right mood for him; I have to be able to handle the otherworldly longing, the mix of sorrow and joy, that threads through many of his works. I can't simply pick up Till We Have Faces any day of the week without feeling the need to cry because of the beauty and reality of the truths that Lewis paints. But it would not be true to say that C.S. Lewis is not still a favorite, because of more so than despite the painful loveliness in his books.

what I have read

The Chronicles of Narnia (7)
The Space Trilogy (3)
Till We Have Faces
The Screwtape Letters
The Great Divorce
Mere Christianity
An Experiment in Criticism

Day One {Favorite Character}

2011-08-12T05:50:00.000-07:00

I am really and truly belated on Lerowen's challenge, I know, for which I have the excuse that my blog was booked for the first two weeks of August. However, I have been reading other people's replies and waiting eagerly for a chance to join in the fun, and since I have some free time, I'm now hustling to catch up with everyone else.

For those of you who are not aware of the 15 Day Challenge being hosted by Lerowen over at "Eat...Sleep...Write," the point is to post an answer to the question assigned to that day. This was supposed to begin on August 1 and go to August 15, but you could always be like me and pretend to have an excuse to join really late. So here is my answer to day one's question.

your favorite character you have written

This, like many of the others on the list, is a hard question. If asked several months ago the answer would have been simple enough: Justin King, my main character from Wordcrafter. But as I have progressed in The White Sail's Shaking I have grown more in love with the characters of that story, even Tip, who used to be so ornery that all I wanted to do was shake him and box his ears. I've fallen under the spell of my work in progress - and the spell was a long time in the making! - and so the answer is no longer cut and dry. Therefore, instead of being able to give the definitive answer that I'm sure the question is meant to have, I am forced to dawdle around and do a great deal of hemming and hahing before I come round to the point.

Justin

I love Justin. I think that despite my growing affection for Tip and Charlie and the rest of the White Sail's cast, Justin King will always be first simply because he is a dear. Oh, I certainly had some trouble with him; I couldn't even figure out his name in the first scene I wrote. But it wasn't the trouble that Tip gave me; Justin never sat in a corner and sulked. It was just that Justin wasn't like either Ethan Prince (Wordcrafter) or Charlie Bent (The White Sail's Shaking) and so he didn't come ambling into the story and ask if I had any tea to give him. Justin's shy, and so he took coaxing - but the coaxing paid off, and I now have a character who is, as perhaps only fellow writers will understand, a friend.

Tip

There could not be two characters more different than Justin King and Tip Brighton, which is probably what caused me so much trouble with Tip in the first place. Tip came to me with an occupation and a Christian name. Tip was a midshipman. Tip was a midshipman on the USS Constitution. Tip was a bully.

Tip did not want to be a bully. Tip did not want to be on the Constitution. Tip did not even want to tell me his last name. If you simply boil it down, Tip did not want to cooperate. And he continued to not want to cooperate all throughout November and NaNoWriMo, and, consequently, the first 50,000 words of my novel. I hated him with a passion; I wanted to hit him upside the head and then shake him and demand that he answer my questions and be a good, self-respecting character like Justin.

I don't really know when he started to shape up, but we sorted out our differences in the - well, the middle, not the end. He got his way on a few points: he is no longer a bully and I switched him to the Enterprize instead of the Constitution. And I managed to figure out his last name and get him to cooperate, or myself to cooperate with him. The more I write, the more attached to him I become.

So the result of the examination is that amid the large cast of characters I love, these main ones stand out as two of my favorites because of how juxtaposed they are to each other. They are different in background (Justin is an only child and now an orphan; Tip has a large family in which he feels unaccepted), temperament (Justin is shy and reclusive; Tip is volatile and intrusive), and friends (Justin's best friend is his polar opposite; Tip's is so close to him in temperament that sparks fly on a regular basis), and so I have poured energy into them both in different ways. I love 'em both, and I love Ethan and Charlie and Pierre and Jamie and Darkwood... Nearly all of my characters could have been in this post, really, but I have already stretched this question much farther than it ought to have gone, so I will save them for another time.

Imagination Limited

2011-08-09T06:57:00.000-07:00

When writers write and when readers read, they often explain their love of stories by saying that the words take them away to other times and places. Their imagination is fueled by stories and, in the case of writers, finds an outlet in stories. While it is true that very small and seemingly inconsequential things in daily life can inspire a novel, books and the written word continue to be the prime medium for the activity of the mind; reading promotes some degree of intelligence.

To have a well-rounded mind, however, it is necessary to not focus on a single genre of literature. You shouldn't read only fantasies and fairy tales; you shouldn't even have a steady diet that is 53% fantasy and fairy tales. You shouldn't have a steady diet of romances, "Christian" or secular. Nor should you wear a track from the library door to the historical novels. Histories should not gather dust while fiction is being constantly pulled off the shelf. There is no genre that can be indulged in to the exclusion of all others; the mind will be stunted if fed the same thing day after day, just as the body would if you only ever ate carrots or potato chips.

Oddly enough, one of the bits of advice most promoted by many writers today is that you should read extensively...in the genre of your choice. If you want to write historical fiction, read historical fiction. If you want to write fantasy, read fantasy. Never mind that this may very well mean that your plots, characters, story arcs, and what-have-you are being fed to you by authors who have come before, or that you are stuck in the rut of one genre both as the source and outlet of your imagination. 'Read in one genre, write in one genre' is the rule of the day, and so authors are pigeonholed into specific fields of writing to develop themselves there until they are ready to expand (if not forever).

This is not wholly ridiculous. From a marketing standpoint, it is true that if you write and publish a historical fiction, then write a fantasy and want it published, you will likely have to seek out a new publisher. I speak from personal experience; I am currently querying Wordcrafter, a fantasy, and it is almost like being an entirely new author. I have no guarantee of acceptance. But I wouldn't trade the time I spent writing that story for the certainty of publication, and I would far rather have been writing Justin's story than grinding out another historical fiction. Of course, I am writing a historical fiction now. I simply didn't want to then, because I didn't have the inspiration for one.

Writing is an art, although it must be balanced with the more "practical" side of marketing, and some of the most renowned artists are those who experimented in many different mediums. Michelangelo was a sculptor as well as a painter and architect; Leonardo da Vinci dabbled in a dozen things, from sketching to painting, from writing to inventing. In the realm of writing, Agatha Christie is most famous for her mysteries, but she also wrote romances. C.S. Lewis wrote essays on faith and philosophy as well as fantasies and "science fiction." Rosemary Sutcliff, acclaimed for her Romano-British works, wrote children's books, stories set in the Middle Ages, some nonfiction, and retellings of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

These artists were never equally lauded in all mediums, but that was not their purpose; their imagination was fired in many different directions, and so they followed that and did not remain inside the box of their own especial genre. Their minds were well-rounded, so that they could and did tackle fantasy as eagerly as nonfiction, sculpting as readily as painting. Practically speaking, if you read widely, it is unlikely that you will be able to stop your mind from developing tales in many different genres - and this is not a bad thing, even if you are not as skilled with one as with another. It's good for the imagination to expand, and not to be allowed to stagnate in a single medium.

Interview with Liz Patterson

2011-08-06T06:46:00.000-07:00

Liz Patterson, who writes over at the lovely blog Awake, recently published her fantasy novel The Mark of the Star. I bought a copy and thoroughly enjoyed devouring it (you can read a review of the book itself over at The Penslayer), and I was delighted when Liz agreed to do an interview here at Scribbles. For those of you who have somehow not stumbled upon Liz's blog or her book, here is the plot summary from the back cover:

What can you do when an entire country hovers on the brink of collapse and your courage is all that can save it? What can you do when your dearest friend makes the wrong choices and your love is not enough to protect him? What can you do when your blessing turns out to be a curse? When Arvis is suddenly faced with these questions, her search for answers leads her on a journey across the world. Hunted by an elusive enemy and brought low by betrayal, Arvis is forced to rise to the challenge and accept that she was set apart by the mark of the star for a reason.

I don't know about you, but that (and the beautiful cover) caught my interest - and the rest of the novel lives up to it. I am eagerly awaiting Liz's next story. And now, on to the questions.

1. First things first. Can you give something about yourself? Personality, favorite pastimes, ideal weather, tea or coffee, favorite pair of socks?

Well, I'm a writer, so that means that I have a inordinate love of words, I tend to sit in coffee shops by myself and people watch, all the librarians know me by name because I check out so many books, and I'm generally the quiet, nerdy one who doesn't say much until you get her talking about books; then she won't be quiet.

I wish I had more pastimes. I don't tend to have any. Instead of pastimes I have passions, which are so much more exhausting. I have a passion for music and I bang away at my poor piano quite frequently. I have a passion for philosophy, which is expressed in my avid love for competitive debate and my intention to major in Philosophy in college and become a teacher of it. And I don't know if I have a favorite pair of socks, but I do have a favorite pair of shoes: my tall black boots which I wear to death because 1.) they are comfy 2.) they are black and I love the color black and 3.) I like to indulge in the irrational fancy that they look like Robin Hood's boots and anything Robin-Hood-ish is the epitome of awesomeness.

2. When did you first begin writing?

Pretty much since the first grade, where I wrote a tragic poem in which every character died. But I really didn't launch into fiction writing until I was 10, when I started writing a series of stories about Arvis (who is the now the MC of Mark of the Star), except back then she was an elf from Lothlorian who drifted in and out of the story of The Lord of the Rings, sometimes off on her own adventures, sometimes joining up with the Fellowship... It really was a way to escape life and enter into a story that I loved.

3. What inspired The Mark of the Star?

Each character has a person who is their inspiration and each place in the world does as well, but overall the inspiration for the whole idea of the Mark of the Star was inspired by a dear friend of mine, Susanna, who originally was going to co-author with me, but became too busy to write. She came up with many of the original ideas, including Arvis's star-mark, and though the story is mainly mine, it was the excitement and fun of her friendship that really inspired the adventures of Arvis and Co. And it was Susanna who encouraged me to write in the first place - she was the first person (and only person for several years) who genuinely believed that I could write a novel.

4. Some novels flow easily, others are like molasses running uphill in January. Which would you say The Mark of the Star was?

Haha! Molasses running uphill in January? How did you know? The current copy of the Mark of the Star that you can buy happens to be the seventh draft of the story. Every few chapters, Writer's Block would bound up and harry me for a while... I thank God that Arvis was so supremely stubborn that she wouldn't let me give up, and also that my stiff-necked pride wouldn't allow me to bail on this project once I had told everyone that I was going to write a novel...

5. I know that Arvis, the main character of The Mark of the Star, has been in your mind a long time. Is she your favorite character in the novel?

I'm afraid Arvis is a little too much like me to be my favorite character. Arvis is, of course, ten times better and braver of a person than I am, but we share many of the same flaws and characteristics. So my favorite character is without a doubt Jadev! Several people have remarked that they love Jadev and I think part of the reason is that when I wrote Jadev, I poured out my heart into his character. I love everything about Jadev, from his silly habit of running his fingers through his hair to his longing to prove himself and his sometimes volatile moods. Jadev embodies almost all the characteristics I love most in people and I had an absolute blast writing him.

6. Politics form the background to the plot of your novel. When and how did you first become interested in that?

When I was 15 back in 2008 and the presidential election season was gripping the country in its excitement and suspense, I discovered, quite shockingly, that this strange and generally-abhorred thing called politics was something I found extraordinarily intriguing. I declared, amidst much controversy, that I wanted to grow up to be a politician. I think the reason I love politics is because it is human nature displayed. Leadership has a way of bringing out the best, and the worst, in people and I love seeing that. Also, political philosophy is so fascinating! If one can be a novelist, a teacher, a wife, a mother, and a politician in the same lifetime, I certainly intend to!

7. Who is your favorite or most inspiring writer?

Wow. This question floors me. Can I cheat and choose two or three? My first answer would be undoubtedly C.S. Lewis. Though it was Tolkien's story of The Lord of the Rings that first inspired my imagination, it was the writings of Lewis that taught me how to write and think and inspired my love of words. In particular reference to The Mark of the Star I think Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle was very influential. His book Taliesin has many similar characters and elements in it and I learned a lot about writing from Lawhead's creative style. But one of my favorite authors and the writer whose work truly empowered me to finish Mark of the Star when I was about to genuinely give up would be Ara, who used to blog over at Shilah. I read the manuscript of her novel Riven and it changed my life. When I was about to quit writing, her story encouraged me to keep on. I owe the fact that my novel is finished to Ara and Riven. [Ara also designed The Mark of the Star's gorgeous cover.]

8. This is probably a difficult question, but what do you think your favorite part of the plotting process is? World-building, character-sketching, outlining?

Hmmm. Considering that I never outlined the story and although I tried to character sketch, the characters always ended up being different than I intended, I will have to go with world-building. My friend Susanna and I created the world of Lithan'galow together and all the summer afternoons down by the lake and long winter evenings curled up with hot chocolate that we spent yakking away about Lithan'galow, drawing maps, and coming up with history... those are priceless memories and were definitely a ton of fun. I think our boundlessly imaginative Creator placed in all of us a deeply-rooted longing to create. Coming up with an entire world where your imagination can run wild and play with the very laws of physics and nature... it fulfills that longing and sparks a unique and special sort of joy in your heart.

9. What kind of scene do you find easiest to write: tragedy, comedy, or drama? Do you find writing dialogue or writing description/narrative to be easier?

Well, this has changed over the years. At first, dialogue was the bane of my existence and I couldn't write anything but soap-opera drama. Now as I've learned a bit more about writing and gotten more comfortable with it, I find dialogue to be my favorite. I love to write long conversations between my characters that never end up in the story but just help them bond and help me bond with them. Speech is how we express ourselves and writing a character's dialogue is like opening a window into their mind and their heart. As for type of scene, I love comedy but can't write it to save my life. So the easiest would definitely be tragedy - well, not tragedy so much as a scene of intense moral dilemma or conflicting emotions.

10. Is fantasy your genre of choice, or do you see yourself trying others in the future?

Since I'm a little too lazy to ever be completely bound by the laws of nature, I'll probably always have fantasy/sci-fi elements in my stories, but I can't see myself writing epic fantasy for a very long time, if ever again. Fantasy is definitely my favorite genre of book to read, but for writing, I've been yearning lately to get into something more realistic - I want to write a novel set in present-times and that stretches my limits as a writer. Perhaps a thriller or mystery.

11. What are you working on now?

I was working on a story called This World (a weird sort of dystopian sci-fi drama story that involves a good deal of politics and philosophy). But I've realized that I will not have time to finish the story (since I'm going back over and redoing the beginning) before I leave at the end of September for a six-month-long mission trip to South America. So in these next few weeks before I leave, I'm not really working on anything. Everything is put on hold until I return to the US in March. When I get back, though, I may write a sequel to The Mark of the Star, or I may be inspired to write an entirely different story. We'll see what life throws my way...

Thank you for listening and thank you muchly, kind Abigail, for letting me monologue on Scribbles and Ink Stains!

I enjoyed getting to interview you, Liz! Thanks so much for sharing about yourself and Mark of the Star.

The Mark of the Star will be available for purchase on Amazon in three or four weeks, and is now available on Lulu.com. For more information about Liz's writing, or just to read some highly enjoyable posts on anything from music to philosophy, head over to her blog Awake, pull up a chair, brew a cup of tea, and stay for a while. I assure you, you won't be disappointed.

Liebster Award

2011-08-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

Last week Jenna, over at Literally YA, chose five blogs to award with the Liebster Blog Award. For those of you, like me, have absolutely no idea what that means, here is the point of the Liebster:

"The goal of the award is to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers. The rules of the award are:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have fun!"

Anyhow, I am very honored that one of Jenna's picks was Scribbles, and in keeping with the rules, I am going to pick out five of my own favorite, under-appreciated blogs to award. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

The Penslayer - Jenny, the author of The Shadow Things, scribbles about writing, about reading, and about her faith, and her posts are wonderfully airy and lighthearted. Even the ones about how to write fight scenes. Two bonuses are that she always finds lovely pictures for her blog posts and that she has great tongue-in-cheek, geeky humor. What's not to love?
Whisperings of the Pen - (No, Katie, I'm not just giving you this because you love my book.) This little nook-of-a-blog has the feel of a quiet corner of a library beside an open window, filled with stacks of books and a musty ink smell and washes of sunlight. I love the cheerfulness of Katie's writing, not to mention that the subjects are always a delight to the literary.
Insanity Comes Naturally - If you want to die laughing, this is the spot for you. If you want to think on deep and weighty subjects, this is also the spot for you. You may protest that those things can't possibly go together, but I merely reply that that just goes to show that you haven't seen this blog - or met its authoress.
The Lamb and the Lion - This blog is darling. The topics range from writing to faith to Hornblower to BBC Merlin, but still the best adjective to describe it is "darling." Just scoot over and see if you don't agree.
The Poetry of Lost Things - This dreamy blog is almost entirely writing-focused, full of story-snippets (this gal can really write), character introductions, and book-love. Because no blog is complete without some book love.

There is at least one other that battled for a place in the list, but I think I'll leave that one to Jenny for her to award. If you want to take a peek at a new blog, I suggest a stroll around the block to one of these lovely places for tea and a bit of reading.

Note: The giveaway is still going on, so if you haven't joined yet, don't miss the opportunity!

Giveaway - The Soldier's Cross

2011-08-01T05:55:00.000-07:00

Recently Scribbles and Ink Stains passed fifty followers. Fifty is a nice number, perfectly situated between zero and a hundred, and in honor of the event I have decided to host a giveaway of my historical novel The Soldier's Cross. Note that this does apply only to readers living in the United States, since shipping out of the country is just a wee bit expensive.

Historical Setting:
The Soldier's Cross is set in the early 1400s, a full century before Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the doors of Wittenberg, but in a time where the first rumblings of the Reformation can be heard through the preaching of Jan Huss and the underground movement of the Lollards in England. It stands on the threshold of the Protestant break from the Roman Catholic Church, a time when the ignorance of the Dark Ages was just beginning to give way to curiosity and knowledge.

This was also a time of renewed conflict between England and France. Henry V, the new king of England, invaded northern France in mid-1415 in order to recapture the lands that he believed were rightfully his. He took the fortress of Harfleur in September and then moved on toward Calais, but on October 15 his tired army was met by the French for the most famous battle of the Hundred Years War: the Battle of Agincourt.

Plot:

A.D. 1415 - Fiona's world is a carefully built castle in the air, made up of the fancies, wishes, and memories of her childhood. It begins to crumble as she watches her brother march away to join in the English invasion of France. It falls to pieces when he is brought home dead. Robbed of the one dearest to her and alone in the world, Fiona turns to her brother's silver cross in search of the peace he said it would bring. But when she finds it missing, she swears she will have it and sets out on a journey across the Channel and war-ravaged France to regain it and find the peace it carries.

Characters:
To meet the characters of The Soldier's Cross, check out my Dramatis Personae post.

Want to win a copy of The Soldier's Cross? Here's how to enter:

Mandatory Entry
Follow Scribbles and comment to let me know (1 entry)

Additional Entries
Comment and tell me why you want to win The Soldier's Cross (1 entry)
Shout-out this giveaway on your blog, Twitter, or Facebook account (2 entries)
Buy Jennifer Freitag's The Shadow Things from her blog* (3 entries)

Post one comment for every thing you do: if you shout-out the giveaway, comment twice; if you buy Jenny's book, comment three times. Be sure to leave your email address so that I can contact you. Giveaway ends August 15. I will then choose two (2) winners using a random number generator, each to receive one free copy of The Soldier's Cross.

*NOTE: Copies of Jenny's The Shadow Things MUST be bought from her blog in order to be eligible for this giveaway.

Assassinations and Executions

2011-07-28T06:33:00.000-07:00

Morbid a bit? Yes, rather, but I promise that this post is about writing. It is, after all, the only venue in which murders are allowable and assassinations are common fare; writers get to kill people any day of the week without fear of the law (although going around in public saying "I murdered someone yesterday!" is not advisory). It's one of the fascinating things about being a writer that you hold sway over the lives of your characters, despite the fact that the opposite frequently seems to be true.

Unfortunately, this often presents difficulties in stories. Most writers - I have never known one who didn't - become attached to their characters and regard them as friends and children, and some grow so attached that the thought of killing one of the characters terrifies them. I frequently hear things like, "Oh, I love my characters too much to kill them!" and "[Name of Character] insisted that he wanted to die, but I wouldn't let him." This refusal to follow the path of the story may result in a happier ending, but I'm willing to wager that it will not be as satisfying or meaningful a conclusion as it would otherwise have been. The characters live, but to what purpose? They are all happy for ever after, but does that destroy the whole drive of the storyline? Writers, if they want to progress and write solid stories, must pay attention to this as they determine the fates of their characters.

This analysis does not mean that writers should go the route of Diana Barry and kill all their characters indiscriminately; a depressing story does not necessarily equal a profound story. In fact, the stories that end in the death of the main character are and should be a minority, since in general people do not want to follow a person through a tome of six hundred pages only to have him be killed off in the end (unless the novel is Russian, in which case this is to be expected). Death should be doled out sparingly, but it should be doled out.

off with his head!

One important consideration is whether or not the death is necessary for or at least adds to the plot. In The White Sail's Shaking, for example, a good portion of the plot hinges on the murder of one of the characters. I'm fairly certain I'm going to get hate-mail for that, but it is what it is - the character had to die or the story would not work at all. This can also work in a smaller way when the plot itself does not depend on the death of a character, but the main character's development or some other important element of the story does. Although perhaps not as readily evident as when the plot is driven by a character's death, the grief, guilt, or anger that the main character feels at the death of this other person may be important in moving him through his character arc.

Conversely, writers have to consider whether or not the death detracts from the story. In planning my to-be-written novel Tempus Regina I expected to kill one of the major characters toward the end, but then realized that to do so would bring the story full circle and rob it of any point. Therefore, the character lives. Don't kill for the sake of tragedy or drama; make sure it adds to the story as a whole.

Another consideration, which may seem painfully obvious, is whether the death is historically accurate. If dealing with a historical figure, don't kill them at Place A and Time B if they didn't die there and don't have them survive Scene C if they didn't survive. In The Soldier's Cross I got quite attached to one of the characters, but they had to die in order to be accurate to history. (I was extremely cut up about it; I put The Soldier's Cross away for about a month because I didn't want to write the death scene.) Although alternate history is becoming popular, it is in its own genre and shouldn't be mixed with others.

we survived, but we're dead!

The somewhat easier considerations of when to kill a character aside, how do loving writers survive these deaths? All right, so I'm being a little facetious, but I do know the difficulty of killing off a likable character and knowing that he won't be there for the rest of the novel. An enjoyable and helpful solution is to work on fleshing out that character's backstory, which serves the dual purpose of giving you more time with that character and of deepening his personality in the parts of the story where he does show up. The deeper his character is, the more likely it is that his death will resonate with readers and make them care about the rest of the story.

Beautiful People - Justin King

2011-07-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

It's that time again! The next batch of questions for "Beautiful People" has arrived. For those of you who are not yet aware of how this works, here is the summary:

Once a month Sky and Georgie will be posting a list of 10 questions for you to answer about your characters. You can use the same character every month, or choose a new one for each set of questions. Your call. You can answer all the questions, just one, or however many you have the time and energy to answer. Just go for it and have fun.

This month I will be combining the June/July and July/August questions, since I did not get a chance to answer the former, and this month's Beautiful Person will be the hero of my novel Wordcrafter:

Justin King

1. What kind of music does he like?

Justin likes a variety of music, but dislikes heavy rock, rap, and heavy metal. He prefers peaceful or cheery songs, and I was just realizing the other day that he would probably like the style of Owl City.

2. Does he like to go outside?

Justin is an outdoorsy person, as long as the outdoors is fairly tame.

3. Is he naturally curious?

No, not really.

4. Right or left handed?

Right.

5. Favorite color?

Blue, very light or very dark.

6. Where is he from?

Justin describes himself as a British mutt: he has a little bit of everything in him. He has some Irish from his mother’s side, Scottish, Welsh, and a little English from his father’s. His family moved around frequently when he was young and he spent most of his first six years in southern Ireland, but when he was seven or eight his parents moved to a farm outside Edinburgh.

7. Any enemies?

As he develops friendships, he also develops enemies. I can’t say any more than that.

8. What are his quirks?

He has a habit of rubbing the side of his right hand, which is always stained with ink and graphite, against his trousers. If under extreme mental strain, he takes to straightening his things obsessively.

9. What kinds of things get on his nerves?

People touching his books and being interrupted during his writing. Also, forward women.

10. Is he independent, or needs others to help out?

Justin is more dependent than independent.

11. What is his biggest secret?

That his father committed suicide.

12. Has he ever been in love?

The first time he has been in love was when he fell for Jamie Fairbairn.

13. What is his comfort food?

Tea. Not really a food, but he loves Ceylon.

14. Does he play a musical instrument? If so, what?

Justin does not play an instrument, but he does have a good singing voice; he used to be in a choir as a boy and the talent stuck around.

15. What color are his eyes? Hair?

Justin has brown hair and coffee-brown eyes.

16. Does he have any pets?

Ram, his horse, is the only ‘pet’ he has. As a child he used to have two squirrels.

17. Where is his favorite place to be?

Justin has a lot of comfort places—the park; the library and his bedroom in Tera; the pastures. He likes quiet, meditative places.

18. What are some of his dreams or goals?

Before meeting Ethan and going to Tera, Justin’s biggest dream was earning enough money to leave the plant at which he was working and write for a living. He wants very much to be married, a dream he very rarely talks about.

19. Does he enjoy sports?

Justin is not cut out for sports—physically or mentally—and has no interest in participating in or watching them.

20. What is his favorite flower or plant?

He is fond of honeysuckle.

That Necessary Evil

2011-07-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

The necessary evil. The one that is almost always a little more evil than the villain of the story. It's called Editing.

Editing can be fun at first. There's something exhilarating about brandishing the red pen at your story - something exhilarating about cleaning it up, or about the concept of it being cleaned up. But then you settle down for the long, hard haul and things don't look so fun anymore, especially when your novel is over two hundred thousand words long. (Just ask Jenny, although you might regret it afterward.) This is when editing becomes the necessary evil.

Now I know some people think that editing is fun, but I personally consider them to be in a state of hopeless denial. However, I am sure it is a blissful one, and if you happen to be in it I have no desire to shake you back to reality. I regard you with envy. I personally have not seen or tried a method of editing that is "fun," but, like just about all writers, I do have a process that I use and it helps me complete the task. So in case any of you are looking for ideas to make the editing process go more smoothly, I thought I would share mine.

the overwhelming heap of awful

Some people wait to edit their manuscript until they are done with the rough draft. Others swear by doing an edit every time they reach a fifty-page mark. Still others edit by chapter. I don't hold to any of these choices exclusively, as they all have merit and have been useful in editing one novel or another. In general, I do edit as I go, clipping sentences and taking out words here and there as I write each chapter. This makes the actual drawn-out process of editing somewhat easier. Apart from those minor edits, however, I can use either the complete-novel edit or the fifty-page edit. In the case of Wordcrafter, for instance, I waited almost exclusively to edit until I had finished the first draft. This worked because Wordcrafter flowed, and at the beginning I knew essentially where I was going. I knew the characters at the start; I didn't have to turn around at the half-way mark and realize that those fellows at the beginning were imposters. The things I changed when I was done with the rough draft were relatively minor - an added scene here, a tweak there, a change of voice in one scene or another, a bit of foreshadowing in this chapter or that.

With The White Sail's Shaking, it was - and is - a different story. Literally. I began writing it for NaNo last year, and the fact that I barely managed to squeak by at 52,000 words, as opposed to The Soldier's Cross' 62,000 the year before, will give a very slight indication of the troubles the novel caused me. On October 31 I had some vague ideas about the plot, no villain, an elusive main character, no supporting characters, and an outline that I had discarded several days before. It sounds like a typical NaNo novel, right? But that's not how I operate, so my little writing self was in shambles on November 1 when I plopped down at my computer and opened a new, white, terrifying Word document.

To cut a long story short, although I managed to get through NaNo without killing either myself or my novel, the first sixty or seventy pages were pretty much rubbish. I gamely ignored them, trudging on with the story in a valiant attempt to finish before I turned my attention to editing. But it was so awful that I finally had to stop and edit the first fifty pages - and I am very glad I did.

So complete-manuscript edit or fifty-page edit? It depends entirely on you and your story. If you're the kind of person who gets bogged down with edits and then never completes the story, wait to draw the red pen until you've hit that last page. If you need to keep your story flowing as you go, try for the fifty-page edit.

checking it twice (or thrice)

When I finally decided to edit White Sail's, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of disgust for those miserable pages written during November and by the impression that everything and its cousin needed to be changed. So I turned to what I had done on a much small scale for The Soldier's Cross, when I was thrown into a whirl of edits that had to be completed on a deadine: I made a list of the things that needed to be changed. I made the points broad so as not to overwhelm myself yet again and put check boxes beside each (because there is something immensely satisfying in checking off things on a list). In the end, I had only nine major points. Nine isn't too bad, right? Well, at the very least it doesn't seem so bad as the vague and unnumbered things that had been gathering over me, and it gave me a place to start.

the red pen of doom, death, and the like

If you go around our house, you will find a lot of notebooks. If you look inside those notebooks, the chances are high that you'll find one edition of Wordcrafter or another. A thoroughly red-blotted one, a copy full of colored tabs, a copy with miscellaneous notes in black ink - I was pretty thorough in printing out that one. For White Sail's, I had so much trouble printing out a single copy that I haven't dared trying to do another full one.

After printing out a copy, I go through the laborious process of punching holes in it, round up a ring-binder, and enclose the manuscript in it. Then I pull out the red pen that is, miraculously, still alive and get to work. For sections that must be thoroughly rewritten, I don't bother applying the red pen; I just put a note up at the top to say "Rewrite," plus some insult to the scene. Elsewhere, I will dash through sentences and rewrite them in red pen until whole pages seem to be bleeding. Occasionally I put notes for myself to keep in mind, such as "Add such-and-such scene" or a historical note that I did not know when I wrote the chapter the first time and need to incorporate. As the story progresses, the huge amounts of red ink begin to drop off (I'm pretty sure there's a dramatic change from November 30 to December 1).

you mean I have to do this again?

At the end of the tiring business of blotting all over the printed pages, I get to work transferring the edits to the Word document. At this point I tackle the big issues that I could not easily address in pen, such as adding scenes and completely redoing whole chapters. Then, when everything is typed in and cleaned up, I go about something else. With Wordcrafter, I sent out queries; with White Sail's, I returned to the actual writing process. But then after awhile I will print out another copy and go through it again for things that I know I tend to do, like flogging semicolons to within an inch of their lives. This invariably results in a pretty thorough edit in itself, and so the process is repeated on a smaller scale.

A story is never done until it's published - that's the cold, hard truth. And writers should take advantage of the chance to make changes while they can, because even when the book is out and under the public eye, you'll probably still see things you wish you could alter. At some time, however, it is necessary to let it go, because even the agony of editing becomes strangely addictive after awhile. There comes a time to move on - but you shouldn't move on too soon.

Ink Blots and Ships

2011-07-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I did this questionnaire for Wordcrafter, and I thought I would fill it out for The White Sail's Shaking as well. Enjoy!

1. What’s your word count?
Approximately 80,000.

2. How long until you finish?
I hope to be done by November, but that may be wishful thinking. I’m scared to sit down and actually approximate.

3. If you have finished, how long did it take you?
“I have not yet begun to fight.”

4. Do you have an outline?
Sort of. I use FreeMind for The White Sail’s Shaking (I did a post on it a few months ago) and I have it separated into chapters and the events that take place in each.

5. Do you have a plot?
Yes.

6. How many words do you typically write a day?
White Sail’s is a difficult story, so my daily wordcount varies widely. I can go anywhere from nothing to about three hundred words (!) to a thousand. During NaNo I managed about 2,000.

7. What was your greatest word count in one day?
I can’t remember. I’d take a stab for about 3,000.

8. What was your least impressive word count in one day?
0. Nada. Nothin’.

9. What inspired you to write?
I’ve always been interested in the Age of Sail, which, although a gruesome time, still manages to hold a romantic appeal. Ian Toll’s book Six Frigates, a history of the early U.S. Navy, inspired me to write a story set during the First Barbary War.

10. Does your novel/story have a theme song?
No, but Owl City’s music is linked to it in my mind.

11. Assign each of your major characters a theme song.
See my Characters and Music post.

12. Which character is most like you?
Tip. At first, as with Wordcrafter, I didn’t think any of my characters were very like me, but as I continued to write I found that some of the things Tip struggles with (not his family; I have a wonderful family) are things I have trouble with myself.

13. Which character would you most likely be friends with?
Oh, that’s a hard question. All of my main characters are friends already, so I can’t really answer.

14. Do you have a Gary-Stu or Mary Sue character?
Nope.

15. Who is your favourite character in your novel?
I’m pretty fond of Charlie…

16. Have your characters ever done something completely unexpected?
Are you kidding? Charlie was unexpected. He showed up and bullied his way into being a main character without ever consulting me.

17. Have you based any of your novel directly on personal experiences?
No.

18. Do you believe in plot bunnies?
Certainly!

19. Is there magic in your novel/story?
No.

20. Are any holidays celebrated in your novel/story?
I haven’t gotten to Christmas yet, so I don’t know about that.

21. Does anyone die?
“That joke is funny because the squirrel gets dead.”

22. How many cups of coffee/tea have you consumed during your writing experience?
I don’t drink coffee. I like tea, but don’t drink it very often.

23. What is the latest you have stayed up writing?
I did the first 52,000 words of White Sail’s for NaNo, but I went to bed on time.

24. What is the best line?
“Brighton!” the spectre [Charlie] exclaimed, his face flashing into a grin as he crossed the room and grasped Tip’s limp hand. “I didn’t expect you; Tatty said the newcomer was well-dressed and rather good-looking.” (In my writing notebook, not in the Word document yet.)

25. What is the worst line?
Ugh. Do you really want to know? I haven’t edited everything yet, so shall we just say that there are a lot of bits that need help?

26. Have you dreamed about your novel/story or its characters?
I don’t think so.

27. Does your novel rely heavily on allegory?
No, not at all.

28. Summarize your novel/story in under fifteen words.
The story of a midshipman as he learns what honor really means.

29. Do you love all your characters?
Mostly. Marta’s a bit hard, but I’m sure she’ll grow on me.

30. Have you done something sadistic or cruel to your characters specifically to increase your word count?
No. I don’t do things just to increase wordcount, because I’ll only have to cut it in the editing process.

31. What was the last thing your main character ate?
He’s eating right now, but I don’t know what.

32. Describe your main character in three words.
Bull-headed. Awkward. Compassionate.

33. What would your antagonists dress up as for Halloween?
He’s much too busy to play dress-up.

34. Does anyone in your story go to a place of worship?
Not explicitly.

35. How many romantic relationships take place in your novel/story?
One. Well, two-ish.

36. Are there any explosions in your novel/story?
Yes.

37. Is there an apocalypse in your novel/story?
No.

38. Does your novel take place in a post-apocalyptic world?
Nope.

39. Are there zombies, vampires or werewolves in your novel/story?
Oh, this is definitely a zombies-meet-navy story. Don’t you think it will sell? (The frightening thing is that it probably would.)

40. Are there witches, wizards or mythological creatures/figures in your novel/story?
No.

41. Is anyone reincarnated?
No.

42. Is anyone physically ailed?
No, but some characters are physically aled after some time in the tavern.

43. Is anyone mentally ill?
If I say yes, my characters will come after me. With sticks.

44. Does anyone have swine flu?
No. And there aren’t any flying pigs, either.

45. Who has pets in your novel and what are they?
Tip has a pet Barbary macaque.

46. Are there angels, demons, or any religious references/figures in your novel/story?
No.

47. How about political figures?
Various and sundry, but my characters don’t meet any of them.

48. Is there incessant drinking?
What does “incessant drinking” mean? “And they drank and they drank and they drank and they drank and they breathed and then they drank and they drank and they drank and they breathed a bit and they drank and they drank and they…”

49. Are there board games? If so, which ones?
No.

50. Are there any dream sequences?
No.

51. Is there humor?
Yes.

52. Is there tragedy?
I should hope so. I mean—no, of course not! What makes you think that?

53. Does anyone have a temper tantrum?
Charlie’s a bit of a firebrand, but I wouldn’t say he was infantile enough to have a temper tantrum.

54. How many characters end up single at the end of your novel/story?
Hard question. I suppose you could say that one character does.

55. Is anyone in your novel/story adopted?
No.

56. Does anyone in your novel/story wear glasses?
No.

57. Has your novel/story provided insight about your life?
Maybe.

58. Your personality?
I think so, but not intentionally.

59. Has your novel/story inspired anyone?
No one has read it yet.

60. How many people have asked to read your novel/story?
Only a couple, but because it isn’t finished, I turned them down.

61. Have you drawn any of your characters?
Absolutely not. That would be cruel.

62. Has anyone drawn your characters for you?
No.

63. Does anyone vomit in your novel/story?
Tip is seasick at one point. I think that will be the only time anyone throws up.

64. Does anyone bleed in your novel/story?
Tip… Charlie… Darkwood… Yes, just about everyone.

65. Do any of your characters watch TV?
Eh, no.

66. What size shoe does your main character wear?
I don’t know, but they’re probably large.

67. Do any of the characters in your novel/story use a computer?
Now that would be weird, wouldn’t it?

68. How would you react if your novel/story was erased entirely?
Whoever put this questionnaire together is a cruel, cruel person.

69. Did you cry at killing off any of your characters?
I’ve gotten a little teary-eyed, yes.

70. Did you cheer when killing off one of your characters?
No. Killing characters is an exhausting business.

71. What advice would you give to a fellow writer?
Oh, why bother coming up with my own when Jenny voiced her advice so nicely? “Persevere. Don’t be content with the mediocre and cliché. Read good literature.”

72. Describe your ending in three words.
Bittersweet. Refreshing. Jasmine.

73. Are there any love triangles, squares, hexagons, etc.?
No.

74. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being the least stressful, 10 being the most) how does your stress rank?
This novel plays its scales like an expert. Right now I’m feeling pretty sanguine. (“You’re feeling bloody?” “Yes, because I just shot someone.” “Oh, I see.”)

75. Was it worth it?
If I say no, my characters will go on strike. But honestly, yes, it’s always worth it.

Not a Tame Lion

2011-07-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

Within the genre of Christian fantasy, as it is known in that vague place called "the market," perhaps the most used tool in making the fantasy world "Christian" in some way is allegory. This can be as slight as having a different word for God, or it can be as broad as having a Christ-figure, angelic beings, demons, and a Satan-figure. Writers want their stories, whatever genre they fall into, to reflect God's truth and to have Gospel elements, and in the difficult genre of fantasy, the simplest way of doing this is to employ allegory.

Sadly, the rise of allegory can probably be traced to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, some of the best-loved children's books since their publication in the 1950s. Most fantasy authors will admit that their primary inspiration came from such works as Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Lewis' most famous The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, even though neither man wrote his book intending for it to be taken as an allegory. The Chronicles of Narnia are "what if" tales, as Lewis specifically stated: "...[Aslan] is an invention giving an answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all." This is made clear at the end of The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' when Aslan tells Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace that in their world he has another Name, and that they must learn to know him by that Name.

But even this is a dangerous position for an author to take, for when he writes a being like Aslan, he is making a statement about Christ. In fact, he is essentially writing Christ. This is taking on one's self a massive amount of responsibility, but because Lewis got away with it (and in doing so created a classic), many writers now operate under the assumption that they can do the same. The shelves are filling with allegorical fantasies that feature Christ or a Christ-like figure as a dragon, as a canine, as a feline - and authors have lost sight of the magnitude of what they are attempting to do. The process of writing an allegory has become as simple as picking some creature that seems in the author's mind to represent some attribute of God, and then enhancing that attribute to make the creature into something which (again, in the author's mind) is "like God."

"The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God
that are unworthy of Him."

This quote by A.W. Tozer sums up the state of affairs in modern American Christianity. God has been put in a box. His perfections have been diluted and cheapened into "what God is for me," and this personalized, subjective, and unbiblical way of looking at Him cannot help but overflow into the writing of professing believers. Thus, Christians have no problem with portraying Christ as a dragon or of comparing God to their dog. In fact, it seems perfectly natural to them. They never stop to think of the horror the early Christians would have felt at the thought of applying such base images to a holy God.

One argument that might be raised in defense of such allegories is that it helps readers to understand God better, or at least to understand certain of His attributes better. But unworthy thoughts do not lift the mind to see God more clearly; they lower God to the level of the human mind and thus degrade Him. In the pages of Scripture, God does not express much enthusiasm for man's self-made ways of worshiping Him. He has given us His Word in order to reveal Himself to us, but too often we forget that in the Bible we have God Himself speaking to us; if we recalled that to mind more often, why would we think we need weak word-pictures to reveal Him to us? God does not need help in revealing Himself to us.

Is all allegory evil? I would not go so far as to say that. I do think that Lewis, in portraying Aslan as a lion (a scriptural term for Christ - the Lion of Judah), in pointing always to Christ, and in grounding the representation in Scripture, did an excellent job with his Chronicles of Narnia and created a deep, thoughtful story worth reading over and over. But writers ought to be careful with this method of Christianizing their stories - and, indeed, with any method of Christianizing anything - and should stop marching on as though they had every right to portray God however they want. Although they may think they are sharing the Gospel and proclaiming Christ, it is quite likely that they are doing more harm than good. The nature of God is not a thing to be taken lightly.

"Drop Dead."

2011-07-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

Jenny's post on Between Earth and Sky prompted me to post a little, non-spoiler section of Wordcrafter for those of you who have been interested in this novel. While it is "completed" and currently in the querying stage, leaving me with my attention primarily focused on The White Sail's Shaking, it's never really finished until it's published. I even made a couple changes to this bit before posting. But anyhow, here it is.

Chapter 15 - The Harvest Knot

Justin blew a heavy breath and wrapped his arms around his drawn up knees, watching carefully for a hint of the “excitement” Ethan foretold. He saw nothing even resembling it for a time, and it took him by surprise when at last it did come. There was a sudden, tense silence all through the crowd, and then Ash materialized on one side of the blaze and leapt toward it. Justin jerked forward, but Ethan, now sitting upright, body tense, grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back with a breathed, “Wait!”

Justin obediently waited, though he strained against his friend’s hand. The warrior kept on until he drew near the ring, then swerved to the right and ducked away to the far side of the fire from Justin; when he came around on the opposite side again, he had been joined by Sparrow’s lithe form. From every part of the circle warriors continued to join the wild, twisting knot-work of a dance, and though Justin knew many of them, he could not afterward remember who had been there and who had not. Each and every one of them danced with an agility that he would not have expected from them, and took a different part of the dance as characters from Justin’s books played different roles in a plot. No motion of their bodies as they wove around the fire was extraneous, but every whirling step, every flash of firelight on their upturned faces, told a kind of story—one that Justin would not have understood months ago, but that he recognized now.

They danced a tale of wildness and laughter, of summer hunts and winter fires. They danced the dance of the wolves and boar they hunted, and of the horses who were their pride. They danced for the pale blue sky of Tera and the stars that shone in it; they danced for their women and children; they danced for feast and famine, rain and drought, joy and sorrow. They danced for Tera, and they danced for the God who made her. They danced the story of the Horsemen.

The winding dance went on, gaining in numbers until it seemed that it had reached its crescendo and could go no higher. Justin sat enraptured, aching to join them but knowing that he had neither the grace nor the power of a Horseman to dance in the Harvest Knot. He glanced over at Ethan and found the Hound gathered up like a wolf waiting to spring, eyes shining, his whole face full of mingled delight and anxiety as he waited to see if any of the dancers would miss a step. From behind them a boy spoke up, shoving Ethan in the shoulder. “Come, prince, you must join them,” he cried.

Ethan shook his head, still not drawing his gaze from the pattern.

“You must!” the boy persisted. “You are the life of the dancing; the Harvest Knot is missing its heart if you are not part of it.”

Ethan hesitated, and Justin saw it. He glanced at his friend, then at the dancing, then at Justin again, and at last he rose. He shook off his boots and undid the lacing of his tunic, pulling it over his head and tossing it to the laughing boy, and then faced the dancers with a different kind of expectancy than before; he was braced again as for a lunge, waiting for a break in the pattern where he could dive in and become part of the formation, and after what seemed an eternity, it came. He leapt in, and all in a flash Justin saw what the boy meant.

Ethan Prince danced as none of the other warriors did. He danced the way he played his harp, with no set plan, but only a vague idea in his head that he then expanded and embellished and vivified. He could no more dance any other way than he could play a song merely because one was demanded of him; but though his dancing was unrefined, Justin could not imagine the onlookers expecting anything different. He was, as the boy had said, the centre of the Harvest Knot. He was its heart—as he was the heart of his people. Justin had thought the Knot’s story a beautiful one before, but now he knew that if Ethan were to drop out, it would become ugly.

The formation twined around the bonfire again, and Justin caught a glimpse of someone slipping out and changing the Knot slightly. Ethan disappeared in the film of smoke, then reappeared. His bare feet flashed up and seemed to hang in the air for longer than was possible, then came down to the dry earth again with the pounding note of a drum. His face glowed in the wavering firelight and his eyes gleamed jewel-bright, reflecting both his wild delight and his fixed concentration. Watching him and the other dancers, Justin wished to join all the more. He almost did, but then his common sense and embarrassment overwhelmed him and he relaxed back into his place again.

He thought later that this must have gone on for a long time, but it did not seem so as he was watching, for there was always a new twist in the dance, a sudden move that he could not foresee, and it kept the crowd wanting more. These dances were ages old, yet he knew from the fascination each face showed that it was new every year. How could it not be? They had nothing to follow but their own memories and inspiration, and so, by degrees, it changed. But in the midst of his reverie Justin suddenly realized that the dance was drawing to its climax and he leaned forward, waiting for whatever was to come.

The thread of warriors wove back to the place where Ash had begun and then curved, Ethan in the centre, facing the fire and sweeping toward it with doubled strength. Justin knew how it would be now. He waited eagerly for the turn, but it seemed to him that the Hound was going a little too far, that Ash had veered off before now, and that the prince was going to burn himself in the fire. Justin sat with his mouth open, dumb and horrified, incapable of moving; and, as he watched, the Hound gathered himself up and hurtled through the flames.

For a moment he was gone, and then he came into sight again, his body gleaming like burnished copper for an instant, his feet arched and one outstretched to receive the ground again, and, just as the other dancers began to close the gap around the fire, he touched the earth. The breathless crowd waited, ears pricked, to catch the sound of his landing: it was silent. It was as if it had never happened. He stood in the centre of the ring of warriors, poised with his head upflung, only the occasional, spasmodic tightening of the muscles in his belly showing the exertion he had put his body through.

The silence continued for several seconds longer, and then the assembly erupted into cheers as the warriors dispersed. They did not stay to receive the applause of their fellows, but only dropped out and made for the water and mead barrels. Justin scrambled up and went in search of his friend, his heart still thudding in panic, and found him near one of the low, makeshift tables. He stood with his legs widespread and his head back, a mug to his lips as he drained the last of the drink; it was such a common sight that Justin half wondered if he had dreamed the dance and the fire-leaping, until he came nearer and saw that Ethan’s breeches were blackened and singed in places.

“I thought you landed a mite heavy,” Ash was saying, finishing off his mead in two gulps and swinging the goblet at Ethan. “Have you put on a pound or two? You have to be careful what you eat.”

Ethan laughed at the good-natured jest and flung it back with, “I did, did I? Well, you got too near the fire and burned yourself. Here, let me by.” He retreated from the press of the crowd and came to Justin’s side, drawing a deep breath. Putting his fists on his hips, he said, “So, was that exciting enough for you?”

“It was amazing,” Justin stated. “You once told me you could dance, but I did not know you could dance like that.”

Ethan chuckled, brushing himself off as though it would help get rid of the black marks. “Still think the harvest fires are boring?” Justin made a wry face and gave no answer. “So, then,” the Hound continued, “you liked the Knot. Think you will be joining it next time?”

“Drop dead.”

A Faultless Felon

2011-07-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago when Anna came to visit us she brought her copy of G.K. Chesterton's Four Faultless Felons, a short book that I proceeded to borrow and read over about a week-long period. It was my first Chesterton book, and while I am not sure I agree with everything in the four short stories, the major point that he was driving home made me think. Each of the characters had done something or appeared to do something that in the eyes of those around them was illegal, earning themselves the titles "felons." Yet their actions were in fact not felony at all; each man was faultless when his motives and real actions were taken into account.

One of the points of Four Faultless Felons is that genuinely good actions are so confounding to the world that if they were practiced more often, they would be mistaken for felony. How can evil understand Good? How can darkness understand Light? Can the things of the flesh understand the things of the Spirit? Another point is that we ought not do good in order to be seen as Good People by those around us, and that when the world starts calling us Good, we should stop and examine ourselves very closely. The people did not call Jesus "good," and when one man did, Jesus turned it back in his face with the reply, "Why do you call me good? There is none good but God alone." It isn't about appearing to be good; it is about being holy.

Yesterday I was working on my author website, getting it set up to launch, which involves doing summaries for my novels and all that good stuff. I had done The Soldier's Cross and Wordcrafter and was working on The White Sail's Shaking, mulling over some of the themes that have come to play in it - friendship, courage, mercy, and true honor. Only, I hadn't really thought about the last one very much. Tip is driven by a need to prove himself, to show his family that he is something more than mediocre and to show his fellow officers that, unlike his relations, he is not a Loyalist. I already knew that that would be a point of the story; I knew subconsciously that Tip was facing a decision - whether to seek honor or to do right - but until yesterday I hadn't come to the foundation of the choice.

It isn't about whether to choose honor or righteousness; the question boils down to what honor is. Honor is doing right, or at least it ought to be, and as Chesterton points out, it often comes out looking very dishonorable to everyone else. Tip is hunting glory, not honor, and though the two words are used synonymously, in this fallen world they are very often opposites. What is our conception of glory but greatness? And what, after all, do we really know of greatness? When we say a man has won glory, we mean he has won the people over into considering him great, which is not at all the same as the man really being great. Again, Chesterton's point is a good one: if true greatness were seen among fallen man, it would be considered base. When a great Man did come, what did the world do but ridicule Him and mock Him and put Him to death?

And so it is that when real honor is seen, it is usually misunderstood. To seek real honor is to seek something very low in the eyes of the world, and it is a great deal harder than winning glory. Any scum of a man can set himself up as something great, but it takes a different kind of man to be a faultless felon.

Scribblin' Notebooks

2011-07-03T12:30:00.001-07:00

Although technology has all but displaced writing whole novels by hand, most writers still carry notebooks around with them for scribbling ideas in during the day. Some people are more comfortable writing this way; some people prefer typing. I like a mix of both. Some sections seem to want to be written by hand - especially scenes that take place beyond the point at which I am in the "actual" writing - while others like to be typed and won't flow on paper. I always carry a notebook with me in what my family calls "Abigail's little red bag." "Did you get your little red bag?" "Where's your little red bag?" "Don't you have your little red bag?" During Wednesday night Bible Study, Thursday night theology class, and Sunday evening worship, I'll pull my notebook out and write, which actually helps me pay attention rather than distracting me. I currently have three writing notebooks - two completed, one in progress.

The middle one was my first, and not decorated by me; those are Elrond's twin sons, Elladan and Elrohir, up at the top, by the bye. It has some of my planned novel Sunshine and Gossamer but is mostly full of Wordcrafter - lots of messy scribblings on Wordcrafter.

The one on the far left was my second, this time decorated by me. The sketches of the two women are of Lizzy and Jane Bennet, drawn by professional artist Niroot. The drawing in the bottom right of the anthropomorphic cat sitting at a burning typewriter is from the webcomic Lackadaisy. The middle image is a drawing of Legolas with "If You Can Read This, The Dwarf Fell Off" written on the back of his tunic. Over on the right and at the top are some signature graphics (original art not mine); the one on the left says "blue jeans in Tera" (Wordcrafter), the silhouetted man says "Justin King" (Wordcrafter), and the woman up top says "Marta Rais" (White Sail's).

And the one on the right is my current notebook. Like my second, it has an Arabian horse on the left (for Marah from Wordcrafter). It also has a couple signatures - one for Justin (again), one for Ethan, and one on the right that says "I answered you in the secret place of thunder." It also has an adorable picture by a gal who...seems to have deactivated her deviantART account. Then I've got a cover for Sunshine and Gossamer and another for Tempus Regina, my other planned novel.

I write the scene on the right-hand page only; it's easier that way. At the top I mark the story and sometimes the chapter, if I'm actually advanced enough to have a chapter list.

I also write notes on the top of the page, usually having something to do with the teaching. (The top note, for those of you who are peering curiously at it, is the quote from Wives and Daughters, "I'm not saying she was very foolish. I'm saying one of us was very foolish, and it wasn't me.") On the left-hand page I write the location of the scene, more for the fun of using elaborate fonts than for anything else, although with White Sail's it is helpful. For instance, the scene I was writing in the right picture took place in Boston; others take place on the schooner Enterprize, and I'll note that and the location of the ship at the time (if in port). I also use this space for writing more notes, or for scrawling furiously when I can't think of anything to write.

And sometimes I write on the bulletins our church has for Sunday mornings. This is for Tempus Regina, but I'm not going to translate it for you.

*The cat featured in some of the above photos is Buster. He was more interested in lounging than in posing, however, so he looks a bit...well...loungy.

The Genius of Dickens

2011-06-30T10:04:00.001-07:00

I apologize for the lack of posts; this past week has been quite busy and I've not been on the computer much.

Dickens is the kind of writer who must either be loved or hated. Readers either see him as brilliant and witty or dull and tedious, and there are elements of his style which support both views; it doesn't help, for instance, that he was paid by the word and that he was in constant need of money. In addition to the length of his novels, they deal with very dismal themes - not the kind of light reading you want for a rainy day. In fact, until I began watching the Masterpiece Theatre adaptations of his works, I did not realize that Dickens' novels were concerned with anything but starving orphans, a misconception which I am sure is shared by many others. Dickens is simply not appreciated by the majority of readers nowadays.

A few weeks ago I finished reading Little Dorrit, one of Dickens' less familiar novels, although it has become more well known since the release of the BBC production starring Claire Foy and Matthew Macfadyen. Although we had long owned an older production of David Copperfield, the Little Dorrit mini-series was my family's introduction to the world of Dickens adaptations, and my introduction to Dickens as something more than a boring and dismal writer. It had intrigue. And romance. And wit. And - and color! I was startled and pleased, and began to take an interest in reading more of his books than I had hitherto.

I had read A Christmas Carol and The Pickwick Papers before, but though I enjoyed both, I did not fully appreciate them. After watching a slew of Dickens adaptations I picked up Martin Chuzzlewit, not being in the mood for one of his more popular and more dismal novels, like Oliver Twist, and learned to appreciate his writing. Then, as I already mentioned, I just recently completed Little Dorrit and found it fantastic.

I am no literary expert, and so I do not intend to go to great lengths to talk about the minutiae of Dickens' style and his expert use of adverbs or some such silliness. But I would like to do my bit to set aside the idea that Dickens oughtn't be a classic or that his stories have no life. While it is true that he tended toward wordiness, it is amazing how much wit and truth he put in those "useless" words - proving that, while less may be more, it does not necessarily follow that more is nothing. (Chew on that conundrum for a bit.)

Many, if not all, of Dickens' novels have a high moral tone and a heavy political criticism, but unlike most modern novels - and, no doubt, many of his own era - he succeeds in keeping the reader engaged even through long chapters on the Circumlocution Office by his tongue-in-cheek narration. Although he is essentially satirizing the British government and there is no action, he makes up for it with humor and shows a little later that some detail on the Circumlocution Office was necessary for the storyline. I do not suggest using this as license to run to great lengths with backstory and description, but I believe a little such spice would not go amiss. Writing gurus today are so adamant about chopping words and never having any sentence that does not move the plot along that, judging from the sizes of paragraphs in modern novels, writers seem afraid of exceeding three or four sentences in each. So the moral of this story is not to be flowery merely for the sake of being flowery (unless you're getting paid by the word, in which case, have at it), but not to be scared using too many words.

Another thing for which Dickens ought always to be regarded as a classic is his skill in crafting characters. I have seen many books around on "crafting characters" and "creating the perfect character" and "eliminating every cliche that ever existed from your main character"; but I really have no idea why such works are needed when we have Dickens novels. In his books he displays a variety of characters such as I have never seen in any other author's work, and characters who exemplify such extremes and yet also come across as unquestionably realistic. His main characters, indeed, are not so much this way as his supporting characters are; in Little Dorrit, the titular character narrated a relatively small proportion of the book. Throughout the novel she is a quiet, retiring young woman who hardly stands out at all, but is made remarkable in her silent virtue by the characters who surround her - her petulant father, her ne'er-do-well brother, her proud sister, and the hard and self-righteous Mrs. Clennam. Arthur Clennam, the narrator of most of the story, is a kindhearted man with a desire to do right, but again, he is not remarkable in the way the minor characters are.

Little Dorrit alone provides a plethora of fantastic minor characters. There is Fanny Dorrit, the main character's proud sister who is given to outbursts of temper followed by outbursts of tears and cries of "I wish I was dead!" There is good-natured Mrs. Plornish, who believes she can speak Italian and always has to "translate" for the Italian Cavaletto (who can communicate in English). There is Maggy, the orphan girl who had a fever when she was ten and has never gotten any older since. There is the whole cast of characters who make up the Circumlocution Office, particularly Barnacle Junior with his eyeglass-woes. And then there is my personal favorite: Mr. Pancks, the grubby rent-collector who is disliked by the population of Bleeding Heart Yard, while his hypocritical employer is beloved by all. Pancks is described as the Tug - always puffing and snorting and going along at a great rate, chugging into 'dock', towing the 'ship' (his employer) around.

Those are just a few of the outrageous characters who populate Dickens' novels. Most writer's minor characters appear to serve a plot point and then slip into oblivion, but with Dickens, everyone is made to stand out no matter how slight his role is. Just about any of his stories will provide a writer with a lesson in minor characters and how they make a story move - and that is the genius of Dickens.

Beautiful People and...

2011-06-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

...an update on The Soldier's Cross! For those of you who love those little technological gadgets that would make my eyes bleed out of my head, I'm here to announce that both The Soldier's Cross and The Shadow Things are now available for Kindle downloads from Amazon. Both are only $9.99. You can also read the first chapter of each for free on your computer by checking out the green Kindle gadget over on the right. Or is that a widget? Oh well, you get the idea. You can now cart our novels about on your Kindle, Android, Blackberry, iPod, iPhone, and iDon'tKnowWhatElse, so enjoy!

And now, because it's still June, and because I love these questionnaires, and because poor Scipio has been sadly neglected of late (seeing as I'm editing the beginning sections of White Sail's and he, unfortunately, doesn't arrive until Much Later), I'm doing another Beautiful People Post. These questions have been pulled together by Georgie Penn and Sky:

Once a month Sky and [Georgie] will be posting a list of 10 questions for you to answer about your characters. You can use the same character every month, or choose a new one for each set of questions. Your call. You can answer all the questions, just one, or however many you have the time and energy to answer. Just go for it and have fun.

As with Tip's questionnaire, this one will be a compilation of the questions to date. And so let me introduce you to Scipio, the Barbary macaque.

1. What is your character’s full name?

Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus. Scipio the Younger.

2. Does his name have a special meaning?

With a name that long, you would think it had a special meaning...but it doesn’t.

3. Does your character have a methodical or disorganized personality?

Quite disorganized. Scipio’s favourite pastime is wreaking havoc.

4. Does he think inside himself more than he talks out loud to his friends? (more importantly, does he actually have friends?)

Scipio doesn’t speak, but I’m also not sure he thinks very much.

5. Is there something he is afraid of?

Blood. Scipio is terrified of the sight of blood.

6. Does he write, dream, dance, sing, or photograph?

None of the above, although I would love to see a monkey singing.

7. What is his favorite book? (or genre of book)

The ones that taste the best. He likes that particular dusty taste that old books get, and prefers leather covers to cloth ones. Cloth gets stuck in his throat.

8. Who is his favorite author and/or someone that inspires him?

Those that inspire him to keep going to the back cover.

9. Favorite flavor of ice cream?

Thank goodness, Scipio has never had it; if once he had tasted it, he would probably pine away for lack of it.

10. Favorite season of the year?

It’s all the same to Scipio.

11. How old is he?

Scipio is only a few months old when he comes into the story.

12. What does he do in his spare time?

Tries not to get into trouble, gets into trouble, and tries to look as though he didn’t get into trouble. Story of his life.

13. Does he see the big picture, or live in the moment?

Scipio definitely lives in the moment.

14. Is he a perfectionist?

Yes, he likes his world to be a certain way and gets quite confused when things change.

15. What does his handwriting look like? (round, slanted, curly, skinny, sloppy, neat, decorative, etc)

Well... I should think a monkey’s handwriting would be very sloppy indeed.

16. Favorite animal?

Scipio is fond of the ship’s cat.

17. Does he have any pets?

At least two: Tip and Charlie.

18. Does he have any siblings, how many, and where does he fit in?

Scipio remembers nothing of his family (so touching, isn’t it? I love that angst aspect).

19. Does he have a "life verse" and if so what is it?

Proverbs 12:10—“A righteous man regards the life of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”

20. Favorite writing utensil?

I refer you to number 15.

21. What type of laugh does he have?

Scipio shrieks when amused. It’s quite deafening.

22. Who is his best friend?

Tip Brighton.

23. What is his family like?

We’re sorry, the answer to this question is not available now. This page will redirect to number 18 in five (5) seconds.

24. Is he a Christian, or will he eventually find Jesus?

As he is an animal and has no need of salvation, this question is not applicable.

25. Does he believe in fairies?

I don’t think Scipio has ever heard of fairies, poor dear.

26. Does he like hedgehogs?

If he met one, I have a feeling Scipio would be scared out of his skin.

27. Favorite kind of weather?

Anything without rain. Scipio dislikes rain.

28. Does he have a good sense of humor? If so what kind? (Slapstick, wit, sarcasm, etc.?)

Scipio has a very good sense of humor. He probably has the best sense of humor of anyone in the book.

29. How did he do in school, or any kind of education he might have had?

Scipio is enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks.

30. Any strange hobbies?

Playing with or eating Charlie’s buttons; playing with or eating Charlie’s queue; playing with or eating bugs; playing with or—well, he doesn’t eat the ship’s cat. His life basically revolves around either playing or eating. Or sleeping. But mostly playing or eating.